1 Introductory address by Cole, Henry, Superintendent of the South Kensington Museum, on the ‘Functions of the Science and Art Department’, delivered 16 November 1857, Cole Fifty Years, 2 vols (London, 1884), II, p. 292 Google Scholar.

2 Models are included in the first museum guide books: Guide to the South Kensington Museum, No. 1, 20 June 1857; No. 7, 15 September 1859; No. 8 (April 1860); No. 9 (October 1860, 1871, 1874/6), and of the Structural Museum: Classed Catalogue of the Museum of Construction in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1859)Google Scholar; Catalogue of the Collection Illustrating Construction and Building Materials in the South Kensington Museum, 2nd edn under revision (1860); 2nd edn (1861); 3rd edn (November 1862); latest edn (1876). For a full list of V&A early publications, see Elizabeth James, The Victoria and Albert Museum: a bibliography and exhibition chronology 1852-1996 (1998).

3 Sappers was the popular name given to the foot soldiers of the Royal Engineers.

4 Guide to the South Kensington Museum, 20 June 1857, No. 1, p. 4.

5 Italian Wall Decorations of the 15th and 16th Centuries: A Handbook to the models, illustrating Interiors of Italian Buildings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington (London, 1901). (A variant issue of this published before the death of Queen Victoria bares a different heraldic crest (Department of Science and Art) containing ‘VR’ on the front cover and title page; copies thereafter have ‘ER’ in the crest.)

6 V&A RF: 12/5668.

7 Burton, Anthony, Vision & Accident: the Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum (1999), pp. 1–23 Google Scholar.

8 Wainright, Clive, ‘Principles true and false: Pugin and the foundation of the Museum of Manufactures’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 136 (July 1994), pp. 357-64Google Scholar; Burton, Anthony, Vision & Accident: the story of the Victoria and Albert Museum (1999), pp. 29–33 Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., p. 32.

10 Ibid., p. 32.

11 Physick, John, The Victoria and Albert Museum: the History of its Building (1982), p. 25 Google Scholar. From 1864, the so-called ‘Brompton Boilers’ were taken down from South Kensington as more permanent buildings were built there, and were partly re-erected in the London Borough of Bethnal Green to form the Bethnal Green Museum in 1874. These changes may in part explain the moving out of some of the models from the Art Division.

12 Burton, p. 54.

13 Guide to the South Kensington Museum (1857 and 1859), p. 3.

14 By 1871, apart from a general discussion of the new galleries, there are no specific references to models on display in the Art Division (as the Museum of Ornamental Art was known after Henry Cole’s rationalization of the collections in 1860), Guide to the South Kensington Museum (1871), p. 25.

15 Helen Dorey and Peter Thornton, A Miscellany Of Objects from Sir John Soane’s Museum (1992); Cuisset, G., ‘Jean-Pierre et Francois Fouquet Artistes Modeleurs’, Gazette des Beaux Arts, May/June (1990), pp. 227-40Google Scholar.

16 Altick, Richard D., The Shows of London (1978), p. 392 Google Scholar. This is a possible source for the remaining cork models in the V&A collection.

17 Where possible, however, the acquisition of more-or-less complete rooms was desirable, with examples such as the Renaissance Santa Chiara chapel by Giulliano de Sangallo which was collected in 1861. See Figure 6.

18 Fifth Annual Report of the Department of Science and Art (1871), p. 70.

19 A Description of the Architecture and Monumental Sculpture in the South East Court of the South Kensington Museum (1874), p. 4.

20 As pointed out by R. G. W. Anderson writing on the history of the Science collections during this same period, which after 1860 contained most of the models: ‘The curators … saw their primary function as providing a museum of science education, not the history of science.’ Anderson, R. G. W., ‘Connoisseurship, pedagogy or antiquarianism?’, Journal of the History of Collections, 7, no. 2 (1995), p. 224 Google Scholar.

21 Guide to the South Kensington Museum (1857), p. 10.

22 A Description of the Architecture and Monumental Sculpture in the South East Court of the South Kensington Museum (1874), p. 5.

