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Innovation/Invention

Illustration sans titre 27

If necessity is the mother of invention, this group of schemata spanning nearly 350 years explores our needs throughout the eras, illuminating how far we’ve come. Discover inventions obsolete to us today and innovations still influencing our world.

Sir John Dalrymple’s notes on fish soap

These letters from detail Sir John Dalrymple’s (1726-1810) process of making soap from herrings. An innovation previously attempted in France, fish soap was perfected by Dalrymple, who provides us with his sketches and measurements.

His running commentary, including slighting the French and ruminating on ways to improve his methods, helps us understand the insight behind the invention, as well as the psyche of the inventor.

How to Make Soap from Herrings

Creator Sir John Dalrymple
Date 1799
Object reference Ge.720D/6.

Title: How to Make Soap from Herrings
Creator Sir John Dalrymple
Date 1799
Object reference Ge.720D/6.
Material Typed page describing how to make fish soap.

Dalrymple's letters

Click the excerpts below to explore the transcriptions.

  • Title: Sir John Dalrymple letter excerpt I
    Creator Sir John Dalrymple
    Date 1799
    Object reference Ge.720D/6.
    Transcription

    I have made [the French recipe] soap several times, and it was so bad that nobody here would buy a single pound of it at any price.

  • Title: Sir John Dalrymple letter excerpt II
    Creator Sir John Dalrymple
    Date 1799
    Object reference Ge.720D/6.
    Transcription

    Discovery Second.

    The discovery that soap did not depend upon the oil of fish but upon a saponaceous matter in the bones and other useful parts of fish even after the oil was boiled from them led me naturally to the sea, that there was likewise a saponaceous matter from which soap might be made in the bones of land animals; which would probably be better than soap from the bones of fish, because the bones of land animals are full of marrow, which those of fish (very few accepted [exceptions?]) are not.

Architectural Fictions

This plate is the work of Iakov Chernikhov, a Ukrainian constructivist architect. Constructivism was a modern architecture style popular in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, focusing on industrial and urban spaces.

These themes clearly define Chernikhov’s drawings, pairing striking colours with semi-fantastical, futuristic, and often abstract structures to create a pleasing aesthetic.

Click "full information" for a translation from Russian by Matthew Hale.

101 Architectural drawings, plate 33

Creator Iakov Chernikhov
Date 1944
Place of creation Leningrad

Translation from Russian: “A compactly-built construction of a monolithic character. There is a combination of differing volumes between the buildings, as well as clear subdivisions into their major parts."

by Matthew Hale

Title: 101 Architectural drawings, plate 33
Creator Iakov Chernikhov
Date 1944
Place of creation Leningrad
Object reference RB.F.1071
Material Printed colour illustrations
Transcription

Translation from Russian: “A compactly-built construction of a monolithic character. There is a combination of differing volumes between the buildings, as well as clear subdivisions into their major parts."

Planning your Neighbourhood

After London was blitzed during the Second World War, many scrambled to rebuild not just structures but society. Erno Goldfinger and Ursula Blackwell, an architect-artist couple, were commissioned by the British Air Ministry Directorate of Educational Services to do just this.

These display boards, called Planning your neighbourhood for home, for work, for play, are dystopian to us today – almost Orwellian – and depict a functioning society contained within a single neighbourhood.

Plate 9

Creator Erno Goldfinger and Ursula Blackwell
Date 1944
Place of creation London

This plate, perhaps the most dystopian, suggests certain homes based on a family’s quantity and age of its members.

Title: Plate 9
Creator Erno Goldfinger and Ursula Blackwell
Date 1944
Place of creation London
Object reference RB.FF.321
Material Coloured pictorial board illustrations

Christopher Clavius’ Horological Workbook

Published in 1599, this workbook is the oldest piece in this exhibition. It is attributed to Christophorus Clavius, the German mathematician and astronomer who reformed the Gregorian calendar and revolutionized European astronomy. The workbook is horological, meaning it deals with the study of time and its measurement. In it, Clavius works out how to use astrology and the planets to tell time.

We are not sure when they were added, but Clavius has made annotations to much of the workbook, margin notes and diagrams, fleshing out (and sometimes correcting!) the original manuscript.

Use the zoom tool to explore this page yourself.

Work(book) in progress

Creator Christophorus Clavius
Date 1599
Place of creation Rome
Object reference RB.S.3264

Title: Work(book) in progress
Creator Christophorus Clavius
Date 1599
Place of creation Rome
Object reference RB.S.3264