Main Content
Summary
Author: (Exhibitions - London 1851)
Title: Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 1851. Reports of the Juries on the subjects in the thirty classes into which the exhibition was divided. Presentation copy.
Publication: London, printed for the Royal Commission by William Clowes & Sons 1852.
Price: £495
Reference: 09773
Full Description
Large 8vo. (6) + cxx + 867 + (1)pp, 3 coloured plates, also 16pp of adverts for Official Exhibition Catalogue. Publisher’s gilt and blind-stamped cloth, spine repaired, worn at outer corners.
A massive volume which prints verbatim the reports by expert panels of jurors on the objects displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Medals were to be given for the best of the exhibits, a larger and more prestigious one for “important novelty of invention or application, either in material, or processes of manufacture, or originality combined with great beauty of design”, and a smaller medal for “excellence in production or workmanship”, and the jurors who awarded these included such notable individuals as Michael Faraday, Joseph Hooker, George Rennie, Lewis Gruner, J.G.Crace, Panizzi, Cockerell and Pugin. The volume also prints a lengthy and interesting “Supplementary Report on Design” by Richard Redgrave, praising and criticising the general state of contemporary design as evidenced by the exhibits. Copies of it were specifically intended for presentation to exhibitors (hence the words “presentation copy” which appear as part of the volume’s printed title).