The Mechanisms

CASE 3

Culture and International Relations in the 18th Century

MECHANISMS

Taihu garden rock
Palace Museum, Beijing
Photo courtesy of Marty Powers

The use of such elaborately contrived devices led to similar embarrassments in Europe, particularly when combined with Chinese-inspired gardens of the “natural” sort. In 1776, Richard Graves (1715–1804) wrote:

To crown the whole, at length he’d made Without water, a cascade. Behind his artificial rock, A cistern placed; he turn’d a cock; And to the little Naiads spout And splutter-till the tub ran out.—Not with more rapture Israel spied The streams by Moses’ rod supplied.

“The Cascade,” Euphrosyne

“Artificial rock” was the term Europeans had always used for the beautifully twisted taihu rocks popular in Chinese gardens. By mentioning the artificial rock in his poem, Graves highlights the irony of turning a “cock” (faucet) to set water running in what pretended to be a then-fashionable, “natural” garden!

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