TITANIA'S PALACE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 81, 17 January 1936, Page 8

TITANIA'S PALACE.

UNIQUE TREASURE HOUSE. QUEEN MARY'S TOPICAL GIFT. Nearly 30 years ago a child playing in an Irish garden claimed to have seen a fairy disappear into the foot of a gnarled tree. This incident inspired her artist father. Sir Neville Wilkinson, to create a Lilliputian palace so magnificent that the fairies might be lured from their underground haunts, bringing with them their treasures. . Since then Titania's Palace has travelled, many thousands of miles and, in delighting children and grown-ups alike, has been the means of raising huge sums for crippled, neglected and unhappy children. It is now on exhibition in Auckland., the Governor-General (Viscount Galway) officially opening the exhibition. The proceeds of the display will be devoted to the Mayor's fund for crippled children. • It took 15 years of patient work to create this exquisite dwelling, and it was fitting that Her Majesty Queen Mary should have opened it on her own birthday and signed her name in the tiny Royal visitors' book. Since then Her Majesty has. never ceased to take the keenest interest in it and on Saturday there arrived a piece of the Duke of Gloucester's wedding cake as a special gift to Titania from the Queen herself.

For three years after its completion the palace was shown in the British Isles, followed by three years more in America. It returned to England and then was sent to the Argentine Exhibition, in the next year it was in Amsterdam ajid then commenced its trip to the Antipodes with a most successful tour of Australia, where upward of 200,000 people were privileged to sec it. A catalogue of the treasures within the palace would occupy a volume. Nowhere in the world could there be assembled in such a small space so many tiny antiques. Many of them are centuries' old, the work of patient craftsmen of many countries. Each object seems to have a history of its own. Thus the throne of Queen Titania has inlaid into the back a diamond peacock made for the Paris Exhibition in 1856 and valued at £6OO. It carries a pair of tiny gold figures said to have been the work of the great Cellini and the seat is made from a piece of fossil mastodon bone from Colorado. Other such treasures are a cannon made by a Nuremberg armourer about the year 1580, an original Book of Hours illuminated about 1450 and a set of Bristol glass over 100 years old. The pictures on tbe various walls represent artists through the centuries, while the furniture comprises a unique collection of "tiny-craft." In one room is a perfectly proportioned bookcase containing 75 Volumes printed, illustrated and bound in calf. Throughout there are many examples of the beautiful work of Sir Neville Wilkinson, friezes. mosaics and mural decorations, while bis gifted friends have contributed incredibly small musical instruments, pictures, inlays, stained enamels and many other objects. Throughout its tours the palace has received numerous gifts from, craftsmen and collectors, enough to fill a large case having been accumulated on the present trip. Some have already found their wav into the palace and visitors will see what must surely be the tiniest set of bowls ever made, perfect even to the bias, and a rack of brooms made ol Australian woods and the hair of an Airedale dog. The custodians of the palace, Miss 11. M. Leslie and Miss F. A. Hills, have been associated with it for a number of years, with the responsibility of erecting and dismantling it and packing its numerous treasures. It occupies 63 square feet and stands 27in high and, when packed for transport, weighs 3$ tons. When complete it is lighted and heated by electricity, and is carefully designed to withstand changes of climate. «