Pyrotechnics: The History and Art of Firework MakingBrock, Alan St. H. (Alan St. Hill)
History
Pyrotechnics: The History and Art of Firework Making
Brock, Alan St. H. (Alan St. Hill)
Fireworks
The larger display pieces are generally designed and redesigned season
by season by pyrotechnists, and are certainly being elaborated and
improved. They, however, fall generally into certain classes in the
same way as do those given by Ruggieri. His classification is as
follows:
1. Stationary fireworks.
2. Fireworks turning vertically.
3. Mixed fireworks or fixed and turning.
4. Fireworks turning horizontally or on a pivot.
5. Built-up pieces turning on a pivot.
6. Cut-out pieces and transparencies.
Of these, the last mentioned class are now obsolete: they consisted of
transparent and silhouette pictures or designs illuminated from behind.
He also includes both simple and compound fireworks in each class, but
as the former have already been dealt with they will be ignored here.
Class 1. (1) Glorys, fans and “pates d’oie” or goose foot, synonymous
with our expression crow’s foot.
Glory was a term used also in this country to signify fixed suns, as
mentioned above. Fans were cases five or more in number, arranged as
the name indicated, and pates d’oie, three similarly arranged.
(2) Mosaiques. These are geometrical designs formed by arranging gerbs
or fixt on framework, so that their fire forms a symmetrical pattern.
The effect is heightened by saxons in suitable positions, and in large
devices of this nature, small wheels, also formerly, the now obsolete
fixed or five-pointed star.
This type includes what are now called “lattice poles,” a series of
poles provided with cleats so that the fire of the cases crosses,
forming a lattice of sparks; also the more elaborate “carpet piece.”
(3) Feux croisés. These were similar in conception to the above, except
that the design is circular or based on the circle or wheel form; this
type is represented by the “fixt piece” of to-day, which is constructed
up to considerable dimensions, the large fixt piece at the Crystal
Palace often measuring sixty feet across the fire.
(4) Palm Trees. These consist of a framework intended to suggest the
form of a palm, provided with cleats to take the cases.
(5) Bouquets. These he describes also as a kind of tree different from
palm trees; his illustration shows that they were similar to the modern
lattice-pole with the difference that the cleats were not symmetrically
arranged.
To-day the word bouquet is applied to Roman candles arranged in what he
called “pates d’oie.”
(6) Cascade. This device needs no explanation. He says that Chinese
fire is the best composition for such a piece; this remained true up
to the introduction of the aluminium into pyrotechny, when the “weird
white waterfall” became a feature of the Crystal Palace displays, being
200 feet long and 90 feet high.
(7) Decorations in coloured fire. This heading introduces the lancework
set piece of to-day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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