Among the new uploads to the Internet Archive is A Grammar of Japanese Ornament and Design (1880) by Thomas W. Cutler. The title is an echo of Owen Jones’ landmark study, The Grammar of Ornament (1856), a much larger volume which devotes several pages to Chinese decoration but says nothing about the Japanese. Japan’s self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world only ended in the 1860s, a restriction which had limited the spread of Japanese culture for over two centuries. Cutler’s book capitalised on the new openness and a growing interest in the country which fuelled a fervour for “Japonisme” among Western artists.
Where Owen Jones condensed whole cultures and histories into a few pages, Cutler examines a wide range of Japanese art and decoration, from details of plants and animals as found in ukiyo-e prints, to the stylised kamon emblems used by Japanese families. His book is distinguished by many pages of precise line drawings, together with reproductions of whole prints. More details like these may be found in the books of waves and clouds by Yuzan Mori and Korin Furuya.
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