The Grammar of Ornament [Paperback]

Owen Jones (Author), Maxine Lewis (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 18, 2001

An excellent resource for artists, designers, architects, craftspeople, or anyone interested in the decorative arts. First published in 1856, The Grammar of Ornament remains a design classic. Its inspiration came from the pioneering architect and designer Owen Jones. His observations of decorative art on his extensive travels in Europe and the Near East were employed to improve the poor quality of Western design. His goal was to change the Victorian habit of mixing elements from a wide variety of sources and applying this mix indiscriminately to buildings, graphic design, and products. His resulting study is a comprehensive analysis of a remarkable collection of styles of ornamental design -- from Ancient Egypt and Greece to Imperial China and Renaissance Italy. With its sumptuous illustrations, its detailed survey of individual cultures, and its manifesto of "General Principles," it offered guidance to the designers of the future. In this new edition the designs are further illuminated by Iain Zaczek's perceptive commentaries. Hugely influential since its first publication, The Grammar of Ornament inspired great figures such as William Morris and Frank Lloyd Wright. Contemporary designers, entertained by the archaic charm of Jones's descriptions, are struck by the book's enduring relevance and its soundness regarding the essential principles of good design.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This disc reproduces the printed The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones (London, 1856), with supplementary color plates from the 1868 edition. The original printed work was considered a masterpiece of 19th-century color printing, with thousands of examples of ornamental motifs and designs (many from ancient monuments and buildings) from the ancient world through the Renaissance, including both Eastern and Western design motifs. The complete work is represented here, viewable (as with other Octavo discs) in a variety of resolutions, searchable, printable, and supplemented with a critical introduction. This disc continues Octavo's pattern of creating digital reproductions of rare books that are themselves works of art. However, paper reprints of the original are available at a reasonable cost, so it is hard to understand why this title was selected for Octavo's otherwise rare books on disc series. This is the first Octavo disc with which this reviewer experienced performance problems. Response time was consistently slow even on a robust machine, owing (presumably) to the graphics-heavy nature of this title. The Bottom Line: The Grammar of Ornament is for libraries developing electronic text collections as well as art and design libraries; not an essential purchase.AEd Tallent, Research Instruction, Harvard Coll. Lib.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the CD-ROM edition.

Review

A classic art resource that has been beautifully transformed into digital format. The Grammar of Ornament is a treasure trove of visual resources for the Digital Artist. Whether graphic design for print, 2D imaging illustration, 3D modeling, Multimedia, Web design or motion picture graphics, this is an indispensable package for any artist. -- Susan A. Kitchens, The KPT Bryce Book and CD-ROM, Addison-Wesley Pub Co, August, 1995

Finalist, Best New Graphic Resource of 1996 -- MacUser, February, 1997

My hat's off to Direct Imagination, They've shown me how good an electronic book can be. -- Olav Kvern, ADOBE-On Line, Issue #8, July 15, 1996 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 504 pages
• Publisher: DK ADULT (April 18, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0789476460
• ISBN-13: 978-0789476463
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #200,382 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #85 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Interior Design > Decoration & Ornament

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Gem, June 25, 2001

By A Customer

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This review is from: The Grammar of Ornament (Paperback)

The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones is a highly regarded design classic, first published in 1856 and just as relevant today. The DK edition is a pleasure to examine (although you may need reading glasses to see the six-point type for some captions). The small format fits well in the hand and has a nice heft (504 pages at 1.3 inches thick). The paper is superb and the colored inks for the thousands of engravings brilliant and crisp. If you need a version that lays flat on your drawing table or a scanner bed, however, this one has some drawbacks. The images are very tight to the inner margins, and the glued binding difficult to keep open without breaking the back. That aside, the DK edition is beautiful and a great buy.

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pattern Paradise, October 30, 2001

By 

Rebecca Johnson "The Rebecca Review" (Washington State) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Grammar of Ornament (Paperback)

This book was first published in 1856 and is a design classic! Owen Jones was born in 1809 and is a key figure in the history of British design. He was an architect and designer who taught in London during the 1850s.

He traveled in Europe and the Near East, were he helped to bring back ideas to improve the quality of Western design. This collection is a result of his comprehensive analysis of patterns. The sumptuous illustrations are presented in these sections:

Ornament of Savage Tribes

Egyptian Ornament
Assyrian and Persian Ornament
Greek Ornament
Pompeian Ornament
Roman Ornament
Byzantine Ornament
Arabian Ornament
Turkish Ornament
Moresque Ornament from the Alhambra
Persian Ornament
Indian Ornament
Hindoo Ornament
Chinese Ornament
Celtic Ornament
Mediaeval Ornament
Renaissance Ornament
Elizabethan Ornament
Italian Ornament
Leaves and Flowers from Nature

The original Preface to Owen Jones's original folio edition has been preserved and included. The general principles in the arrangement of form and color are listed so you can see which are advocated throughout this book.

If you are interested in reading about over 2,350 classic patterns (color engravings representing a vast range of ornamental styles), this is the book for you! More than likely, you will gravitate to one form of the other and concentrate your reading efforts on those sections.

The actual pictures are all numbered and the mediaeval section is especially beautiful.

Iain Zaczek has contributed to the commentaries in this work. He is an art historian and has written on a wide variety of subjects. He is also the author of The Essential William Morris, The essential Art Deco, and the Art of Illuminated Manuscripts.

~The Rebecca Review

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Little Gem, February 7, 2006

By 

Valerie J. (West Yorks, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Grammar of Ornament (Paperback)

I was disappointed when I first received this book. I had bought it as recommended reading for my design course and ordered it blindly. I don't know what I had expected but this wasn't it. Then, one day, I pulled it off my bookcase, looking for information on a certain type of design - and suddenly found myself enthralled with the beauty of this book. Let it not fool you, it's a beautiful little gem packed with design and information. Not a centimetre wasted.