Back Cover

"Wonderful. This reissue of Owen Jones's Grammar of Ornament , unabridged and in full color, will be welcomed by scholars as well as architects and desginers." --Alina Payne, author of From Ornament to Object: Genealogies of Architectural Modernism "Like the Crystal Palace, for which Jones himself designed the interior color scheme, this book is a riotous cornicopia of hue and form, a heroic attempt to come to grips with the entire world of things. The Grammar of Ornament is an object of beauty in its own right" --Tim Barringer, author of Reading the Pre-Raphaelites

Author Biography

Owen Jones has worked in the British Parliament as a trade union lobbyist and parliamentary researcher. He is writing a PhD on the history of blue-collar America and the rise of the New Right. He lives in London.

Table of Contents

Introduction 12 Preface to Owen Jones's Original Folio Edition 18 General Principles 22 1 Ornament of Savage Tribes 30 2 Egyptian Ornament 46 3 Assyrian and Persian Ornament 74 4 Greek Ornament 88 5 Pompeian Ornament 114 6 Roman Ornament 124 7 Byzantine Ornament 136 8 Arabian Ornament 154 9 Turkish Ornament 174 10 Moresque Ornament from the Alhambra 184 11 Persian Ornament 222 12 Indian Ornament 238 13 Hindoo Ornament 260 14 Chinese Ornament 272 15 Celtic Ornament 286 16 Medieval Ornament 310 17 Renaissance Ornament 340 18 Elizabethan Ornament 400 19 Italian Ornament 418 20 Leaves and Flowers from Nature 468 Index to the Commentaries and Introduction 488 Index to Owen Jones's Text 491 Owen Jones: A Chronology 496

Review

"Architects, design nerds and hard-core antiquarians may be the natural audience for the reissue of this Victorian-era classic. But if you have wondered--as I have--about the subtle differences between the filigrees featured in Persian, Byzantine and Arabian tilework, The Grammar of Ornament: A Visual Reference of Form and Colour in Architecture and the Decorative Arts (Princeton University Press) is a good book to have on hand... The illustrations are delightful, and perhaps surprisingly, it is easy to pick a page at random and find a bit of tasty decorative information to digest. Summer grazing at its best."--Ted Loos, Introspective Magazine

Long Description

The complete and unabridged full-color edition First published in 1856, The Grammar of Ornament remains a design classic. Its inspiration came from pioneering British architect and designer Owen Jones (1809-1874), who produced a comprehensive design treatise for the machine age, lavishly illustrated in vivid chromolithographic color. Jones made detailed observations of decorative arts on his travels in Europe, the Middle East, and in his native London, where he studied objects on display at the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in 1851 and at local museums. His aim was to improve the quality of Western design by changing the habits of Victorian designers, who indiscriminately mixed elements from a wide variety of sources. Jones's resulting study is a comprehensive analysis of styles of ornamental design, presenting key examples ranging from Maori tattoos, Egyptian columns, and Greek borders to Byzantine mosaic, Indian embroidery, and Elizabethan carvings. At once splendidly Victorian and insistently modern, The Grammar of Ornament celebrates objects of beauty from across time periods and continents, and remains an indispensable sourcebook today.

Review Quote

"Wonderful. This reissue of Owen Jones's Grammar of Ornament , unabridged and in full color, will be welcomed by scholars as well as architects and desginers." --Alina Payne, author of From Ornament to Object: Genealogies of Architectural Modernism

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