The 1853 Dublin Exhibition of Art-Industry

Illustration: Central Hall of the Dublin Exhibition, 1853.

With the publicity surrounding the ground-breaking Great Exhibition held in Hyde Park, London in 1851, publicity that has made it as enduring an event today as it was one hundred and sixty one years ago, it is often tempting to think that it was the only significant event of its kind in Britain for some time after 1851. However, another international exhibition was held a mere two years after London, this one in Dublin.

The Exhibition of Art-Industry opened in Dublin on 12th may 1853 within the Irish Industrial Exhibition building which had been especially commissioned and built for the occasion. The Exhibition was in fact a grander version of exhibitions that had been running on a regular basis for a number of years and were part of the Dublin calendar of events. However, previous exhibitions had been limited to products that had been produced in Ireland, not internationally.

Illustration: Items from the Hall of Irish Antiquities at the Dublin Exhibition, 1853.

Apart from the fact that the Dublin Exhibition building was only a quarter the size of the original Crystal palace building in London, the event was very similar in many respects to the Great Exhibition of 1851. That exhibition was used very largely as a platform to project the image of Britain to the world; the Dublin event equally gave Ireland the chance to project its own unique identity on to a potentially international stage. 

Although all or most of the internationally staged exhibitions of the last century and a half have used the event to highlight the achievements or flavour of a particular nation or region, they have usually been organised by sovereign states. The Dublin event of 1853 gave what was perceived by many in Europe and North America as a subjugated sovereign state, the opportunity to have a voice independent from Britain and more importantly London. In this respect, the feel and flavour of the Dublin Exhibition was very different from that of London. The Roman Catholic Church for example, played a much higher profile than it would have been allowed to have done in London, and although Pugin's Medieval Court was both tolerated and indeed popularised and admired by the crowds, it was contained and portrayed by the press as being shorn of any real Catholic influence or idealism.

Illustration: Contemporary Irish jewellery inspired by the Celtic traditions of Ireland shown at the Dublin Exhibition, 1853.

Interestingly, there was a Medieval Court at the Dublin Exhibition, and although Pugin himself had died the previous year, his collaborator John Hardman produced the Medieval Court for Dublin. It is highly probable that had Pugin lived he would have been enthusiastically involved in the Dublin exhibition along with its more overt Catholicism. An interesting description of the Medieval Court from a London perspective can be found in a copy of The Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal for May 1853:

The medieval court has been fitted up with great care and elaboration. Window of stained glass, representing a number of figures of saints, serve to throw "a dim religious light" on altars, crucifixes, paschal candlesticks, credence tables, priests' vestments, lecterns, chalices, ciboriums, monstrances, triptics, and other "furniture" of a Roman Catholic church. Mr Hardman of Birmingham, who has the charge of this department, has had the roof painted and gilded with various designs suited to ecclesiastical decoration, so as to give to the medieval court almost a sacred character in the eyes of Roman Catholics, who enter it with looks of reverence that ill accord with the fiery glances of puritanical visitors.

As with the previous exhibition of 1851, the Dublin event was a strange combination of the contemporary industrial and the traditional craft. many of us would not necessarily see this as being a natural or comfortable combination, but many in the mid-nineteenth century saw no real problem in both admiring the significant strides made by Victorian technology whilst also admiring the traditions of the decorative arts.

Illustration: Contemporary and antique Irish jewellery at the Dublin Exhibition, 1853.

The Dublin Exhibition therefore highlighted in a series of exhibits, features of traditional Irish decorative life that was very much part of the pre-English and Scottish interference in Ireland, namely its Celtic heritage. One of the obvious contributors to the history of both European and world decorative art, Ireland was seen by many as the natural home of Celtic decoration and ornament. Therefore, examples of Celtic art that were both traditional and of contemporary inspiration were included in the exhibition. Some examples of the intricate Celtic inspired jewellery work that was on display at the exhibition are featured in this article.

On reflection, the Dublin exhibition was perhaps not as internationally successful as the organisers would have hoped and wished. On the whole the London press gloated on the fact that the Dublin event lost money and was under-represented internationally. They seemed at great pains to portray Dublin as an after-event to the London exhibition of 1851. Many in London found the idea of any form of subsequent exhibitions as a pointless exercise as the feeling was that the earlier exhibition had defined the contemporary moment of the mid-nineteenth century and that that moment had been largely seen as British, and as an international industrial event there seemed little point in Dublin restating the facts that had already been made. However, the Dublin press were equally exuberant and positive that an event on such a scale had been organised entirely within Ireland. There were in fact significant entries from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, some of the German states including Prussia, as well as the United States. The British Empire was also represented, particularly India which made as impressive an impact on the public as it had in London in 1851. English and Scottish textile companies were particularly well represented as a number saw the event as a means of competing with the relatively large Irish textile industry. Significantly, what much of the London press perhaps failed to understand was the significance that could be accrued through self-publicity by holding an event on an international scale as well as the potential in trade. Therefore, international exhibitions have been held constantly since that point in the mid-nineteenth century and are the mainstay for many industries today.

Illustration: Contemporary jewellery and copies of antique Scottish jewellery at the Dublin Exhibition, 1853.

As far as Dublin, and more importantly Ireland as a whole was concerned, the feeling was that they were heavily unrepresented as far as trade and industry were concerned. That they were politically and socially subsumed within the artificial empire-making conglomerate that had become the United Kingdom, was blatantly clear, that the identity of their trade and industry was also largely hidden within the UK, was perhaps not so clear. Ireland was often portrayed and imagined by London as little more than a backward colony of the British Empire suitable only for raw recruits for its empire-building army, and although technically seen as an important and integral part of the United Kingdom, practically it was often treated as being near non-existent.

