King's Library

Infobox Historic building


caption=Interior of the King's Library at the British Museum, showing the permanent "Enlightenment" exhibition
name=King's Library
location_town=London
location_country=England, United Kingdom
architect=Sir Robert Smirke
client=
engineer=
construction_start_date=1823
completion_date=1827
date_demolished=
cost=
structural_system=
style=NeoclassicalThe King’s Library was the original name applied both to the British Royal Collection of over 60,000 books and to the room in the British Museum that housed them.

The books were transferred to the new British Library in 1998, and the room has now been restored to its original glory as one of London's finest and most beautiful neo-Classical interiors.

Impressive as it is, the King’s Library, with its magnificent interior and fascinating objects, combine to make a scene of sheer beauty, stimulating to the imagination as well as to the senses.

The King’s Library is considered one of the most significant collections of the Enlightenment, containing books printed mainly in Britain, Europe and North America from the mid-15th to the early-19th centuries. The collection was especially rich in classical literature, British and European history, English and Italian literature, religious texts and in examples of early printing, which include include a copy of the Gutenberg Bible and Caxton's first edition of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales".

History

The origins of the library date to what was called the "Old Royal Library", which was the library of the English monarchs since Richard III. At first it contained only official manuscripts, but starting with Prince Henry, son of James I, sovereigns started to add books to the library (Prince Henry bought books on his own private income). After his death the library became the property of Charles I. It was first housed in St. James's Palace, then moved in 1708 to Ashburnham House. After a fire in 1721, it was moved in another place in Westminster School. It was made public in 1757 by George II, and housed in the Montagu House, the original location of the British Museum after its foundation in 1753 [cite web
url=http://www.aboutbookbinding.com/Royal-English-Bookbindings/Prologue.html
title=Royal English Bookbindings
last=Davenport|first=Cyril
date=1896
accessdate=2007-11-03] .

At that date the library contained approximately 15000 volumes, but it was mainly made of scattered collections of books, stored in various places. It was George III who devoted himself to building a worthy Royal collection under the guidance of his librarian Frederick Augusta Barnard [cite web
url=http://www.bl.uk/collections/early/georgeiii.html
title=The Printed Books of King George III
publisher=British Library
accessdate=2007-11-03] .

As it soon became apparent that there was insufficient room for the rapidly growing collection in the Montagu House, a new building was erected on the same site by the architect Sir Robert Smirke, much of which can be seen today.

At the death of George III in 1820, the royal collection passed to his son George IV, Prince Regent since 1811 with the Library comprising around 65,000 volumes of printed books, with a further 19,000 pamphlets. After some negotiation with the government, the new king offered the King’s Library as a gift to the British nation in 1823. It was decided that the gift should be placed in the British Museum, on the understanding that it would keep its separate identity. After a temporary sojourn in Kensington Palace, in 1828 the books (with the exception of a few choice items withheld by the King and today at the Royal Library at Windsor) were moved to the new King's Library Gallery, designed in Greek Revival style especially for the collection by Sir Robert Smirke. The arrival of the King's Library doubled the size of the British Museum's printed book collections.

For the next 145 years, King's Library volumes were regularly consulted by readers in the British Museum's reading rooms. The most significant event to affect the collection during this long period was the aerial bombardment of the Museum during the Second World War. On 23 September 1940 a small bomb fell on the Gallery. 124 volumes were completely destroyed, a further 304 were damaged beyond repair, and many others required substantial restoration. As a result the collection was moved to the Bodleian Library at Oxford for the remainder of the war. In the following decades, attempts were made to replace the lost works, but even today there are a few gaps.

In 1973 the British Library was established, and responsibility for the King's Library transferred to the new UK national library. The books however stayed where they were until 1998, when they were moved to the British Library's new St Pancras building.

Gallery Construction & Redevelopment

When the books, which gave the King’s Library Room at the British Museum its "raison d’être", were transferred to their new home in the new British Library, the room was left without a function. Between 2000 and 2003 the original room was carefully restored to the previous glory of the 1820s.

Built by Sir Robert Smirke between 1823 and 1827, the ‘King’s Library’ was the first completed part of his grand design for the new building of the British Museum, and his finest interior. It was on a grand scale: convert|300|ft|m long, convert|41|ft|m high and convert|30|ft|m wide, with a central section convert|58|ft|m wide giving a gross internal area of 1,143 m². Its great size called for the pioneering use of cast iron beams to support the ceiling.

The conversion of the library to now house a new permanent exhibition of the Enlightenment is brilliant both in conception and in execution, and allows for the first time for the story of the museum and its early collections to be told. Seven themes, corresponding to the seven compartments of Smirke’s interior, are illustrated by objects from the diverse collections that made up the original museum, including geological specimens, stuffed birds and the wonders of nature (which later led to the establishment of the Geological and Natural History Museums), as well as the emerging evidence of early civilisations through archaeological excavations, astronomical and scientific instruments, and much else.

3,000 objects are displayed, as well as enough leather-bound volumes from the House of Commons Library to convey an adequate sense that this is a library, increasing the Museum’s total of objects on display by a staggering 10%. These are displayed in the original bookcases, which were glazed in the 1850s, and in surviving and replica freestanding display cases. The cases are supplemented by pieces of marble sculpture and vases, carefully placed on new pedestals, reflecting the passion for classical antiquity, and the character of a gentleman’s study, that would have been familiar to the early collectors.

Hundreds of square metres of plaster were cleaned and repaired; the ceiling glows once again with its original stone paint and golden yellow roundels; a sun burst of gilding announces the very centre. The balcony, previously thought to be of burnished brass, glitters once more with new gilding. Weeks of painstaking repair and cleaning revealed the warmth of the oak and mahogany floor, reinforcing the sense of space and order. Panels of sienna yellow scagliola, columns of Aberdeen granite, capitals of Derbyshire alabaster, pilasters and architraves of white marble once again offer their engaging polychromy: two centuries of use and London grime have been washed away.

The ornate plasterwork of the coffered ceiling has been painstakingly repaired, the granite, alabaster, marble and scagliola wall surfaces cleaned by conservators, and cleaning of the floors carried out with hand- rather than machine-sanding in order to retain the patina of age and use. The original decorative scheme has been carefully researched, later gilding over painted, and a rather surprising primrose yellow painted on the circular and oval compartments of the ceiling to restore its original appearance. The whole room has been invisibly serviced and beautifully lit, employing great ingenuity in using the hidden voids behind the bookcases and within Smirke’s innovative fireproof cast iron floor construction to run mechanical and electrical systems.

In order to display objects in the bookcases, 200 kilometres of wiring including fibre optics cabling has enabled a subtle lighting scheme to be introduced with the backs of the cases painted a suitably recessive dark red. The lighting has been carefully judged to allow all the objects to be clearly seen without it being apparent from a distance that they have been lit at all.

Enlightenment Exhibition

"Enlightenment" is a rich new permanent exhibition using thousands of objects from the Museum's collection to show how people understood their world in the Age of Enlightenment. Their view was different from ours, but our knowledge has been built on the foundations they laid. The new display explores a period which saw the development of a systematic approach to the way that people understood the world of nature and human achievement, a period which saw the founding of the British Museum itself. The new gallery also provides an introduction to the Museum and its collections, and highlights the way that our understanding of much of the natural and human world has changed. A central exhibit is the Piranesi Vase.

Sculpture from the exhibition

References

External links

* [http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/enlightenment/ The "Enlightenment" exhibition at the King's Library]