Owen Jones – Page 2 – { feuilleton }

Christopher Dresser’s Studies in Design

The previous post about Christopher Dresser’s design studies proved popular so here’s another discovery from the same source. A surprise this time was seeing the middle motif on the page above; I have this separated from its neighbours in a collection of Art Nouveau graphics, and used it on the slipcase of a Cradle of Filth CD in 2002. Studies in Design (1876) is a collection of colour plates of Dresser’s design work. Some of these emulate medieval or Arabian/Persian decoration but the most interesting examples for me are Dresser’s more personal pieces. Once you’ve seen a few of these his style is easy to recognise. Thanks to some searching by Mr TjZ I now know that a number of collections of Dresser’s designs are available from (who else?) Dover Publications. More for the shopping list.

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Christopher Dresser’s Art of Decorative Design

Studies of decorative design are numerous but this one stands out for the quality of its colour plates, all of which show a variety of designs derived from plants and flowers. The Art of Decorative Design (1862) is one of a number of design books published in the wake of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the most celebrated being Owen Jones’ lavish Grammar of Ornament. Christopher Dresser was a professor of ornamental art and botany who here continues where The Grammar of Ornament ends, exploring the floral design that’s a recurrent feature of Victorian decoration. What’s most remarkable for me about some of these designs is the way they prefigure the forms of Art Nouveau, a style that wouldn’t emerge for another thirty years.

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Kunstgewerbliche Schmuckformen für die Fläche

Kunstgewerbliche Schmuckformen für die Fläche is another collection of decorative plates intended as a reference book for designers, and it’s proved its usefulness by providing me with a motif I can use in one of the things I’ve been working on this week. This book differs from others by being the first in a series that runs to at least eight volumes, going by the uploads at the Internet Archive. The first number is vaguely Art Nouveau in style, the later volumes feature designs that are much more bold and abstract. Anyone wishing to see the full set is advised to search for the title to compensate for the inconsistencies of the Internet Archive’s cataloguing system. This volume and the others are part of a recent batch of uploads from the library of the Glasgow School of Art so I’m looking forward to browsing some of the other titles. Via Beautiful Century.

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Album de la décoration

Plates from a selection of art nouveau-styled prints for the use of artists and craftsmen. There’s more in this incomplete Flickr set; a little searching turns up further examples but the Flickr ones are the highest quality. The Four Seasons were featured here several years ago in a post about illustrator Patten Wilson. The bat-obsessed Robert de Montesquiou would no doubt have approved of the unusual conjunction of a chauve-souris with the favourite fowl of the fin de siècle.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Grammar of Ornament revisited
• Dekorative Vorbilder
• Combinaisons Ornementales
• Charles J Strong’s Book of Designs
• Styles of Ornament
• The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones

The Grammar of Ornament revisited

I’ve owned a facsimile of Owen Jones’ study of ornamental design for many years. Jones was an architect who helped in the planning of London’s Great Exhibition in 1851, and in the subsequent development of the Victoria & Albert Museum. The Grammar of Ornament (1856) originated from this work, a lavish guide to the history of ornament through the ages, and from all parts of the world. My facsimile is a large, heavy and unwieldy volume: nice to look at but difficult to use. One of the earliest posts here linked to an online copy but a recent addition to the archives at the University of Heidelberg is better quality, and also much more accessible.

What I’m hoping for now is that someone will do the same for Auguste Racinet’s Polychrome Ornament (1877), a book inspired by The Grammar of Ornament‘s example which is even more lavish. This Flickr set has copies of the plates but when anything at Flickr can be deleted on a whim it’s always better to have an alternative available.

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