Mercury fountain

A mercury fountain is a fountain that is designed to run on mercury rather than water.

A well-known modern mercury fountain was built in 1937 by American artist Alexander Calder for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris and is now in the sculpture garden of the Fundació Joan Miró museum in Barcelona . The fountain was commissioned by the legitimate republican government of Spain to respond to the Francoist offensive in the Spanish civil war against the mercury mines in Almadén ( Prov. Ciudad Real), which were among the most important in the world at the time, and on the other hand to draw attention to the economic and capitalist interests behind the military coup that sparked the civil war.

Around the year 1000 there were pools filled with mercury in the palaces of the caliphs of Cordoba (Medina az-Zahra), Cairo and Baghdad , which were used to play with the effects of light, as well as mercury ponds set in large porphyry shells (for Cairo, 50 cubits are in Square handed down).

Web links

• Calder's mercury fountain in the Fundació Joan Miró
• Calder's mercury fountain in operation
• Photos of Calder's Mercury Fountain by Mary Ann Sullivan
• More photos of Calder's mercury fountain

See also

• Qin Shihuangdis Mausoleum (rivers of mercury)