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- Robert Pricke
- Also known as
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Robert Pricke
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primary name: Pricke, Robert
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other name: Pryke, Robert
- Details
- individual; publisher/printer; printmaker; British; Male
- Life dates
- c.1642-1708
- Address
- 1. Flower Pot in Fleet Street (1655)
2. in White Cross Street near Cripplegate Church (1664)
3. Golden Lion in New Cheapside (1669)
4. Marefields near Bethlehem (1669)
Some of these addresses were used simultaneously.
- Biography
- Pricke is familiar to architectural historians as the pioneer publisher of architectural pattern-books in England, who supplied the demand from builders and craftsmen after the Great Fire (Harris p.379; see also Plomer). Almost all his publications were taken from French sources, which he often seems to have known through Dutch piracies. He himself translated the texts and copied the plates. On one occasion he managed to import the original plates. His publications came out in handsomely-produced folios, of which he published at least thirteen titles in a short space of time between 1669 and 1679. He continued to reprint these until at least 1700 (Harris cat.719). Only his writing-books had English authors.
It is often stated that he was a pupil of Hollar. But there is no evidence for this, and the statement seems to derive from a copy he published of Hollar's set, Pennington 1261-72. Pricke was a competent etcher, but seems only to have made copies; he always published his own plates, and never worked for anyone else. His first publications were not specifically architectural. The first date found on a publication is 1655, when he published an engraving of the Cries of London at the Flower Pot in Fleet Street (Hind III 369.84). To the next year belongs a set of reversed copies after animals by Paulus Potter, etched by himself (BM). Most of his plates are undated, and include reprints of earlier English plates (eg Elstrack's 'Bulchin and Thingut', Hind II 210.97) and imported Dutch ones (eg the set of six proverbs after van Mander, with English verses newly added to Estius's Latin). Some of his copies are of very substantial size: a Tabula Cebetis copied from Matham's 1592 engraving after Goltzius (BM 1917,1208.2396), and a six-plate copy of Hollar's Long View (Pepys Library, 2972/28-9).
In 1664 he published his first book, Cocker's 'Guide to Penmanship' at an address at the Cross Keys in White Cross Street, Cripplegate; by 1669 he was also publishing at the Golden Lion in New Cheapside, and in Marefields near Bethlehem. His earliest address, at the Flower Pot in Fleet Street, is found on some single sheet prints, and on a book published in 1670. Many prints, such as a mezzotint of the Bantam ambassadors of 1682, merely have his 'excudit'.
On 30 September 1675 Robert Hooke purchased from him four pencils for 1s. and Richards' translation of Palladio (Diary pp.130,185,188). The titlepages of many of his books advertise his stock. That of Francini's 'New Book of Architecture' of 1669, for example, advertised 'also choice of mapps, coppy-books, Italian, French and Dutch prints' and this is still found on his last book of 1700.
- Bibliography
- ODNB