Unusual Artifacts: Queen Victoria’s Table Fountain, 1853

Table Fountain
R. & S. Garrard and Co, 1853
Silver, partly-gilt, and enamel.
The Royal Collection

Victorian table settings were notoriously formal, but they were also famously imaginative. Tables for lavish dinner parties were adorned with an array of ornaments and decorations to complement the food, the china, the silver and the crystal.


No one had more exceptional table settings than those of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Always looking for a way to create something dramatic and beautiful for their guests, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert commissioned this exquisite table fountain in 1853. The working fountain was made of partly-gilt silver and enamel by the Royal jewelers at R. & S. Garrard and Co. and was modeled after the Moorish architecture of Spain’s Alhambra.

The fountain was exhibited several time to much public acclaim before it returned home to Buckingham Palace where it remains to this day as part of the Royal Collection.