page_title: Fountains in the United Kingdom
section_title: Exposition Fountains
hierarchical_section_title: Fountains in the United Kingdom / Exposition Fountains
context_page_description: Fountains became a decorative feature of the English country house as early as the end of the 17th century. These baroque fountains were influenced by the fountains of the Italian Renaissance garden and the Garden à la française, particularly the fountains of Versailles. Chatsworth House in Derbyshire featured a cascade and fountains in the style of French baroque gardens. It had a seahorse fountain and a willow tree fountain, which sprayed water on unsuspecting visitors.
  In 1843 the Duke of Devonshire, the owner of Chatworth House, learned that the Tsar Nicholas of Russia was planning to visit his home. To mark the occasion, the Duke commissioned his gardener Joseph Paxton to construct the world's highest fountain on his estate. Paxton built an eight-acre lake as a reservoir for the fountain, 350 feet above the level of the fountain, to provide water pressure. The Emperor Fountain was finished in just six months, and could jet water 296 feet high. Unfortunately the Tsar never came to see fountain, but it still functions today.
  In the nineteenth century, the development of steam engines allowed the construction of more dramatic fountains.
context_section_description: In the 19th century,  international expositions in London and Paris introduced fountains using new materials and technologies.  The Crystal Fountain was the first of these fountains.  Designed by Follett Osler, it was the world's first glass fountain, made of four tons of pure crystal glass.  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.
caption: The Crystal Fountain at the Crystal Palace, London Great Exhibition of 1851.
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