Special Collections

Decorative Sunday

This week we return to our third edition of Owen Jones’s classic work The Grammar of Ornament, published by Bernard Quaritch in London in 1868 with in-text wood engravings and 120 chromolithographs by Day & Son. Today we are showing plates from the “Arabian” section. The first three color plates are decorative patterns from various mosques in Cairo and Nasiriyah. Iraq. The fourth plate contains designs drawn from an illuminated Quran and the fifth consists of different mosaics from pavements and walls in private homes and mosques in Cairo.

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Greek Decorative Art in The Grammar of Ornament

This week we present the chromolithographic plates from the Greek section of Owen Jones’s classic work The Grammar of Ornament, published by Bernard Quaritch in London in 1868 with chromolithographs by Day & Son. The Grammar of Ornament was first published in 1856 and ours is the third English-language edition. The book features 120 chromolithographic plates of design examples from across time, geography, and culture. Jones, an architect, designer, and color theorist primarily interested in the use of color in ornamental design (“form without colour is like a body without a soul”) was an early proponent of the use of chromolithography.

While Jones, a pioneer in the use of chromolithography in books, praised Greek ornament for its “perfection of pure form to a point which has never since been reached,” his main critique was that “Greek ornament was wanting, however, in one of the great charms which should always accompany ornament, – viz. Symbolism. It was meaningless, purely decorative, never representative, and can hardly be said to be constructive… . The ornament was no part of the construction, as with the Egyptian: it could be removed, and the structure remained unchanged. On the Corinthian capital the ornament is applied, not constructed: it is not so on the Egyptian capital; there we feel the whole capital is the ornament, – to remove any portion of it would destroy it.”

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Dado Designs from the Jeypore Portfolio

This week we revisit the decorative plates from Jeypore Portfolio of Architectural Details, published in twelve volumes by Bernard Quaritch between 1890 and 1913. The plates displayed here are from volume 9 on dados, the decorative treatment to the lower part of a wall.

Issued under the patronage of Maharaja Sawai Madhu Singh, the set was prepared under the supervision of Colonel Samuel Swinton Jacob, Indian Staff Corps, Engineer to the Jeypore State, and Lala Ram Bakhsh, head draftsman and teacher in the Jeypore School of Art, and was photo-lithographed by William Griggs of London, the inventor of photo-chromo-lithography. The Portfolio was intended to serve as a record of the architectural heritage of the Jeypore State and the north-west region of Rajasthan. As a record, it would “rescue (such) designs from oblivion and give them new life.”

Of the 12-volume set we only hold volumes 7 (String and band patterns), 9 (Dados), and 10 (Parapets). These have been digitized and may be found in our digital collections.

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Egyptian Decorative Art in The Grammar of Ornament

This week we present the chromolithographic plates from the Egyptian section of Owen Jones’s classic work The Grammar of Ornament, published by Bernard Quaritch in London in 1868. The Grammar of Ornament was first published in 1856 and ours is the third English-language edition. The book features 120 chromolithographic plates of design examples from across time, geography, and culture. Jones, an architect, designer, and color theorist primarily interested in the use of color in ornamental design (“form without colour is like a body without a soul”) was an early proponent of the use of chromolithography.

At his own great expense, Jones had assistants spend a year meticulously copying his original drawings on to lithography stones. Then, working with the London lithographers Day & Son, he had his designs reproduced in color using the new technique of chomolithography. This method of printing required up to 20 separate lithographic stones, one for each color. These were then printed one over the other, layer over layer, to form the finished plate. This layering creates an almost luminous effect, which remains vibrant to this day.

Of Egyptian decorative design, Owen Jones notes that “every flower or other object is portrayed not as a reality, but as an ideal representation. It is at the same time the record of a fact and an architectural decoration, to which even their hieroglyphic writing, explanatory of the scene, by its symmetrical arrangement added effect.”

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Parapet Designs from the Jeypore Portfolio

This week we return to the Jeypore Portfolio of Architectural Details, published in twelve volumes by Bernard Quaritch between 1890 and 1913. Shown here are a few parapet designs, the decorative treatment to the extension of the wall at the edge of a roof, from volume 10 in the set.

