to the sermon; an ‘expanding hearse’; a silver nose, for those missing a nose of their own; a vase made of mutton fat and lard; an oyster-shucking machine; and a bed which in the morning tilted its occupant straight into a waiting bath.29
Even items with more long-standing recognized functions were not necessarily prized primarily for those functions. Of the thirty-eight pianos in the Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue to the Exhibition, most were put, logically enough, in the section ‘Philosophical, Musical, Horological and Surgical Instruments’, but two were listed under ‘Furniture, upholstery’, because their papier-mâché cases were considered more important than their sound. Even many of the pianos listed under musical instruments had gimmicks, often to do with the problem of finding space for a grand piano in an average-sized house. Some instruments were simply designated ‘semi-grand’, an acknowledgement that getting a ‘real’ grand piano into a terraced house was like squeezing a quart into a pint pot. Broadwood’s, the most prestigious manufacturer (see pp. 355, 362—3), didn’t worry about such matters—the company knew its customers, and it showed four pianos, all grand. But others, with less exalted clients, who therefore had less grand houses which did not permit equivalently grand pianos, could not be so cavalier. Pierre Erard, who listed himself as ‘Inventor, Designer and Manufacturer’, had a range of sizes to show: ‘ornamented extra-grand; extra-grand with pedal keys; small grand…grand oblique [which from the picture looks like a decorated upright piano], ornamented in the Elizabethan style…grand cottage; reduced cottage…’
Others had more elaborate objects to show. George Frederick Greiner had a semi-grand ‘constructed on the principle of the speaking-trumpet’; while Smyth and Roberts’s piano was ‘on the principle of the violincello’. John Brinsmead was far more worried about appearance than sound, and showed a piano whose ‘case permits the instrument to be placed in any part of the room. Embroidered device in the central panel.’ Another manufacturer enclosed his piano’s workings in plate glass instead of wood; yet another highlighted the case’s ‘paintings of mother-of-pearl on glass’. Richard Hunt meanwhile joined in the general enthusiasm for harlequin furniture. His piano was ‘a dining or drawing room table, [which] stands upon a centre block, or pedestal, and contains a pianoforte (opening with spring-bolts) on the grand principle, with a closet containing music composed by the inventor’. William Jenkins and Son had a ‘registered expanding and collapsing pianoforte for gentlemen’s yachts, the saloons of steam vessels’ ladies cabins, &c.; only 131/2 inches from front to back when collapsed’.30 Other manufacturers concentrated on the music student: Robert Allison’s piano had keys that ‘alternated in colour, to show all the scales, major and minor, according to a single rule for each mood, founded on the place of the semi-tonic interval, which renders the seven notes to be touched for an octave of each of the other eleven scales, as evident as the scale of C’; while Robert Addison showed ‘a transposing pianoforte. This piano will transpose music five semitones higher or lower than the written key.’31
Even at the time, there was a recognition that gadgetry had got out of hand: the Illustrated London News lamented the displays of ‘a tissue [fabric] which nobody could wear; a carriage in which nobody could ride; a fireplace which no servant could clean if it were ever guilty of a fire; a musical instrument not fit for one in fifty thousand to play; endless inventions incapable of the duties imputed to them’.32 This brought to the fore the question: were the exhibits designed to show the inevitable march forward to prosperity for all, or would it be more true to say that many exhibitors—and even more of the public—were seeing the Great Exhibition as an enormous advertising site?
The Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue, reading which was as close as many visitors would get to thinking about the purpose of the fair, claimed in its introduction to be ‘a book of reference to the philosopher, merchant and manufacturer’. Thus, in its own view, it was an educational tool—one that would give instruction to those exhibiting, and also to those many manufacturers in the same field who were not providing exhibits. The catalogue would show these people examples of the best work of their competitors, for them to strive towards. Then, for the many visitors, the catalogue would also explain the new world of technology and design, in layman’s language, to improve their taste. By this means, the customers would be led to demand more of the manufacturers, and this heightened demand for quality would in turn improve the supply.
That was the idea. Carrying it out was another matter. The planning of the exhibits, both in the catalogue and in the actual display halls, had been a mixture of overlapping responsibilities shared between the centralized and local organizations. The local committees had selected the goods to be displayed from their regions or cities, with the barest guidance, in the form of a preliminary outline, from the commission. Once the items were chosen, how they were laid out, and the organizational structure of the hall, were entirely the province of the central body. The planners had originally wanted the Exhibition to represent a schematic re-creation of their thirty-section outline, laying out the state of industrial knowledge before the visitors in map-like form, walking them through the processes by which goods were transformed from raw material, via labour, to finished products. But both because it was not the commission which was making the initial selections and because of the technical requirements of the building, nothing but lip service could ultimately be paid to this didactic aim. The local committees had not necessarily chosen exhibitions that showed each of the processes, and, even when they had, there were power sources in only one part of the north-west axis of the halls, so all the industrial machinery had to be set up there. Then it was realized that the floor of the upper galleries could not bear the weight of heavy machinery, so they became the logical place for lightweight manufactured goods. The central axis or nave, as the main walkway of the Crystal Palace became known, ended up displaying most of the consumer commodities.
The crowds were required to follow specific routes and not able to wander at will. Rather in the way that out-of-town superstores such as Ikea process their customers past high-priced goods or seasonal overstocks, the route down the nave of the Crystal Palace ensured that all visitors passed by the highly finished consumer goods—the goods that were the most superficially attractive, the most entertaining, and the least educational. While the Exhibition stressed abundance and choice—in Prince Albert’s words, ‘The products of all quarters of the globe are placed at our disposal, and we have only to choose’—in fact, the choice had been made already, by the selection committee, by the display committee, and by those guardians of public order who decreed which route the consumers were to take. The visitor had only limited choice about where to go, or what to see.
Henry Mayhew’s comic novel of the Great Exhibition, 1851: or, The Adventures of Mr and Mrs Sandboys and Family, Who Came Up to London to ‘Enjoy Themselves’, and to See the Great Exhibition, opened with a paragraph describing the foreigners going round the Crystal Palace. It began, ‘The Esquimaux had just purchased his new “registered paletot” [a loose, coat-like cape] of seal-skin…The Hottentot Venus had already added to the graceful ebullitions of nature, the charms of a Parisian crinoline.’33 The humour here is of the simple ‘look-at-the-funny-natives-encountering-civilization-for-the-first-time’ type, but reading this passage today what is noticeable is Mayhew’s unconscious acceptance of the purpose of the Exhibition: the display of fashionable commodities and their subsequent acquisition by the visitors. For it was acquisition that was beginning to hold sway at the Great Exhibition. Horace Greeley had already linked acquisition specifically to an increase in moral good: ‘Not until every family shall be provided with a commodious and comfortable habitation, and that habitation amply supplied with Food and Fuel not only, but with Clothing, Furniture, Books, Maps, Charts, Globes, Musical Instruments and every other auxiliary to Moral and Intellectual growth as well as to physical comfort, can we rationally talk of excessive Production’ (my italics).34 Now it was not merely food and shelter that were considered necessities, but also education, the arts, and physical