Crystal Palace. Glass-mounted Jewelry Box. Souvenir Of The Great Exhibition. London, 1851

Lacquered papier-mâché jewelry box with a lid decorated with reverse glass painting and mother-of-pearl and abalone inlays. 173 x 106 x 42 mm. The interior of the box is covered in pink moiré fabric and the back of the lid offers a mirror to the opener. The box is in good condition; note two small air bubbles at the right edge of the reverse glass painting and a small dark area on the left side. The Crystal Palace, a vast iron and glass palace, was built in Hyde Park, in the heart of London, for the Great Exhibition of 1851 (the first World's Fair). 654 meters long, the building offered an exhibition area of 92,000 m2. It was dismantled after the Exhibition and then rebuilt in a larger version in south London, in the district that now bears its name. The Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire in 1936. The glass-mounted mount adorning this box, although anonymous, is reminiscent of the work of Thomas Lane, a Birmingham-based artist (active c. 1821-1855), who specialized in the production of reverse glass paintings, with the particularity of adding very fine pieces of pearl and shell as inlays, giving his compositions an unparalleled transparency, luminosity and brilliance. Ref. A13-92