23 Soon after its inception Cole made several attempts to rationalize the collections which also resulted in the names of the collections changing. The 1860 reorganization led to a change in nomenclature of the separately identified museums to divisions (although the Art Museum persisted as a general term well into the twentieth century). After the major reorganization of 1909 divisions became departments, at which point architecture had its profile raised with its inclusion under the Department of Architecture and Sculpture.

24 Guide to the South Kensington Museum, 20 June 1857, p. 2.

25 Ibid., p. 2. The models are also referred to in the context of the South Kensington Museum in the Fifth Report of the Department of Science and Art (1858), p. 71, and are later published in the catalogues of the Collection Illustrating Construction and Building Materials in the South Kensington Museum. (Note: the 1862 edition has some changes in the buildings’ names with two variants.) For extant objects, see Appendix A. List of fifteen plaster models transferred from Art Museum to Museum of Construction in 1860 (building names as published in all but 1862 edition): The Temple of Vesta, or The Tibutine Sibyl, Tivoli, The Erecthein, Athens, The Propylea, entrance to the Acropolis, Athens, Choragic monument of Lysicrates, The Temple of Ilissus, Athens, The Temple of Fortuna Virilis, Rome, Temple of Segetse, Sicily, The Portico of Septimus Severus, Rome, The Temple of Augustus, Pola, The Temple of Augustus, Nismes, The Temple of the Winds, Athens, The Temple of Theseus, Athens, The Arch of Constantine, Rome, Tomb at Palmyra, Syria, Temple of Saturn, or Vespian, Rome. The allotted initial Art Museum numbers were never properly assigned and so when in 1916 they were transferred back to the V&A’s Department of Circulation they were renumbered. Four of them were immediately sent on loan to Aberdeen Art Gallery (referred to in correspondence both as Aberdeen Sculpture Gallery and Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum) who in turn lent them between Aberdeen High School for Girls and Aberdeen Grammar School for Boys. Four other temples (August, Nimes; Segesta, Sicily; Fotuna Virilis, Rome; Vesta or Tibutine Sybil, Tivoli) which were on loan to the Manchester Municipal School of Art, were destroyed in the Second World War (V&A, RF: BOS 46/2003). In 1969 their whereabouts was not altogether known and Harold Barkley, a V&A curator, traced the models in Aberdeen which were then brought back to South Kensington (V&A, RF: 69/864). All the remaining models except the four in Scotland were transferred into the Architecture and Sculpture Collection.

26 Greig, James (ed.), The Farington Diary 1821, vol. VIII (1928), p. 300 Google Scholar; Country Life (July 1919), xivc?, pp. 27-28.

27 Jean-Pierre Fouquet worked with his son François making models for architects and collectors. Their individual work has been distinguished by the sizes of the models: the V&A versions being slightly larger than others, such as those at the Soane Museum which have been identified as being by Francois Fouquet, and so must be by the father. The first known model by J.-P. Fouquet was ordered by Thomas Jefferson to be used as a source for the Capitol of Virginia, United States. Kimball, Fiske, The Capitol of Virginia: A Landmark of American Architecture (Richmond, Virginia, 2002)Google Scholar; Cuisset, G., ‘Jean-Pierre et Francois Fouquet Artistes Modeleurs’, Gazette des Beaux Arts, May/June (1990), pp. 227-40Google Scholar; Helen Dorey and Peter Thornton, A Miscellany Of Objects from Sir John Soane’s Museum (1992).

28 Yorke, James, ‘Tiny Temples of Mr Nash’, Country Life (8 February 2001), pp. 66–67 Google Scholar.

29 Guide to the South Kensington Museum, 20 June 1857, p. 2; Science and Art Report (1858), p. 71.

30 Catalogue of the Collection Illustrating Construction and Building Materials in the South Kensington Museum (1876), p. 207.

