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The 2014 International Contemporary Furniture Fair, with its emphasis on the new, even the futuristic, might not seem to be a topos with ancient roots. But the origins of fairs devoted to the comparative exhibition of furniture and other objects of applied art from home and abroad can be traced all the way back to England's Great Exhibition of 1851, when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert joined notable design reformers, in particular the designer Henry Cole, who designed the first postage stamp, in promoting British industrial design, engineering--and the raw materials gathered proudly from its colonies around the world-- while at the same time presenting foreign, even exotic wares as exemplars and inspiration for designers on their own island. The Great Exhibition, housed in Joseph Paxton's magnificent Crystal Palace, a giant, revolutionary edifice of iron and glass constructed like a monumental greenhouse, was more than simply a five- month tourist attraction. Its financial and artistic success galvanized the establishment of the South Kensington Museums (now the Victoria & Albert Museum, the HYLAND