Issued under the patronage of Maharaja Sawai Madhu Singh, the set was prepared under the supervision of Colonel Samuel Swinton Jacob, Indian Staff Corps, Engineer to the Jeypore (Jaipur) State, and Lala Ram Bakhsh, head draftsman and teacher in the Jeypore School of Art, and was photo-lithographed by William Griggs of London, the inventor of photo-chromo-lithography. The Portfolio was intended to serve as a record of the architectural heritage of the Jaipur State and the north-west region of Rajasthan (not to be confused with the city of Jeypore in Odisha, India). As a record, it would “rescue (such) designs from oblivion and give them new life.”

Of the 12-volume set we only hold volumes 7 (String and band patterns), 9 (Dados), and 10 (Parapets). These have been digitized and may be found in our digital collections.

View other posts from this title here.

View more posts about decorative arts and pattern books.

Flora and Sylva

Today we present botanical art found in Owen Jones’s classic work The Grammar of Ornament, published by Bernard Quaritch in London in 1868. The book features 120 chromolithographic plates of design examples from across time, geography, and culture. In the chapter on “Leaves and Flowers from Nature,” Jones contemplates the successful application of natural motifs in ornamental art. Jones wrote:

“In the ten plates of leaves and flowers which accompany this chapter, we have gathered together many of those natural types which we thought best calculated to awaken a recognition of the natural laws which prevail in the distribution of form. But, indeed, these laws will be found to be so universal, that they are as well seen in one leaf as in a thousand. The simple example of the chestnut leaf, Plate XCI, contains the whole of the laws which are to be found in Nature: no art can rival the perfect grace of its form, the perfect proportional distribution of the areas, the radiation from the parent stem, the tangential curvatures of the lines, or the even distribution of the surface decoration.”’

–Sarah, Special Collections Graduate Intern

Manuscript Illumination in The Grammar of Ornament

Today we present examples of manuscript illumination found in Owen Jones’s classic work The Grammar of Ornament, published by Bernard Quaritch in London in 1868. The book features 120 chromolithographic plates of design examples from across time, geography, and culture. In the preface, Jones describes 37 propositions that are “general principles in the arrangement of form and colour, in architecture and the decorative arts, which are advocated throughout this work.” The plates we are highlighting today showcase decorative art patterns found in illuminated manuscripts, tile work, and architecture.

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Persian Decorative Art in The Grammar of Ornament

Today we present Persian decorative art styles found in Owen Jones’s classic work The Grammar of Ornament, published by Bernard Quaritch in London in 1868. The book features 120 chromolithographic plates of design examples from across time, geography, and culture. In the preface, Jones describes 37 propositions that are “general principles in the arrangement of form and colour, in architecture and the decorative arts, which are advocated throughout this work.” The plates we are highlighting today showcase decorative art patterns found in illuminated manuscripts, tile work, and architecture.

View more posts about The Grammar of Ornament.

View more posts about decorative arts and pattern books.

–Sarah, Special Collections Graduate Intern

Jeypore Portfolio of Architectural Details

Today we are presenting decorative plates from Jeypore Portfolio of Architectural Details, published in twelve volumes by Bernard Quaritch between 1890 and 1913.

Issued under the patronage of Maharaja Sawai Madhu Singh, the set was prepared under the supervision of Colonel Samuel Swinton Jacob, Indian Staff Corps, Engineer to the Jeypore State, and Lala Ram Bakhsh, head draftsman and teacher in the Jeypore School of Art, and was photo-lithographed by William Griggs of London, the inventor of photo-chromo-lithography. The Portfolio was intended to serve as a record of the architectural heritage of the Jeypore State and the north-west region of Rajasthan. As a record, it would “rescue (such) designs from oblivion and give them new life.” The plates displayed here are from volume 9 on dados, the decorative treatment to the lower part of a wall.

View other posts from this title here.

View more posts about decorative arts and pattern books.

–Sarah, Special Collections Graduate Intern