Fountains of International Expositions

Grand Fountain at the Saint Louis World's Fair (1904)

The Fountains of International Expositions in London, Paris, New York and other cities between 1851 and 1964 combined architecture, technology and theatre. They introduced the first illuminated fountains, the first fountains made with glass and other exotic materials, and the first fountains programmed to perform with music.

History

The Crystal Fountain was designed by Follett Osler, it was the world's first glass fountain, made of four tons of pure crystal glass.[1] It was displayed in the central court of the Crystal Palace of the London Great Exhibition of 1851. It was destroyed by fire, along with the Crystal Palace, in 1936. The Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition wrote in 1851 that the fountain was "perhaps the most striking object in the exhibition; the lightness and beauty, as well as the perfect novelty of the design, have rendered it the theme of admiration with all visitors. The ingenuity with which this has been effected is very perfect; it is supported by bars of iron, which are so completely embedded in the glass shafts, as to be invisible, and in no degree interfering with the purity and crystalline effect of the whole object.[2]

Eight universal expositions took place in Paris between 1855 and 1937, and each included fountains, both for decoration and for sale, which demonstrated the latest in technology and artistic styles. They introduced illuminated fountains, fountains which performed with music, fountains made of glass and concrete, and modern abstract fountains to Paris.

The most original fountain in the exposition was Les Sources et les Rivières de France, made by René Lalique. It was a column of glass five meters high, made up of 128 caryatids of glass, each with a different decoration and size, each spraying a thin stream of water into the fountain below. At night the column was illuminated from within, and could change color. It was placed on a cross of concrete covered with decorated plates of glass, and in an ocagonal basin also decorated with colored and black tiles of glass.[5]

The cascades, fountains and basins of the Jardins du Trocadéro, originally built for the 1878 exposition, were completely rebuilt for the 1937 exposition. The main feature was a long basin, or water mirror, with twelve fountain creating columns of water 12 meters high; twenty four smaller fountains four meters high; and ten arches of water. At one end, facing the Seine, were twenty powerful water cannon, able to project a jet of water fifty meters. Above the long basin were two smaller basins, linked with the lower basin by casades flanked by 32 sprays of water four meter high, in vasques. These fountains are the only exposition fountains which still exist today, and still function as they did.

The exhibit also featured two more unusual fountains; a fountain in the Spanish pavilion by the sculptor Alexander Calder, the Fontaine de Mercure, where a small metal structure created a flow of mercury, and a fountain of wine, imitating one once created for Louis XIV at Versailles.

  1. ^ http://www.indoorfountainpros.com/blog/indoor-fountains-what-to-expect/
  2. ^ http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-crystal-palace/

Bibliography

Sources and Citations

  1. https://www.historypin.org/attach/uid11736/tours/view/id/609/title/Philip%20Delamotte%20photographs%20Crystal%20Palace,%20Sydenham,%20Greater%20London
  2. The Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition, London , 1851, volume 1, pp, 235, 326., cited in "Fountains as Spectacle at International Expositions", by Marilyn Symmes and Stephen Van Dyk, in Marilyn Symmes, Fountains, Splash and Spectacle, Water and Design from the Renaissance to the Present.
  3. Virginie Grandval, Fontaines éphéméres, in Paris et ses fontaines, pg. 209-247
  4. Virginie Grandval, pg. 229
  5. 1 2 Virginie Grandval, Fontaines éphémères, p. 233.
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