31 V&A Sculpture Collection object card: 338-1886.

32 Guide to the South Kensington Museum (September 1859), p. 2.

33 Ibid., p. 2; Guide to the South Kensington Museum (1876), p. 208, cat. 39Y; the seven cork models were transferred from the Art Division to the Structural Division in 1860 where they were given different accession numbers (and from where the Coliseum model was transferred to Melbourne Museum in 1929 and remains), but on their return to V&A the objects assumed their original accession numbers.

34 I am grateful to Chris Whitehead for this information. This practice can also be seen on the 1920 photograph of the casts courts beneath the sculpture of the Madonna and Child (Fig. 11).

35 Guide to the South Kensington Museum, 15 September 1859, p. 2. These two models were transferred to the Structural Division in 1868 and were later loaned to Edinburgh Museum together with the Berlin Exchange. On their return to London in 1925 they were declined by the Science Museum and so taken by the V&A (V&A, RF: 1924/8071 and 1925/666, 3274).

36 Report of the Science and Art Department (1858), p. 71; Guide to the South Kensington Museum (September 1859), p. 2.

37 There is a note in a V&A memorandum that the fourteen 1711 church models became the property of the Architecture Museum collection which was temporarily housed at the South Kensington Museum, and that they left with it in 1869 (V&A, RF: 64/2726). There is no mention of them in subsequent Royal Architectural Museum or V&A catalogues or transfer lists, although Eric Maclagan noted in 1915 that he saw models that were being retained by the Royal Architectural Museum (V&A, Nominal file: The Architectural Association, 30 November 1915); Jeffrey, Paul, ‘The Commissioners’ Models for Fifty New Churches: Problems of identity and attribution’, The Georgian Group Journal (1995), pp. 81–96 Google Scholar.

38 The Architectural Museum Prospectus (1856), p. 1.

39 The Architectural Museum Prospectus (1856), p. 1.

40 Summerson, John, The Architectural Association 1847-1947 (1947), pp. 35–36 Google Scholar.

41 Guide to the South Kensington Museum (June 1857), p. 4.

42 The Builder, 4 October 1873, xxxi, p. 787.

43 Guide to the South Kensington Museum (June 1857), p. 5.

44 Museum of Construction catalogue (1876), p. 208, cat. 37Y.

45 The Architectural Museum Prospectus (1856), p. 1.

46 Scott, George Gilbert, A Guide to the Royal Architectural Museum (1876), p. 2 Google Scholar.

47 Summerson, John, The Architectural Association 1847-1947 (1947), pp. 37–41 Google Scholar.

48 V&A, Nominal file: The Architectural Association, 30 November 1915. Scott refers to taking other objects with them, ‘allowing us to “spoil” our former hosts by taking some of their specimens with us’. Scott, George Gilbert, A Guide to the Royal Architectural Museum (1876), p. 2 Google Scholar.

49 Summerson, John, The Architectural Association 1847-1947 (1947), p. 41 Google Scholar; Review of the Principal Acquisitions during the year 1916 (London, 1919), pp. 6-7.

50 Fahlman, Betsy, ‘A Plaster of Paris Antiquity: Nineteenth-Century Cast Collections’, Southeastern College Art Conference Review, 1 (1991), XII, pp. 1–9 Google Scholar.

51 Department of Science & Art Fifth Annual Report (1858), p. 71. In 1862 the museum held the loan exhibition ‘Art Wealth of the Nation’.

52 Fifth Report of the Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Education (London, 1858), p. 71.

53 The Building News, 17 July 1857, III, p. 740.

54 Guide to the South Kensington Museum (May 1871), p. 25.

55 List of the Bequests and Donations to the South Kensington Museum now called the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1901), p. 55. This model was possibly made by James Davies Smith (1837-1914) of Deptford, London (V&A Sculpture Collection object file, museum no. 5910-1858). This was transferred from the Art Division to the Reproductions Division in 1863, and then to the Structural Division in 1868. In 1923 papers were raised for its de-accession and on 16 February 1925 it was destroyed (Science Museum registry no. 1864-55).

56 List of the Bequests and Donations to the South Kensington Museum now called the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1901), p. 55; Catalogue of the Collection Illustrating Construction and Building Materials in the South Kensington Museum (1876), p. 206, cat. 15Y.

