‘What is to become of the Crystal Palace?’ The Crystal Palace after 1851

This introductory chapter explores and establishes the Sydenham Crystal Palace in relation to existing scholarship on the Great Exhibition of 1851. The Sydenham Palace combined education, entertainment and commerce, and spans both nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We resituate it as an important location within the London art world and establish the broader connections it had with rival ventures such as the South Kensington Museum and the numerous international exhibitions in the period. We set out the new possibilities for the analysis of both nineteenth- and twentieth-century visual and material cultures opened up by this unique venue, problematising the periodisation of art works and attitudes into discretely ‘Victorian’ and ‘Edwardian’ categories.

‘A present from the Crystal Palace’: Souvenirs of Sydenham, miniature views and material memory

Focusing on two souvenirs: a ‘peep egg’ (after 1851), a stone egg decorated with a floral pattern, inscribed ‘A present from the Crystal Palace’ (Bill Douglas Collection, Exeter University) and a needle case in carved bone (c. 1860-7) in the shape of a folded umbrella or parasol (V&A), this chapter discusses the spy-glass keepsake’s role as both a visual record of the Sydenham Crystal Palace and as an emblem of popular visual memories of the site. Such keepsakes stand testimony to a prevalent affection or fondness for the Palace in the latter part of the nineteenth century, or at the very least, its currency in popular culture and the growing leisure industry.