Would You Like to Come Up to See My Kip?

Jan Kip, Dutch draughtsman for William of Orange in Amsterdam and then William and Mary in England, along with fellow Dutch draughtsman Leonard Knyff were best know for their bird's-eye view engraved prints compiled in Brittania Illustrata. Or Views of Several of the Queens Palaces, as Also of the Principal seats of the Nobility and Gentry of Great Britain, Curiously Engraven on 80 Copper Plates, London (1707, published in the winter of 1708 – 09). - NDL

The volume is among the most important English topographical publications of the 18th century. Architecture is rendered with great care and detail, and the settings of parterres and radiating avenues driven through woods or planted across fields, garden paths, gates and toolsheds are illustrated with meticulous detail, and amusingly staffed with figures and horses, coaches pulling into forecourts, water craft on rivers, filled with the delight native to the Low Countries' traditions. Some of the plates are maps, in the Siennese "map perspective," a feat of imagination in a world that had not conceived even of a balloon ascension. - Wikipedia




This Kip was used to help the National Trust recreate the formal gardens at Westbury Court after they had fallen into disrepair. - NDL


The topographical images of Kip and Knyff are significant for providing reliable illustrations of the development of the formal English garden in the Dutch-French style. Their documentary information for this period in British architecture and landscape design is particularly valued because, within a generation, the formal gardens seen in these views would be swept away in favor of the pastoral compositions, derived from idealized landscapes of painters such as Claude Lorrain, that characterize the "naturalistic"English landscape gardens. - Wikipedia

Tuck Kip and Knyff away in your mental file. They just might make you look very smart when they resurface on trivia night, during your appearance on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, or when dropped casually into cocktail hour conversation. Let us know how that works out.