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The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations was the first international exhibition of manufactured goods, and it had an incalculable effect on the course of art and design throughout the Victorian Age and beyond. It was modelled on successful French Industrial Exposition of 1844,, but it was the first to open its doors to the world.
The Exhibition lasted 141 days and in that time six million people visited the Crystal Palace. Admission prices varied according to the date. There was a day and a ticket price to suit everyone. It varied from 3 guineas a day, £1 a day, five shillings a day, down to one shilling a day. The one shilling ticket was a huge success with the industrial classes, and four and a half million shillings were taken.
Paxton's
Crystal Palace. Initially the Commission rejected Paxton's plan, but he took
out newspaper ads to raise public support, and the Commissioners were forced
to bow to public pressure. Paxton's innovative design called for a glass and
steel structure, essentially a giant greenhouse, made of identical,
interchangeable pieces, thus lowering materials cost considerably. Paxton's
design was adopted, with the addition of a dome to allow space for some very
tall trees in Hyde Park.
Rival
architects claimed that the building was unsafe, and would collapse from the
resonance set up by the feet of large crowds. So an experiment was set up. A
model structure was built, and workmen walked back and forth in time and
then haphazardly. Then they jumped up in the air together. No problem. As a
final test, army troops were called in to march about. The test building
passed the trial, so work proceeded on the real thing.
Amazingly,
the building, dubbed the "Crystal Palace", was ready on time and
on budget. In fact, due to presale of tickets, the exhibition was ensured a
profit before it even opened on May 1, 1851. There were 17,000 exhibitors
from as far away as China, and over 6 million visitors viewed goods ranging
from silks to clocks, and furniture to farm machinery. The French were the
big winners in terms of awards, a fact which did not go unnoticed by the
British press.
The finished building was enormous - 1,848 feet long and 408 feet wide (with an extra bit sticking out on one side 936 feet x 48 feet). A grand avenue and upstairs galleries ran the whole length of the building. Altogether, 772,784 square feet (19 acres) were roofed over, not including the 217,100 square feet of galleries. This was an area six times larger than that of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Materials included 550 tons of wrought iron, 3,500 tons of cast iron, 900,000 superficial feet of glass and 600,000 foot of wooden planking to walk on. There were 202 miles of sash bars and 30 miles of guttering.
The profit from the exhibition was used to purchase land in Kensington, where several museums were built, including the forerunner of the Victoria and Albert Museum, which carries on the spirit of the exhibition in its displays devoted to art and design. In fact, the road were several of these museums were built was called Exhibition Road.
As for the Crystal Palace itself, it was dismantled at the end of the exhibition and reassembled in Sydenham, South London. It reopened in 1854, and there it stayed as a tourist attraction until it burned down in 1936. If you want to get a sense of what this amazing building was like, visit the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, and take a look at the Palm House.
Here are a few pictures of some of the items that were on show at
The Great Exhibition of 1851.
Silver Bowl Drinking Cup
by Marrel Freres from Paris by Charles Meigh of Staffordshire, UK
Tudor Style Chimney Pots
by Doultons of Lambeth, London
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