The need for clean water in 19th-century Britain led to a new and magnificent genre of street furniture. Kathryn Ferry examines the drinking fountain.
We live in the era of the locomotive, of the electric telegraph, and of the steam press…’ stated the Art Journal in April 1860, yet ‘even now we are not advanced far beyond such experimental efforts as may eventually lead us to provide supplies of pure water… to meet the requirements of our dense populations.’…
