There is a small display at the People’s Palace on Glasgow Green which shows images of Glasgow’s various International Exhibitions.

The colour picture at the top is of the 1901 Exhibition, a panorama of that same exhibition is below it, a sepia depiction of the 1888 Exhibition lies below the writing, a view of the Scottish Pavilion at the 1938 Empire Exhibition is to the left and a poster stamp of the Empire Exhibition’s logo in red is below that.

The colour picture is of the Main Pavilion at the 1901 Exhibition:-

The mostly blue picture is of the interior of one of the two Scottish Pavilions at the 1938 Empire Exhibition:-

Here’s the poster stamp in a closer up version:-

The People’s Palace also has one of the jigsaws of the Empire Exhibition:-

Note the (oddly shaped) missing piece of the jigsaw. I actually have a complete example of this jigsaw at home (a companion piece to this) but it’s still in a box somewhere due to the house move last year.

Over a week ago we visited Glasgow and of course I took some pictures.

This extravagant confection of a building is the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

It was constructed in order to house Glasgow’s collection of Art works and was partly funded by using the surplus resulting from the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1888.

Another such Exhibition was held in 1901 to celebrate the opening of the Art Gallery which has been a favourite haunt of the Glasgow public ever since. It was much missed when closed for refurbishment for a few years recently.

I’d never really noticed the details above the windows before.

Each of the gallery type windows has the arms of a Scottish county above it. Further along past the (back) entrance is the one for Dumbartonshire. Note the elephant and castle.

A persistent urban myth is that the Art Gallery’s plans were misread and that it was built the wrong way round (the main entrance faces the Kelvin river and not the west end of Argyle Street) and the architect is supposed to have committed suicide as a result. All complete nonsense.

At the time the road (not Dumbarton Road as the link above has it; that starts just beyond the Kelvin, to the right of the Kelvin Hall in my picture below) would not have been considered so important and the view to the Kelvin out over Kelvingrove Park would have taken precedence.

The later (1927) Kelvin Hall, now mainly a sports venue, is just over the road from the Art Gallery.

There are some stylistic similarities between the two buildings.