P154 - Previously unseen
images of Crystal Palace up for sale
John Ezard, Arts
Correspondent
Friday August 20, 2004
The Guardian
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Forty-seven remarkable,
previously unseen images of the lost Crystal Palace, the
Victorian masterpiece of technology and empire, have been
found and will go on sale next Wednesday.
The photographs, taken
more than 140 years ago, are regarded as almost unique in
their sweep and detail. They reveal the vast building which
a newspaper described as "a fairy palace within a wall of
glass and iron" in its early London heyday.
They show that the
Victorians, at the height of their confidence, felt there
was nothing they could not bring home from abroad, or copy,
put indoors and display to the public. Two 20 metre (65ft)
high replicas of the colossi from the facade of the temple
of Abu Simbel, built on the Nile by Ramesses II in 1300 BC,
tower over a palm court under a glass dome which rises high
above even them.
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They are thought to have
stood in one of 10 fine art courts in styles which ranged -
in a setting Queen Victoria called "magnificent fairyland" -
from Roman to Chinese. Outside a central fountain rose 50
metres (160ft) above Italianate gardens laid out on a scale
rivalling Versailles.
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History in
focus: one of the images of Crystal Palace taken by
Philip Henry Delamotte. Photo: PA/ Dominic Winter
Auctions
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Statistics indicate that the palace had almost 12,000 water jets. It
also possessed a kind of Jurassic Park, with replica
pterodactyls.
The prints were sent to the
auctioneers Dominic Winter in Swindon, Wiltshire. They are expected
to fetch at least £6,000.
They were taken using the
relatively new albumen print process by Philip Henry
Delamotte.
He was recording the palace after
its transfer to Sydenham, south London, from Hyde Park, where Joseph
Paxton designed it as the centrepiece of the 1851 Great
Exhibition.
Albumen printing, invented in 1850,
became the most widely used method for the next 40 years.
It yielded a clearer image than its
predecessor, the salted paper print. It was made by coating paper
with a layer of egg white and salt to create a smooth surface. The
paper was then also coated with a layer of silver nitrate and placed
in contact with a negative.
In 1855 a book containing 160
images by Delamotte was published. The photos which have just emerged
are thought to date from the late 1850s to early 1860s.
Great British exhibitions begin
with vaunting splendour and end in tawdry funfairs. This happened
with the 1951 Festival of Britain, with its pleasure gardens at
Battersea, and it occurred with the Crystal Palace. In 1866 its first
fire broke out, mostly destroying the north transept, but sparing the
Egyptian statues. These fell victim to a later blaze.
By the 1920s, the outside amenities
had degenerated into a dirt-track race course, maze, jungle and dance
hall. And in 1936 came the final fire.
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9/11/04 Last Updated
9/11/04