57 Ibid., p. 206. cat. 14Y. List of the Bequests and Donations to the South Kensington Museum now called the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1901), p. 55. This is possibly a model which is in a great state of disrepair and barely recognizable in the Sculpture Collection.

58 Ibid., p. 211, cat. 58Y; V&A, RF: 88/626; List of the Bequests and Donations to the South Kensington Museum now called the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1901), p. 71.

59 This returned in 1925, together with the four models of the façade treatments for the Royal Albert Hall, which had also been on loan. It does not seem to have been assigned an accession number (V&A, RF: 24/8071, 25/666, 3274). The original building is no longer standing.

60 List of the Bequests and Donations to the South Kensington Museum now called the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1901), p. 161.

61 Ibid., p. 264. This second model of St Paul’s Cathedral differs from the one acquired in 1858 in that it represents Wren’s building as it was completed. The first model seems to derive from an engraving published shortly before the cathedral’s completion (Wren Society, xrv (1937), pl. XXX) which differs in its treatment of the turret roofs and proportions of the dome. Noted by RTC in 1957 on the object card for 6501-1858 in the Sculpture Collection records.

62 Nominal File, Science Museum, 1912/524, 3rd list.

63 Catalogue of the Collection Illustrating Construction and Building Materials in the South Kensington Museum (1862), Introduction.

64 Guide to the South Kensington Museum, No. 1 (1857), p. 9.

65 Catalogue of the Collection Illustrating Construction and Building Materials in the South Kensington Museum (1876), p. 203.

66 Ibid., pp. 203-25.

67 Ibid., p. 209.

68 Ibid., p. 204.

69 Catalogue of the Collection Illustrating Construction and Building Materials in the South Kensington Museum (1862), pp. 144-45.

70 During the nineteenth century there was a predominance of Royal Engineer officers involved with the rebuilding and new building of many public buildings. There was a permanent presence of a small corps of sappers on the site during Cole’s incumbency, as he had been most impressed with their work during the great Exhibition of 1851. The accurate construction and drawings of architectural details onto paper, which was then attached to the wooden structures, was good training for soldiers’ draughtsmanship and map-drawing skills. Burton, Anthony, Vision & Accident: the story of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1999), p. 83 Google Scholar.

71 Physick, John, Marble Halls: Drawings and Models for Victorian Secular Buildings (1973), p. 203 Google Scholar, cat. 142. There are the remains of a further model of this building from this period in the Royal Albert Hall archive, seen there by the author in 1996.

72 Ibid., pp. 203-04, cat. 142A; exhibited in ‘The Model Architecture’, Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield (1974). There were six of these in the 1912 transfer lists (V&A, Nominal file, Science Museum).

73 Catalogue of the Collection Illustrating Construction and Building Materials in the South Kensington Museum (1876), p. 205, cat. 13BY. Physick, John, Marble Halls (1973), p. 45,Google Scholar cat. 10A.

74 There is photographic evidence of two further models by Maj.-Gen. Henry Daracott Scott: an 1869 version, Physick, John, The Victoria and Albert Museum: The History of its Buildings (1982), pp. 162-68Google Scholar; and a later 1874 version, ibid., pp. 166-72.

75 The Gottfried Semper (1803-79) model: Catalogue of the Collection Illustrating Construction and Building Materials in the South Kensington Museum (1876), cat. 54Y. There is an unidentified fragment of a model for a building of this type in the Sculpture Collection which is possibly from the 1855 model.

76 G. G. Scott wrote to Henry Cole on 4 January 1866 justifying the cost of the model, ‘the cost of perfecting the model will be £130… the great cause of outlay is the necessity for modelling the subjects’. Not until a year later did Cole sanction the money for it. V&A, RP: 12/524, 1227. The model was made by Farmer and Brindley, the sculpture by H. H. Armstead. It was sent to the Paris Exhibition of 1867. Physick, John, Marble Halls (1973), p. 213 Google Scholar, cat. 150.

