thousands of visitors from England and the Continent thronged to the colossal Crystal Palace in 1851 to view the remarkable products made by the most advanced manufacturing machinery the world had ever known. Yet they found that the only truly remarkable revelation was the poor aesthetic quality of virtually all the wares on exhibit. Rather than improving industrial goods, modern machinery had virtually stamped out taste by eliminating the role of the artist in the production process. For the English middle class, born in the wake of the industrial Revolution, industry symbolized the final break with everything associated with the medieval social system. By the mid-nineteenth century, handicrafts and craftsmen, the last remnants of the medieval artistic tradition, were seen as beneath contempt. the essential unity and interdependence of all artistic activity was utterly rejected.