FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21717, 26 February 1936, Page 6

FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN

ROTARY HELPS DRIVE FOR FUNDS EXHIBITION OF “TITANIA’S PALACE** The story of “Titania’s Palace,” the miniature building deigned by Sir Nevile Wilkinson, English architect and artist, and now being sent round the world to raise money for the Crippled Children Society, was told to the Christchurch Rotary Club by PastPresident E. H. S. Hamilton at the club’s weekly luncheon meeting at Beath’s yesterday. Rotarian Hamilton is chairman of the finance committee of the Canterbury and Westland branch of the Crippled Children Society and Rotary is looking after the palace in Australia and New Zealand. The palace will , reach Christchurch about Easter and will be on exhibition at Hay’s, Ltd. After emphasising that the palace was not a doll’s house but a building through which an attempt was being made to lead children to take an interest in other children who were crippled, neglected, and unhappy, Rotarian Hamilton said the idea of it came to Sir Nevile Wilkinson. 28 years ago, when his daughter, then aged three, declared that she saw a fairy disappear into the moss at the roots Of" an old sycamore tree. To fulfil a promise to his daughter that she should b© shown the home to which the fairy had returned, Sir Nevile drew a plan a. miniature 'building containing 16 rooms and built round a central courtyard. Fifteen years of work on the building followed and the palace was opened by Queen Mary on July 6, ,1922. Many Countries Visited Since then it had visited cities in the British Isles, the United States of America, South America, and Australia, and was now in New Zealand. Viewed by at least 1,000,000 people, it had raised more than £50,000 for associations which work for the welfare of crippled, neglected and unhappy children. Including Sir Nevile Wilkinson’s private collection of tinycraft, the palace contained about 4000 articles. In the entrance hall was a miniature cannon, made in Nuremberg about 1850, and in another hall was a pair of valuable Chinese vases. A boxwood group of the Holy Family, carved in South Germany about 1600, and an illuminated Book of Hours, written about 1450, were in the chapel. A set of Bristol glass, more than 100 years old, stood on the table in the dining room, round the walls of which were original paintings by Claes Molinaer, a seventeenth century Dutch artist, /unong the furniture of the morning room was a chess table, more than 100 years old, and tourmaline ornaments on the mantelpiece were carved for the Empress of China. A tiny sampler on a wall of the bathroom bore the date 1797. A bed was inlaid with Charles 11. ivories, and the smallest known engraved portrait of George Washington was in the study. Collection of Glass “The museum has the finest collection of tiny Bristol glass in the world,” Rotarian Hamilton said, “and every piece is more than 100 years old. Other exhibits are specimens of blue Bristol, Nailsea, Bohemian glass, a Ming period Chinese temple bell, some carved amber Chinese pieces, and bead work of the time of Charles 11. In the throne room are a diamond peacock, made for the Paris exhibition of 1856 and given to the Empress Eugenie, tiny gold figures made by Benvenuto Cellini, a second diamond peacock from India, a gold, enamel and diamond cup from King Theebaw’s palace at Mandalay, and silver horses dated from the seventeenth century." The palace would reach Christchurch about Easter and would be on exhibition at Hay’s, Ltd., from about April 17 to May 13. It wag hoped to raise £IOOO from the exhibition in Christchurch. After Rotarian Hamilton’s address, Mr J. L. Hay, of Hay’s, Ltd., spoke briefly of his plans for organising the exhibition and appealed for full support from the Rotarians. Rotarian J. Mawson Stewart presided over the meeting.