In the 19th and early 20th centuries the profession of set designer was unknown. It was usual for a play's scene painter to both devise and create the settings. As many productions, particularly Shakespeare, historical drama and pantomime, required frequent scene changes, the managers of larger theatres might employ several painters for one production, each responsible for a number of the scenes. The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, could call upon the services of the leading artists for its annual pantomimes. Under the management of Augustus Harris and his successor Arthur Collins, these became spectacular extravaganzas in which the settings had an importance equal to, and often in excess of, the plot. Collins, who managed Drury Lane from 1896 to 1924, had begun his career as a scene painter and understood the importance of scenic effects. The 1903 pantomime Humpty Dumpty, co-written by Collins and J. Hickory Wood, took the children's nursery rhyme and developed it into a fairy tale, told in 15 scenes, during which the characters visited enchanted forests and beautiful castles and the hero, Rudolf ventured under the sea to find a Princess's ring. Eight scenic artists created the settings. Henry Emden (1852-1930), devised three tableaux, entitled the Sirens' Home, the Anemones' Retreat, and the City of Coral. Reviewers singled out the City of Coral for particular praise, the Illustrated London News commenting that this tableau 'with its wonderful effects of light and its brilliant harmonies of colour, is one of the greatest pictorial triumphs of the management'. It was a 'transformation scene', one of the staples of pantomime, which used drop curtains and painted gauzes to change one scene into another. When lit the gauzes became translucent and revealed more painted scenery behind, opening up unexpected views for an admiring audience. A label on the City of Coral model, written and signed by Emden, explains the movements of the gauzes, 'the whole a continuous rising movement discovering the scene'. The visual effect was an end in itself: the City of Coral was the setting for a 'grand ballet and chorus', which closed the second of the pantomime's three acts but had no importance to the plot.