The grammar of ornament

Owen Jones (1809-1874) was a British architect and designer who pioneered studies on design and colour theory. During his travels as a young man, he became fascinated by architectural polychromy (architecture decorated in colours). Together with the French architect Jules Goury, Jones spent six months studying the architecture and decoration of the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain, declaring it a masterpiece of Islamic design. The drawings and plaster casts he produced there helped to develop his theories on flat pattern, geometry, abstraction and polychromy.

These ideas were visualised and revealed to the public in 1851, when Jones was asked to decorate the much-anticipated Crystal Palace at the Great Exhibition in London. The Crystal Palace was an impressive structure made of iron and glass, and Jones decided to decorate the interior in bold primary colours, paying homage to the precedents of the Alhambra, Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. Though considered controversial by some early critics, Queen Victoria unveiled the building and Jones’ design choices to great acclaim.

Jones also proposed many of the exhibits from the Great Exhibition to be included in the teaching collections of the new Government School of Design (now the Royal College of Art), where he also held a series of lectures on design, polychromy and ornament. However, Jones expressed concerns over the collections’ limited accessibility for some designers, and worried that other students would simply copy examples of ornament without fully understanding the underlying principles.

This led to the publication of his seminal design sourcebook The Grammar of Ornament (first published in 1856). In the Preface, Jones explains his view that modern architects and designers should take inspiration from the past, while being careful not to simply copy it: "To attempt to build up theories of art, or to form a style, independently of the past, would be an act of supreme folly. It would be at once to reject the experiences and accumulated knowledge of thousands of years. On the contrary, we should regard as our inheritance all the successful labours of the past, not blindly following them, but employing them simply as guides to find the true path."

In order to use them as such guides, Jones formulated 37 common principles – or grammar rules – derived from historical ornament, which readers could then apply to interiors, textiles or furniture of the modern world. The text is accompanied by 112 illustrated plates, showing stunning patterns and motifs from diverse cultural periods and locations. Jones researched and utilised the new printing technique of chromolithography in order to do justice to the intricate detail and colours of these elaborate designs.

The book is still in print 150 years later.

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