pantechnicon 
noun; British English

- a large van used for transporting furniture and household goods

- a warehouse or depository where furniture and other property are stored

- a large, cumbersome vehicle or vessel

Oxford English Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster

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WORD ORIGIN

The word began not with a vehicle but with a grand London establishment. The Pantechnicon opened in Motcomb Street, Belgravia, in 1831 as a bazaar selling furniture, carriages, paintings and other fashionable goods.

Its invented name combined Greek pan, “all”, with technē, “art or craft”: in effect, a place containing “all the arts”. The venture was not a lasting commercial success, and much of the building became a furniture warehouse.

Large horse-drawn vans collected and delivered customers’ possessions. These became known as Pantechnicon vans, after the company name painted on them. By the late nineteenth century, the final word was being used independently for any large furniture van.

A lofty Greek name for a temple of the arts had rolled downhill into everyday removals vocabulary.


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THE FIREPROOF WAREHOUSE

On Friday 13 February 1874, at about four in the afternoon, the building London trusted most with its valuables caught fire.

Wealthy families left their furniture, paintings and silver at the Pantechnicon when they went to their country houses for the season. Its great selling point was that it couldn't burn.

The company's own terms were more careful. The building was "considered fireproof", they said, but any risk of fire stayed with the owners of the goods. Someone in the office had read the small print, even if the customers hadn't.

The blaze gutted most of the site. Contemporary accounts put the losses at around £2 million, an enormous sum at the time. One MP lost an art collection that included portraits by Joshua Reynolds. One family had hidden its jewels inside its stored furniture, which turned out to be less clever than it seemed.

The fire even found its way into fiction. In M. R. James's ghost story Count Magnus, the papers of the ill-fated narrator are said to have probably perished in the Pantechnicon blaze.

Only the columned façade survived, and you can still see it on Motcomb Street today.

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

furniture van, Luton van (box-bodied), moving van (US), pantech (Australian), PANTECHNICON, pantechnicon van, removal van

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“We’ll need a PANTECHNICON, not a hatchback, to move all our books.”

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