Decorative Images of the Public Domain
We stumbled upon some amazing nineteenth century books featuring tons of decorative images, patterns and borders. Here’s a sampling of what we’ve restored.
The Grammar of Ornament (1856)
One of the most fascinating books on design ever created is The Grammar of Ornament (1856) by Owen Jones (1809-1874). Jones was an English-born Welsh architect, and one of the most influential design theorists of the nineteenth century. The Grammar of Ornament was Jones’s magnum opus. It is an absurdly detailed and useful guidebook intended to aid in the understanding of the underlying principles used in ornamentation.
Jones understood that contemporary design was at its most successful when it learned from the past. To be sure, The Grammar of Ornament made that very simple to do, with designs arranged by color and design similarities. The book first introduces 37 “general principles in the arrangement of form and color in architecture and the decorative arts”, and then follows with 20 chapters of illustrations. The first 19 chapters showcase Middle Eastern designs from various time periods. In contrast, the final chapter Leaves and Flowers from Nature focuses upon the principles of pattern within nature. It emphasizes the idea that skilled human design comes from observing natural design.
The Grammar of Ornament is incredibly impressive on its own, but Jones published more illustration-rich books as well. For example, we like the elaborate motifs from Examples of Chinese ornament selected from objects in the South Kensington museum and other collections (1867).
The Antiquarian Books of Henry Shaw
Similarly, we have the art of another brilliant 19th century individual to share. Henry Shaw (1800-1873) was an English architectural draftsman, engraver and antiquarian. He published many beautiful books on medieval and Renaissance design, illustrated with his own art. Shaw’s interests were diverse. He illustrated stained glass, heraldry, costume, metalwork, architecture and furniture. He also illustrated a very strange foot object.
The objects below are from The decorative arts ecclesiastical and civil of the Middle Ages (1851). The first image is a crozier. This hooked staff is held by a bishop as a symbol of office. With it’s fernlike curve, it’s clearly a design inspired by nature, and in fact the word crozier also refers to the curled top of a young fern. The elaborately bejeweled central object is a morse. A morse is an ornamental clasp meant to fasten a cope, which in turn is basically a cloak worn by clergy. The image at the right is of a 16th century book cover.
The images below come from Specimens of tile pavements / drawn from existing authorities (1858), a book containing over seventy beautiful illustrations solely of pavement tiles. Here we can see tiles found in Chertsey Abbey (left and center) and Gloucester Cathedral (right).
