A photographic postcard this time; showing Tait’s Tower at the Empire Exhibition, Scotland, 1938, from the air.

The Empire Exhibition of 1938 spawned many items of memorabilia. Various versions of the Tower of Empire (this category, passim) were made from china, metal or plastic; there were handkerchiefs with pictures of the Exhibition buildings, as well as the artist painted coloured ones many sepia photographic postcards were produced, leather items embossed with the Tower or the Exhibition lion, playing cards, matchbooks, commemorative glass tumblers, jigsaws, innumerable tins, all sorts of stuff.

Among these was a set of china cups, plates, dishes etc in deco style made by Carlton Ware and featuring a picture of Tait’s Tower in shades of green, brown and cream. For these the sole seller was Treron of Glasgow, a department store located in Sauchiehall Street (now of course no more.) The legend “supplied by Treron of Glasgow” was stamped on the base of each.

The dish shown below, with its angular lugs, is perhaps the most deco of these in feel.

An artist drawn picture postcard of the Tower of Empire (Tait’s Tower) at the Empire Exhibition, Scotland 1938.

This is a postcard of the Tower of Empire at the Empire Exhibition, Scotland, 1938, otherwise known as Tait’s Tower, after the architect. It gives some idea of what a fine sight the Tower must have been when lit up at night.

It’s not a true colour photo but rather a colourised one.

Stunning whatever.

Edited 3/10/13:-
The flickr account I previously linked to in this post has disabled the sharing facility. The set of pictures is still viewable on flickr via this link or for each photo click on the relevant links below.

Re-edited 12/12/16. The pictures have become embeddable again so I have done so.

Original post:-
Various memorabilia were made for the Empire Exhibition, Scotland, 1938; a lot of them containing representations of the Tower of Empire.

The Exhibition’s logo though was, like that of the Wembley Empire Exhibition of 1924 and 1925, a lion. The Wembley lion was what is heraldically known as statant. Since in 1938 the Exhibition was being held in Scotland the 1938 lion was of course rampant.

Colour images of the 1938 Exhibition are rare but this was what the Empire Exhibition’s entrance gates looked like – complete with lion logo. (Photos below taken from Flickr – though I’d seen them on display at the last Glasgow Worldcon in 2005. A set of coloured photographs of the Exhibition had come to light a year or so previously after having been in a drawer or something for 60+ years.) As always the Tower of Empire is conspicuous in the background.

And there’s a night time view of the entrance taken from much the same angle.

One of the features of the Exhibition was the coloured lights not only on the buildings but also in the fountains and on the Tower.

The zenith of Art Deco (or of Moderne if you must) in Scotland came in 1938 with the Empire Exhibition, Scotland, held in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, and which opened 75 years ago today on 3/5/1938.

Its signature building was the Tower of Empire (seen in the above photograph taken from the link) designed by Thomas Tait whose houses at Silver End I featured eighteen months ago. The tower was erected on the hill in Bellahouston Park and dominated the Exhibition.

Tait was in overall charge of the architecture for the Exhibition – some of whose buildings made extensive use of the new construction material, asbestos cement! – and designed many of the buildings himself.

My favourite is the Atlantic Restaurant, a ship-shaped building cresting the wave of the hill on which it was set, two postcards of which I reproduce below.

Sadly almost none of the buildings remain. (It was a condition of such events that their locations were restored to their original condition soon afterwards. Moreover shortly afterwards the country was involved in the Second World War and conserving architecture became a minor consideration. The Exhibition itself came to an end in the midst of the Munich Crisis.)

Only the Palace of Arts is still standing in Bellahouston Park itself. It was transformed into a sports pavilion. The Palace of Engineering was taken down and re-erected at Prestwick Airport and can still be found there. The South Africa building was in Dutch Barn style rather than deco or moderne and later became a staff canteen at ICI Ardeer. All the rest were demolished.

Think of what a tourist attraction Tait’s Tower, as it was known, could have been! Glasgow’s answer to Eiffel.

As it is, the main tourist draw in the Park today is the House for an Art Lover built to designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh whose buildings are a sort of bridge between the freer, flowing style of Art Nouveau and the more rigid Art Deco.

You may have noticed that I have added a new category to my list especially for this Exhibition. There is so much more I could, and will, post.