The museum, in the west of London, was founded in 1852 under the name South Kensington Museum. It began as a collection of plaster casts, engravings, and exhibits from the 1851 Great Exhibition, the first World’s Fair in London, and has steadily grown ever since. The museum’s mission was to educate about the usefulness of /art in the field of crafts and to serve the people, trade, and the growing industrial sector with a collection of models. The South Kensington Museum inspired the founding of many other museums of art and design during the second half of the nineteenth century, including the MAK in Vienna. Today, it houses the largest collection of art and design in the world.
The museum’s collections include numerous Lobmeyr pieces, mainly from the 1860s and 1880s, ranging from dessert bowls and candlesticks to vases and decanters. Most of these pieces were purchased at the Paris World Fair in 1867. A comment by a British craftsman on the exhibition, that Lobmeyr’s “Greek and medieval services are among the most beautiful examples of engraving”, has been passed down through the generations. Visitors to the V&A can see several exquisite Lobmeyr pieces in Room 131, which is dedicated to glass.