2-888-460 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Banquet in the Egyptian Hall, at the Mansion-House, 1850. Dinner celebrating plans for the Great Exhibition of 1851: 'the Prince Consort taking the seat of honour on the right of the Lord Mayor...the hall presented an extremely brilliant and gay aspect. The tables were loaded with a profusion of plate, costly vases, fruit, and rare exotics, many beautiful emblematical devices of art, trade, and manufactures being interspersed with more substantial viands. The pillars surrounding the hall were hung with banners bearing the arms of the several counties of England, Scotland, and Wales, and at either end were large transparencies - that over the chair representing the genius of Great Britain presiding over the commerce and industry of the country; and at the opposite end was a view of the proposed great industrial building to be erected in Hyde Park'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.