The Museum and the Factory


Book Description

This book reveals a great untold story of enterprise and innovation based on the relationship between the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Elkington & Co., the renowned industrial art and design manufacturer of the 19th century. The Birmingham-based company pioneered and patented the industrial art of electro-metallurgy to create original artworks, perfect replicas, and mass-reproduced luxury consumer goods that used electricity to "grow" metal into shape at a molecular level. This technological revolution created a profound legacy, which continues to influence the way modern material culture looks and operates today. Elkington's syntheses of science and art into industrial manufacturing processes revolutionized the design and production, replication and reproduction of precious metalwork, metal sculpture, and ornamental art metalwork. Elkington & Co. gained huge public acclaim at the Great Exhibition of 1851. They subsequently produced artworks and luxury goods, including world-renowned sports trophies like the Wimbledon Singles Trophies, as well as luxury dining services for great steamships and railways, including tableware that sank with the Titanic. Elkington played a crucial role in shaping and building the V&A's permanent collection from its foundation in 1852 (following the Great Exhibition) until the First World War. The V&A's collections in turn had a profound influence on Elkington's output. The great success of their relationship cemented both the museum's status as a leading cultural institution, and the E&Co "makers-mark" as one of the world's first truly multinational designer brands. Elkington's electrical alchemy helped spark the electrical revolution that founded the modern world.




The Athenaeum


Book Description







A Treatise on Electro-Metallurgy


Book Description

Excerpt from A Treatise on Electro-Metallurgy: Embracing the Application of Electrolysis to the Plating, Depositing, Smelting, and Refining of Various Metals, and to the Reproduction of Printing Surfaces and Art-Work, Etc IN the following pages I have endeavoured to systematise and explain the various processes of electro-metallurgy as far as possible. Believing fully that in teaching and writing upon such subjects a technological rather than a technical treatment is required, I have tried so to set the matter before the reader that, even if he be a novice, he may be led to take an intelligent interest in any practical work upon which he may be engaged; but I have avoided the accumulation of a mass of unnecessary descriptive detail, which would only tend towards confusion, and which would be dictated by common-sense to any who have grasped the principles involved. In many cases, however, success is in a large measure dependent upon strict attention to mechanical detail; and here I have not hesitated to introduce such instructions as I believed needful to guide the worker in the special operations in hand, while indicating the reasons which should enable him to apply them to processes of kindred character. In short, I have aimed at a combina tion of theory and practice. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.