The
Crystal Palace
Foundation

by Chup Friemert

The book is written wholly in German.

This book describes the history of the Crystal Palace in London, where the "Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations" opened the series of world exhibitions in 1851, as a "triumph of production engineering".

The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park was demolished and rebuilt in Sydenham as a "national place of recreation and education". Delamotte documented its re-erection in a series of 160 photographs taken on the construction site.

The longing of the northerners for the warm climes of the south had added countless orangeries to the castles in the 18th century, and the idea of a "palace of crystal" grew out of Romanticism. In London's Crystal Palace, this was realized in new, unprecedented dimensions, later leading the way in glass palaces and skyscrapers.

The victory of modern technology, also in architecture through the prefabricated elements and assembly processes, the use of glass, and cast iron, the incorporation of nature into vast interiors, all this had a future. The exhibition itself brought about the equation of all human products - ancient and brand new of all times and peoples as commodities, for sale and determined by supply and demand, this also had a future and was here for the first time shown worldwide and celebrated as a triumph of progress.

This truly magnificent book was written in 1984 and printed simultaneously in Dresden and Munich. Apart from slight typographical changes on the jacket the contents are the same. It has never been well known and is now very rare.

All the copies have been purchased from high-class antique book dealers and are therefore of good quality. Second hand books are however subject to the usual problems - light foxing and / or lightly stained pages, and the page edges, etc may not be perfect. The pages however are always fully secure. The best available copy of the book will be sent in all cases.

242 pages hardback. 160 sepia images of Delamotte's work and over 70 other images, drawings and plans in the book itself and 6 more images, a ground plan of the Great Exhibition of 1851 on the inside of the dust jacket. Remove and unfold the dust jacket to reveal a large full colour print of the 1851 Exhibition.