Future with roots in past

LONDON’S VICTORIA and Albert Museum has long been at the centre of artistic endeavour and enterprise.

Its first director, the civil servant-cum-inventor Sir Henry Cole, is also credited with devising the idea of sending cards at Christmas, and published the world’s first commercial Christmas card in 1843.

The Great Exhibition, which he organised at Crystal Palace in 1851 – to which the V&A can trace its origin – was one of the wonders of its time, with parallels to the 21st century visions outlined yesterday.

Cole organised it with the Queen’s consort, Prince Albert. But it was not universally popular – Karl Marx said it was “an emblem of a capitalist fetishism of commodities”.