uwmspeccoll:Greek Decorative Art in The Grammar of OrnamentThis week we present the chromolithograph
uwmspeccoll:Greek Decorative Art in The Grammar of OrnamentThis 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.”View more posts about The Grammar of Ornament.View more posts about decorative arts and pattern books. -- source link