Description
This book explores James Watt’s early years and interests, as well as his highly successful 25-year partnership with the industrialist Matthew Boulton. While traditional biographies of Watt concentrate on the steam engine, James Watt tells a richer story: it explores the processes by which ephemeral ideas were transformed into tangible artefacts, and places Watt within the context of Britain’s early industrial transformation. Watt’s work is emblematic of a wider culture of multifaceted artisanship, and this book probes the widely held motivation for making things, looking not only at what was produced but why. It draws on a rich range of resources – from archival material and biographies on Watt to objects themselves, as well as ceramics, antique systems of proportion, sculpture and machine making – to illustrate Watt’s unique career in a time of momentous industrial change.