Although much of Ireland was not to see any real practical disengagement from the United Kingdom and the British Empire until well into the twentieth century, events such as the 1853 Dublin Exhibition of Art-Industry did produce the beginnings of a separation of identity on the world stage, if not in London. The event and others like it across Ireland began to create a contemporary awareness in the concept of Ireland as a state rather than a region, and a state that could contribute towards the contemporary world, whether through the traditions of its own unique decorative crafts, or its contemporary industry and technology.

Further reading links:

Decoration of English Stone Crosses

Illustration: Stone monument at Kirk Michael, Isle of Man.

Large stone crosses litter the islands of Britain and Ireland from one end to the other. They derive from more than one culture, although superficially at least, they appear to be decoratively Celtic in style. The crosses have decorative work that belong primarily to Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Norse cultural heritages though not necessarily exclusive to one specific culture. Many of the crosses have either fusion or crossover decorative work that apply themselves to a mixed heritage with the Celtic underlying both Anglo-Saxon and Norse traditions. This blending, on occassion, produced a further unique tradition of its own, particularly when considering such cultures as Manx on the Isle of Man.

The three examples shown in this article come from Northern England and the Isle of Man. The two from England are said to be Anglo-Saxon in origin, while the one from the Isle of Man is said to be Norse. Interestingly, the two English crosses which have lost their upper portions, were said to have been damaged by Norse raiders, while the Isle of Man cross is said to have been created by the Norse.

Another level of interest is added when considering the date of the actual illustrations themselves, which derive from the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. This was a period when mainstream British culture was only beginning to analyse, understand and produce a level of appreciation of what was in many respects the three founding cultures of the islands. The Celtic, Germanic and Scandinavian cultural heritage were in many respects the building blocks that were to produce the modern nations of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. Each had a unique and specific identity and each added to the cultural heritage of the separate but linked nations that now occupy the islands.

Illustration: Head Stone Cross, St Andrew's Church, Aycliffe, Durham, England, 10th century.

More specifically each culture had a confident and identifiable decorative style that, although unique and rooted in specific yet different cultural origins, somehow complemented each other so that when one or more cultures came together to produce decorative work, the overlapping elements of uniqueness, blended, balanced and harmonised to a degree that was not always possible in other cross-cultural endeavours.

What is also interesting about the illustrations themselves, are the lack of specific details. Although, these examples can be identified with the stone crosses that are still in existence today, they tend towards a generalised view with few close details and many imaginative interpretations. Some examples of medieval and pre-medieval work that were reproduced during this period even tried to change the cultural emphasis of the decoration, so that truly indigenous work was transformed into a decorative format that was much more classically inspired.

In many ways this was a formula that was produced in order for the classically trained British elite to understand what they were attempting to appreciate. It was still considered by many that because cultures that had little interaction with classical Greece and Rome, particularly those in Britain and Ireland that either preceded or post-dated the Roman occupation, they were somehow incapable of portraying the world as it should be seen. Therefore, even work such as the Bayeux Tapestry, which had a specific decorative style of its own, was often reinterpreted in illustrations as if it were a classical Roman or Greek frieze. This lost all the uniqueness of the original and also, perhaps tellingly, lost all reference points to a culture that was decidedly and independently non-classical in origin and focus.

Illustration: Head stone cross, St Oswald's church, Hawkswell, Yorkshire, England, 10th century.

Decoration is such a pervasive human style that it is sometimes difficult to disentangle the many elements that go into its pattern work. These can include social, cultural and political dimensions that are not always as obviously apparent as the pattern itself, but they are there nonetheless. Even such things as the projection of one culture by another, such as these three illustrations, becomes a complicated vision of interpretation and reinterpretation, with elements and overtones that can also entail the complex relationship between overlord and subject, master and slave, depending on which culture you feel emotionally bonded to.

That an imported decorative style such as that of the classical world, was deemed by many to be infinitely superior to any form of indigenous style, says much about the disconnectedness between British culture in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and its native past. Admittedly, many books and magazines during this period began to explore Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Norse artefacts and remains across Britain, such as the stone crosses illustrated. However, they were explored with a certain detachment, as if the cultures belonged to people that no longer existed, lost to time. That they belonged in fact to the past of many of the contemporary working people of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England and in some respects were still part of their everyday culture, says much about the divorced reality between the cultural elite of Britain and the ordinary people.



Further reading links:
Old Stone Crosses of West Gloucestershire
The Sandbach Crosses: Sign and Symbolism in Anglo-Saxon Sculpture
Stone Crosses in East Cornwall (Including Parts of Bodmin Moor) (Cornish Cross)
Stone Crosses in West Penwith (Cornish Cross)
Stone Crosses in North Cornwall (Cornish Cross)
Stone Crosses in Mid Cornwall (Publication Series / Industrial Development Authority Irelan)
The stone crosses of the county of Northhampton
Old stone crosses of the vale of Clwyd and neighbouring parishes, together with some account of the ancient manners and customs and legendary lore connected with the parishes
Celtic Crosses of Britain and Ireland (Shire Archaeology)
The Trailblazer Guide to Crosses and Stones on the North York Moors
Ancient Stone Crosses of England
Crucial Guide to Crosses and Stones on the North York Moors (Crucial guides)
The Early Christian Cross Slabs, Pillar Stones and Related Monuments of County Galway, Ireland (British Archaeological Reports (BAR) International) (Parts 1-2)
The ancient stone crosses of Dartmoor and its borderland