77 Poynter was given 300 guineas to make this model, which included a research trip to Venice, to study the mosaics. Physick, John, The Victoria and Albert Museum: The history of its building (1982), p. 122 Google Scholar. Physick, John, Marble Halls (1973), p. 206 Google Scholar, cat. 145. The Word and Image Department has recently acquired three preparatory design drawings in chalk by Sir Edward Poynter for this model scheme (E.1410-2001, E.883, 884-2003).

78 List of the Bequests and Donations to the South Kensington Museum now called the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1901), p. 206.

79 There is mention of this model as having been ‘normally displayed’ with other Stevens’ works ‘in the Central Hall of the Museum’ by Eric Maclagan in V&A Nominal file on Goetze, minute sheet 1123/1940. In 1955 it was lent to the British Museum and on its return in 1973 it was extensively conserved.

80 Physick, John, Marble Halls (1973), p. 192 Google Scholar, cat. 135; Beattie, Susan, Alfred Stevens 1817-75 (1975), p. 35 Google Scholar, cat. 39.

81 On the back of the model’s case there is a label stating: ‘William Tite, 17, St. Helen’s. Portico of the London Exchange’.

82 This was usually listed together with the other plaster models from Nash’s collection. It has an unclear history since 1857 when it came to the museum: in the Catalogue of 1876 it states that it came to the Structural Division in 1862, and yet it is in the Catalogue of 1860. Saint, Andrew, ‘The Marble Arch’, The Georgian Group journal (1997), VII, pp. 75–93 Google Scholar.

83 Catalogue of the Collection Illustrating Construction and Building Materials in the South Kensington Museum (1862), p. 156, cat no. 90; Harris, M. A. Enriqueta, ‘La Alhambra en el Museo Victoria & Albert: Un catàlogo de las piezas de la Alhambra y de algunas obras neonazaries’, Separata de Cuadernos de Arte e Iconografia (Madrid, 1988), pp. 201-44Google Scholar.

84 V&A, Nominal file, Captain Shean, RP: 36/4839.

85 This model was exhibited in the V&A display, Buildings in Miniature (September to November 2002) which explored the categorization of models by their original functions: working designs, presentation, souvenirs, exemplars, demonstration examples, and religious ritual, and a range of the models included in the show can be seen on the V&A website www.vam.ac.uk

86 Italian Wall Decorations of the 15th and 16th Centuries: A Handbook to the models, illustrating Interiors of Italian Buildings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington (London, 1901), p. xi. This resulted in the Museum commissioning models of: i. the Paradiso of Isabelle D’Esté in the Ducal Palace, Mantua; ii. Chapel of St Peter Martyr in the Church of Sant’ Eustorgio, Milan; iii. Chapel of St Catherine in the Church of San Maurizio, Milan; iv. the Appartamento Borgia in the Vatican, Rome; v. the Villa Madama, near Rome; vi. the Sala del Cambio, or the Hall of Exchange, Perugia; vii. the Chapel of the Medici, now called Riccardi, Palace, Florence; viii, a portion of a room in the Machiavelli Palace, Florence. Ibid., p. viii.

87 V&A, Nominal file MA/1/M790, 89/5697.

88 V&A, Nominal file MA/1/C2413, 83/7463.

89 In 1886 arrangements were made for the V&A model to go to Gillow & Co. for copies to be made of it for Bradford Museum and possibly also for Preston, Edinburgh and Dublin Museums (V&A, Nominal files 359/1886, MA/1/W583). Copies were also made of some of the other models and there are records of them being in the following collections, but apparently they no longer exist: National Museum of Ireland, Dublin, ‘Paradiso Room’ (no number), ‘Borgia Apartment’ : 1899.208; in the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh: ‘Paradiso Room’ 1898.251; and the accompanying three paintings by Allen, 1899.267-269, destroyed in 1949.

