Ballooniana
'Miniature painting depicting the balloon ascent
of 19th
September 1783.'
Sir David Lionel Salomons assembled a rare and unusual collection of items associated with the history of ballooning.
The collection is mainly French, and dates from a time when the first aerial ascents were made and ‘balloonomania' took off. It became fashionable to use pictures of balloons to decorate all sorts of items, and the collection includes many delightful trinket boxes and similar items.
Salomons began to collect ballooning relics sometime in the 1890s. His single most important purchase was the collection of over 1,000 drawings, engravings, portraits and ephemera amassed by the ballooning pioneer, Charles Green. The prints were left to the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris , along with his entire collection of prints related to the history of transport (which amounted to 5,372 items), and other parts of the Green collection were sold in 1930.
Nevertheless, some of the collection remains at Salomons and it includes some important medals and decorative art.