Souvenirs de Marine - François Edmond Pâris

Limited edition on 80 gsm paper in assembled loose sheets. Table of plates at the beginning of the volume, illustrated dust jackets.

From his first embarkations, François Edmond Pâris, (Paris 1806 -Paris 1893) was noted for his drawing talents and his curiosity, which earned him to be embarked despite his youth alongside Dumont d'Urvillle. He is noted for his watercolors and his canoe drawings. A second voyage under the orders of Laplace gave rise to the notable publication of an Essay on the naval construction of extra-European pirogues

This concern for ethnology is coupled with a rare interest in steam engines and new weapons. It was while visiting a foundry in India that Paris suffered an accident where he lost the use of his left arm but he continued to serve in the navy with distinction, playing a large role in the adoption of the machine. steamship in the Navy. It was in 1841 that he informed Baron Tupinier of his project to research and copy both ancient and modern naval plans, successively ten steamboats from 1842 to 1862, from the aviso to the war frigate. At the same time, he began a career as a technical author of manuals for sailors and mechanics. The subordinate command of the squadron of evolutions in 1864 earned him the appointment of vice-admiral. He developed a vast network of correspondents in order to support his experiments with navigation data statistics. Elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1862 then appointed to the management of the chart repository and more of the Navy from 1864 to 1871, he also obtained the direction of the Louvre marine museum to devote himself to an ambitious program of museum a center for the conservation of naval art of all times and all countries. For Admiral Paris, “naval art” must be understood in the encyclopedic sense of the term: everything that affects the boat, from an artistic point of view as well as from a technical point of view; the man, the sailor as well as the officer must not be forgotten either. With his own funds, Paris began to publish the first plans that he had collated and had engraved. This is how we owe it to him to know the records of hundreds of coastal boats from all over the world, of great archaeological interest, and of which no plan ever existed. The many plans of ships, galleys, bombards, brigs... "souvenirs" save us from endless searches in all the museums of Europe. The finesse of the engraving also makes us forget the prestige of the original documents from the 17th and 18th centuries, which are sometimes unclear and which are rarely accessible to ordinary people. His work will be continued after his death to form a particularly original set of six volumes that marine enthusiasts must own, in original or in a reissue.

Author : François Edmond Pâris