90 V&A, Nominal files MA/2/A, 1885/7377; 1887/3857, 4127, 4251, 4535, 87/6884, 6055.

91 V&A, Nominal file, ibid., 97/13747.

92 V&A, Nominal file MA/2/C, RP: 89/3261.

93 Ibid., 1888/1025.

94 Ibid., 1889/3261.

95 Memo from Sir Carlisle to Thomas Armstrong, 16 November 1889, RF: 1767/90.

96 V&A, RF: 1071/888-1897.

97 V&A, RF: 188767/90.

98 Ibid., 22 December 1889.

99 Ibid., 14 April 1890, 5 June 1890, 4 June 1890.

100 Ibid., March 1892.

101 Ibid., 15 March 1897.

102 V&A, RF: 29397/92.

103 This was accidentally destroyed (V&A, RF: 66/3206, museum no. 375-1892).

104 V&A, RF: 5247/92.

105 Ibid., 2 November 1893.

106 Ibid., 22 July 1893.

107 V&A, RF: 55967/95.

108 Ibid., December 1895.

109 Ibid., April 1896.

110 Ibid., December 1895.

111 Ibid., 14503/97.

112 Ibid., 14503/97.

113 Yriarte, Charles, ‘The Camerino of Isabella D’Este, Marquise de Mantua: A model exhibited in the South Kensington Museum’, Art Journal, February-April (1898), pp. 41–44 Google Scholar, pp. 102-05. This model no longer exists. Museum no. 66-1898.

114 In the Handbook to the models (London, 1901), ironically, there is little reference to the contribution of Allen, or the other model supervisor/makers.

115 Ibid., p. 64.

116 V&A, MA/1/P/19.

117 H. W. Dickinson (of the Science Museum) to the Director of the Science Museum (V&A, Nominal File, Science Museum, 19 November 1912). Models acquired after the 1876 catalogue were not subsequently published and so some models that appear on the 1912 list (which was incomplete) are otherwise not known elsewhere.

118 Ibid., 13 May 1912.

119 Ibid., 17 May 1912. Ironically, in contrast to his views here, his department bought an eighteenth-century design model of an Italian church apse in that year: see handlist, Appendix A.

120 Ibid., 24 July 1912.

121 Ibid., 27 January 1913.

122 Ibid., 8 June 1916.

123 Burton, , Vision and Accident: the story of the Victoria & Albert Museum (1999), p. 36 Google Scholar.

124 V&A, Nominal file, Science Museum, 17 May 1912.

125 V&A, RF: 23/20, 14 December 1922. Catalogue of the Collection Illustrating Construction and Building Materials in the South Kensington Museum (1862), p. 145, cat. 12M.

126 V&A, RF: 1923/5053 (museum no. A.81-1923).

127 V&A, BGM RF: March 1928 and BGM daybook entries 3 March 1928 (museum nos Mise. 3 and 4-1928; the latter no longer extant).

128 V&A, Nominal file, Goetze, minute sheet 1123 /1940. Goetze’s ‘improved’ version of the British Museum Reading Room is now in the RIBA collection acquired in 1942.

129 Ibid., minute sheet 1123/1940. Extract from Goetze’s will.

130 Ibid., minute sheet 1123/1940. Extract from Goetze’s will.

131 Ibid., 13 July 1940.

132 Unfortunately this file no longer exists.

133 V&A, Sculpture Collection object card: 6501-1858.

134 Physick, John, Marble Halls: Drawings and Models for Victorian Secular Buildings (London, 1873)Google Scholar.

135 It had been thought at one time that this might have been a design model by Bramante, but after extensive technical investigations by the V&A Furniture Conservators Enio Panetta and Tim Miller, who produced an in depth report on this research, it was found to be of the nineteenth century.

136 This cost just over £43,000.

137 Physick, John, Marble Halls (1973) p. 44 Google Scholar, cat. 10; Gill, Eunice, ‘A Model Transfer!’, Records Management News (October 2003), pp. 12–13 Google Scholar. The full title as inscribed on the ivory plaque is: ‘A Sketch Model of a Design For the Concentration of All the Government Offices of London Except the Revenue Departments on the Western Sides of Charing Cross, Whitehall & Parliament Street by Lieut. Col. Andrew Clarke R.E. Director of Works of the Navy. Messrs. E. I. Woodhead & G. L. Brighton Assistants, 1869-70.’