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.

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The Great Exhibition and its Educational Legacy

Illustration: Arcade from the oak screen work of stalls in the Choir at Winchester Cathedral.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 was the first international trade exhibition of its kind, certainly as far as scale and scope were concerned. It proved to be both a financial and public success, if not an entirely critical one. However, the Exhibition also released a number of unexpected aspirations, creating an atmosphere across much of Britain and Ireland that was to long outlast its physical nature. This took the form of a heightened and sustained interest in the educative aspect of the Exhibition, the expansion of knowledge, both historical and contemporary, that went hand in hand with the Exhibition itself and when the Exhibition did finally close, it continued through the 1850s and beyond,  interest actually growing, rather than dispersing.

It is perhaps one of the great unforeseen benefits of the Great Exhibition that although its more obvious legacy can be seen in the founding of some of the great institutions of London such as the Museum of South Kensington, which later became the Victoria and Albert Museum, many towns and cities across Britain that had any conceivable connection with industry and trade, also felt the aspirational need for an institution and through that a connectedness to the larger contemporary world, in some cases for the first time. Institutions were organised and founded, some of a directly practical nature, others less so. However, these institutions were often focused venues for the leading ideas and beliefs of the contemporary industrial world. Practical classes were held in anything from fine art to mechanics, often depending on the industry of the town, and interestingly many institutes were founded with the intention of also running classes for women, even though many of these were initially domestically textile based rather than art or science based.

Illustration: Cornice design from the pedestal of Trajan's Column in Rome.

Institutes were also great venues for educational lectures and these were run by both national and local experts, critics and enthusiastic amateurs. The wealth of subject matter was admittedly eclectic, but at the same time informative, ranging from such titles as: The Manufacture of Iron; On the Kings and Courts of the Eighteenth Century; On the Application of Electricity to the Arts; On the Physiology of the Senses; Assyria, and the Buried Cities of Assyria and On the Advantages of Mechanics' Institutes in Cultivating the Mind. That many of these lectures were held at institutes in relatively small towns, not just the major ones, and often far from the capital, shows how the initial enthusiasm had spread from the original Great Exhibition.

 Illustration: Design from the font in Cormac's Castle in Ireland.

Although there was much debate during the immediate aftermath of the euphoria set by the Great Exhibition, particularly as to the low self-esteem felt by critics of British manufacturing and design, there was in contrast a real ground-swell of positive enthusiasm for knowledge, both of the contemporary and historical world. To be fair some of this enthusiasm was aimed by the educated at what was considered the uneducated or minimally so, those that belonged to the large working majority which included both blue and white collar workers. There was also a certain reluctance on the part of audiences as the low turn outs for lecture series proved. Many institutes complained of a consistent lack of enthusiasm for their public lectures while their practical classes were always full. However, lectures tended to be very much a voluntary aspect of the institutions work, more so than the practical classes, even though there was a widespread determination in nineteenth century Britain that education should be seen as both a moral duty by the educator and a moral responsibility by the receiver, therefore the betterment of both the individual and the community was seen in some respects as the delayed remit of the Great Exhibition.

 Illustration: Diaper design from the Alhambra in Spain.

Venues for the discussion and promotion of aspects of the historical and contemporary world were not limited to Britain and Ireland. Enthusiasm was just as apparent in the various colonies and dominions that made up the British Empire many of whom had taken part in the Great Exhibition and wished to build on that initial participation, while also making perceived and necessary connections with Britain. The United States was also an enthusiastic participator in the positive aspects engendered by the Exhibition and there was a genuine interest in forging practical and intellectual links between institutes and organisations on both sides of the Atlantic.

As far as design and decorative criticism was concerned, the enthusiasm across Britain for education, often through the practical application of the town institute in whatever form seemed necessary for each individual case, did not by itself spread the interest in design and decoration history and its potential use in the contemporary world. However, the positive atmosphere created by both the Great Exhibition itself and the sustained enthusiasm after its closure, allowed for the continuation and expansion of detailed examinations of the world of design and decoration on a much wider scale and on a much more serious level than had been achieved before. 

 Illustration: The pulpit from Siena Cathedral in Italy.

By physically encouraging the involvement of the nation through the use of practical classes and topical lectures in so many venues across the country, a relatively new phenomenon had occurred, the encouragement of the ordinary individual to intellectually invest in the major contemporary industries of the day, as well as that of art, science and history, subjects that had been limited in previous generations to the privately educated aristocracy. Although many who turned up at institutes in the major cities and towns across the country were to remain locked within the tight boundaries set out by Britain's stifling class system, a system still very much alive today, they still provided a valuable and voluntary self-education facility, a means of providing a vehicle for the individual to discover their past, their present and their future worlds through the opportunity of education. 

Education can often be seen as the lifeblood of self-empowerment, a means of breaking out of limited options or expectations, a way of understanding and handling the world as it really is and not as others would have us see it. Although this was often far from the end purpose perceived in the numerous lectures and classes promoted throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, it was also an inevitable outcome in the promotion of self-education and self-discovery, which in some respects was the great legacy of the Great Exhibition.

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