Creating the V&A tells the definitive story of the formative years of London's world renowned Victoria and Albert Museum and the gathering of its early collections in the decade between the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the death of Prince Albert in 1861. The story of the V&A's genesis is often centered on the first director and first curator (Henry Cole and J. C. Robinson), and their competing agendas for design reform and connoisseurship. And yet there is an untold story of how the young royal couple for whom it is named were highly instrumental in the establishment of the museum, as public supporters and large-scale lenders before a permanent collection was in place. The book is also full of fascinating and colorful stories of the strategies deployed to harvest treasures on the market as the young museum sought to fill its rapidly expanding buildings and compete with the British Museum and the Crystal Palace. For anyone interested in the history of collecting and curating, and for all fans of this legendary London museum, Creating the V&A explains how the foundational collections established parameters which still inform the museum's collecting policies, role, and identity today.

Drawing on the popular jewellery collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 'Jewels & Jewellery' explores every aspect of this fascinating subject within a broad historical framework. Famous pieces are highlighted in special features.

The building of the Victoria and Albert Museum, begun in 1857, is the most elaborately designed and decorated museum in Britain. This book is the first to consider the V&A as a work of art in itself, presenting drawings, watercolors and historic photographs relating to the Museum's 19th-century interiors. Much of this visual material is previously unpublished and is outside the canon of Victorian art and design. The V&A's first Director, Henry Cole, conceived the Museum's building as a showcase for leading Victorian artists to design and decorate. This book reveals for the first time the ways in which Cole's expressed policy to 'assemble a splendid collection of objects representing the application of Fine Arts to manufacture' was applied to the fabric of the building, as he engaged leading painters such as Frederic Leighton, G.F. Watts and Edward Burne-Jones, as well as specialists in decoration such as Owen Jones and Morris and Company, to decorate and design for a building raised by engineers using innovatory materials and techniques. It represents a fascinating, untold chapter in the history of British 19th-century art, design, architecture and museums, and an essential backdrop to understanding the evolution of the Museum's early collections and identity.

The word 'maharaja' - literally 'great king' - conjures up a vision of splendour and magnificence. This book examines the real and perceived worlds of the maharaja from the early eighteenth century to 1947, when the Indian Princes ceded their territories into the modern states of India and Pakistan.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This beautifully illustrated study places Prince Albert at the helm of the South Kensington project, the man whose vision and ambition gave us the V+A, the flagship of 'Albertopolis', London's cultural quarter for art, science and education.