World's Fairs (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "It is hard to underestimate the importance of London's Great Exhibition in Hyde Park and the influence of the Crystal Palace on the course of..." (more)
Key Phrases: foreign pavilions, international pavilions, smaller pavilions, New York, United States, Champ de Mars (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

World's fair have traditionally been the yardstick by which nations measure their industrial rank and inventiveness. They are open forums for participating countries to show off their most crowning achievements. While other books on individual fairs exist, World's Fairs by historian and collector Erik Mattie, is the first illustrated volume to present an illustrated volume to present an international history of the most notable world exhibitions.

Over time, the original intention of the fairs to encourage world peace through world trade has changed, as has the general nature of the fairs themselves. World peace and free trade have becomes separate ideals, and the preeminent attraction of fairs today is their entertainment value. For example, displays of national identity are more popular now (ie., picturesque historical villages) than displays of a country's industrial products. While smaller, more specialized fairs have taken precedence in industry and technology, world's fairs still possess the ability to excite the imagination, instill national pride, and stimulate the senses of their visitors. -- Antiques Journal

Product Description

As showcases of design, architecture, technology, industry, and politics, world's fairs have served as overviews of society's accomplishments as well as barometers of our optimism about the future. They have captured the imagination of the hundreds of millions of people who attend them, and are ongoing objects of fascination, as witnessed by the collectibles, web sites, histories, and memoirs that surround them.

World's Fairs looks back on 150 years of looking forward. Surprisingly, this is the first illustrated history of all major exhibitions, from the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations in London in 1851 to the upcoming fair in Hanover in 2000. In all, 27 fairs are detailed through their histories, structures, and graphics.

While many of the products and ideas promoted at past fairs never materialized, many became commonplace: television, for example, was first shown at the 1939 New York fair. Similarly, while many buildings and landscapes built for fairs have become worldwide icons--the Eiffel Tower, the Crystal Palace, the Barcelona Pavilion, the Seattle Space Needle, the Buckminster Fuller dome in Montreal--hundreds of splendid structures have been forgotten. World's Fairs uses original plans, design studies, period photo-graphs, and ephemera such as programs and postcards to recreate the visual richness, color, and excitement of world's fairs.

The fairs include: London, 1851; Paris, 1867; Vienna, 1873 ; Philadelphia, 1876; Paris, 1878 ; Sydney, 1879; Amsterdam, 1883; Antwerp, 1885 ; Paris, 1889 ; Chicago, 1893 ; Paris, 1900; Turin, 1902; Brussels, 1910; San Francisco, 1915; Paris, 1925; Barcelona, 1929; Antwerp, 1930; Brussels, 1935; Paris, 1937; New York, 1939; Brussels, 1958; New York, 1964; Montreal, 1967; Osaka, 1970; Seville, 1992; and Hanover, 2000

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press; 1 edition (August 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568981325
• ISBN-13: 978-1568981321
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 8.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #444,565 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Overall good, but somewhat incomplete, May 17, 1999

By	Paul McGinnis (Tustin, California, USA) - See all my reviews

This is a nice "coffee table" book with lots of rare photographs and drawings . The book is focused on the architecture of past World's Fairs, and the author chooses expositions that he considers to be architecturally significant. This means that his choices are a bit arbitrary, and also, because of their transient nature, most of the buildings at World's Fairs will eventually be torn down. The author basically ignores most of the World's Fairs that have taken place in the last 25 years, and doesn't mention some landmarks from recent World's Fairs, that have become part of the buildings that define a city, such as the Canada Place building from Expo '86 in Vancouver, that is a key part of that city's architecture now.