WRIGHT, Thomas. Universal Architecture. Book I. Six Original Designs of Arbours. 4 ff., including 2 large engravings of rustic buildings within a landscape setting, and 12 full-page engraved plates. Oblong folio, 300 x 470 mm, bound in modern half-calf over marbled boards. London: Printed for the Author, 1755.

Rare First Edition, an extraordinarily early English pattern book of rustic grottos, rustic buildings and rustic follies, preceding by twelve years William Wrighte's Grotesque Architecture (1767).

When Thomas Wright's Universal Architecture was published, "there were no other pattern-books of grottos, rustic buildings and ruined follies, nor at that time were there any books of architectural designs so attractively presented in complete landscape settings. The brief text accompanying the plates describes the materials and methods of executing the designs and the most suitable situations for them. Many of them can be identified with executed buildings and, although there is no sufficient evidence, it is almost certain that all the designs -- whether or not they were executed -- were made for specific patrons" (Harris).

Thomas Wright (1711-1786), sometimes called "The Wizard of Durham" on account of his astronominal inventions and mathematical genius, later became an amateur architect and landscape garden designer. He contributed to the development of Badminton, Cassiobury, Shugborough, and other estates. He was until recently vitually unknown as a landscape architect; however, Eileen Harris wrote a long essay on his career and garden designs in her Arbours & Grottos: A Facsimile of the two parts of "Universal Architecture" (1755 and 1758) with a catalogue of Wright's works in architecture and garden design (London, 1979).

Harris mentions that the original work is almost never found complete. It is believed that only 200 copies were actually printed, for which perhaps 100 were sold by subscription. The above copy contains Book I in its entirety (Book II was published three years later, in 1758). Only three institutions are known to possess both books: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Public Library, and King's College London (the V&A copy is fragmentary). Other copies located (Book I): Royal Institute of British Architects (fragmentary), Smithsonian; (Book II): John Rylands, Newberry, UCBA, Manchester.

Most leaves with short repairs along outer edges, plate "B" with repairs through margins (not affecting image).

RIBA 3720. Harris, British Architecture 951. UCBA Suppl. pp. 646-647. ESTC T211492 (vol. II only).