Henry Cole and the Chamber of Horrors

In this entertaining account of the origins and early history of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Christopher Frayling shows how the Museum's first director attempted to define the principles of good and bad design, and in doing so laid the foundations of one of the world's great public institutions. His gallery of false principles, which opened in 1852 and came to be called the 'chamber of horrors' was, in effect, the Museum's inaugural exhibition. Many of the exhibits in the chamber of horrors are now lost but all those known to survive have been recovered and brought together here for the first time.