Setting `axes.linewidth` without changing the `rcParams` global dict

Question

So, it seems one cannot do the following (it raises an error, since axes does not have a set_linewidth method):

axes_style = {'linewidth':5}
axes_rect = [0.1, 0.1, 0.9, 0.9]

axes(axes_rect, **axes_style)

and has to use the following old trick instead:

rcParams['axes.linewidth'] = 5 # set the value globally

... # some code

rcdefaults() # restore [global] defaults

Is there an easy / clean way (may be one can set x- and y- axes parameters individually, etc)?

P.S. If no, why?

Answer 1

The above answer does not work, as it is explained in the comments. I suggest to use spines.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)

# you can change each line separately, like:
#ax.spines['right'].set_linewidth(0.5)
# to change all, just write:

for axis in ['top','bottom','left','right']:
  ax.spines[axis].set_linewidth(0.5)

plt.show()
# see more about spines at:
#http://matplotlib.org/api/spines_api.html
#http://matplotlib.org/examples/pylab_examples/multiple_yaxis_with_spines.html