Crystal Palace Company and Victorian people in general...

[Falkor]

Of all the casts taken of various statues and sphinxes, would you consider the Victorians to be thieves? Did they really steal some diamonds from India or something? Do you look up to the Victorians or were they bad guys in your opinion?

[will greenwood]

Lord Elgin thought he was doing the 'World' a great service by bringing his marbles to the British Museum...
His 'World' was in a slightly separate dimension from the people who wondered where their marbles had gone, after 3,500 years....

They were well meaning, but ignorant.

[tulse hill terry]

Of all the casts taken of various statues and sphinxes, would you consider the Victorians to be thieves?

Pardon?

It's getting a bit confused here, perhaps aspects of this thread belong in the "Town Pub" section.

Lord Elgin rescued the sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens, in the face of their certain destruction. This took place at the turn of the 18-19th Century, well before the Victorians! When they were bought for the nation Lord Elgin recovered only a fraction of the costs of their removal.

This came as part of a European appreciation and collecting of all examples of Classical civilisation as part of the Enlightenment - which freed rational scientific thought from the constraints of religion. Anyone remember Galileo? There are chunks of marble spread through all the major museums of Europe. The Elgin/Parthenon marbles had already been unsuccessfully removed by a French dealer. There are also examples of works being destroyed before infidel collectors could get their hands on them.

Thre is the question of whether the Elgin marbles should be returned, which is where the Crystal Palace and it's collection of casts comes in. A visit to the Palace would enable you to see works which were too expensive for any but a small minority to see in person, and there are few copies in the country, of what was once at Sydenham.

There is a set of very convincing casts of the Elgin/Parthenon marbles in a tube station of the new Athens underground station. Cast collections remain relevant as some of the monuments they copy exactly are now much damaged by years of pollution. Something the residents of Athens know all about. A scheme to have residents drive on alternate days to reduce emissions, just meant people bought two cars!

The Crystal Palace Company only bought two actual antiquities, an Assyrian relief, which they then sold, and a piece of a mediaeval altar. They even had offers for their casts before the building burnt down.

As to diamonds, I think that's as much the action of capitalism in the form of the East India Company, enshrined by the state with the New Imperialism and Disraeli flattering the Queen to become the Empress of India.

Was the Victorian age, one of destructive philistines? I don't think you can beat the 1950-60's, something that even crops up in this forum with the houses that were demolished [I know their leases were coming up.]

It continues today with the bombing of statues of the Buddha!

Phew, got that off my chest, though it's all probably TLTR.

[Falkor]

I know the Crystal Palace company were refused permission to make casts of certain statues. They also destroyed Vicar's Oak and filled in the Penge boundary stream.

[will greenwood]

you're right of course ..... much has been saved forever...
they often meant well...(Pitt Rivers museum says it all...it would simply not exist any more if it wasnt there in many cases..)
However....they were often doing these acts of historical altruism out of a quest for empirical glory..
(I suspect, as I look at these new developements that dont fit in...housing estates where orchards were a year ago etc...people will look back at this period of fake boom in the same way as we do the Victorians. )

[tulse hill terry]

I know the Crystal Palace company were refused permission to make casts of certain statues.

Well, that's something I'm sure you can sympathise with.

They also destroyed Vicar's Oak and filled in the Penge boundary stream.

That's progress I suppose.

The one thing about an interest in local history, it can depend on a degree of nostalgia for a rural past, to survive dense urbanisation. I maybe standing on a tatty high road choked with traffic, but once it was a country lane. With all that is reported about hedgerows, and streams full of run off, I dont know that the Penge stream would now be free of fly-tipping.

As to the Palace, perhaps it did have a whiff of Savacentre about it when built. It was on a greenfield site, and I'm sure nobody at the time had any idea that London would encroach upon it quite so quickly.