Joseph Nash, Louis Haghe and David Roberts

This highly detailed and colourful sequence of images was published as part of a pictorial record of the hugely successful Great Exhibition of 1851, which ran in London’s Hyde Park between May and October of that year. Originally conceived by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (whose most famous patron was Prince Albert) the exhibition set out to display the staggering progress that had been achieved in all of the Society’s disciplines. The exhibition building itself was the source of worldwide acclaim: the famous ‘Crystal Palace’ designed by Joseph Paxton, and built-in cast-iron and plate-glass, stretched symbolically 1,851 feet in length and rose to 128 feet in the air.

Indian Court, The Great Exhibition