From our current stock of books for sale:
ECKSTEIN, G.F.
A practical treatise on chimneys; with a few remarks on stoves, the consumption of smoke and coal, ventilation, &c.London, Weale and the Author, 1852
Description
George Frederick Eckstein was an ironmonger of Lloyd Square, Pentonville, who specialised in stoves and cooking ranges and inevitably with all the associated problems of smoking chimneys and inadequate ventilation. In 1814 he himself had patented a successful design for a self-acting open kitchen range, to overcome the disadvantages of closed grate ranges, which was promoted by Loudon in "Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture". Eckstein claims to have fitted up several thousand kitchens with them. Amongst his other inventions was a rotary float to improve the circulation of hot water for heating. This excellent little book, which encapsulates his life’s work, is largely devoted to the correct design of flues, so crucial for the effective working of the fire beneath. Eckstein disseminates his information via a series of chatty "case histories", which reveal much about contemporary living conditions. He was called in to rebuild, enlarge or substantially modify flues in houses and shops large or small from mansions in Hyde Park and Park Lane, merchants’ offices in the City of London, a billiard room on Balham Hill, King’s College, a kitchen with a flue beneath the garden on the north-east corner of Cavendish Square, a vicarage in Hampstead, a shop in Canterbury, a "handsome cottage" in Bushey Heath, a "neat cottage" near Reigate, a mansion near Basingstoke, Court of Chancery offices and so on and on. He has much to say about the correct placing of ranges and the short-comings of bricklayers, is critical of Hiort’s patent bricks and circular flues, and is very critical about the use of climbing boys. In short, a fascinating book on a long-lost art.
Collation
8vo. xii + 153 + (1) + 9 + (1)pp. Publisher's cloth, rebacked.Price
£180.00Catalogue No: 4968