A Grammar of Ornament

      

Among the important technical works written by XIXth century Orientalists in the English tongue, none has had such a deep and lasting influence as The Grammar of Ornament (see here) by the architect Owen Jones. Published in the 1850s it is a work that had a pervasive influence upon all aspects of design in England and beyond right through into XXth century, and even today it continues to influence designers in sundry fields. It is the classic work of its type: a systematic account of the principles and modes of ornament across a range of styles, periods and cultures. Principally, it gives the classic account of oriental styles of ornament with special attention to the Persians, ancient Egyptians, the Arabs, Greeks and Italians, as well as attention to the art of savages and primitive motifs. 

It was written during a time when the British Empire was fascinated with and eager to imitate and acquire oriental styles. Victorian era design - whether carpets, wallpapers, book covers, furnishings - adopted strong elements of oriental ornamentation. This was in large measure due to this book. The Grammar of Ornament collects, systemises and refines oriental decoration with the express mission of bringing oriental beauty, with its sense of pattern and geometry, to industrial production. Jones was strongly of the view that decoration is the necessary complement to architecture and that, on this account, the Empire needed to develop its own contemporary style based on oriental models instead of the increasingly old fashioned Neo-classical style then standard in English design. The purpose of the book, that is, was to set down the rules and framework - the grammar - for this new style. In the course of pursuing this purpose Mr Jones developed bold new theories of flat patterning and was a pioneer of colour theory. 

It is remarkable that, in his pursuit of a defining XIXth century style, Mr Jones turned naturally to oriental patterns and especially those of the Mahometan world. This was not in any sense an act of collusion with a cultural enemy, as anti-Mahometan sentiment would have it in today's context. This is a measure of the degree to which  things have changed. For Jones, drawing upon the patterned decorations of Islaam was an act of appropriation made from within the security of the British Empire. Rather than a measure of cultural capitulation made through a weakened sense of self, Jones looked to appropriate oriental design from a position of cultural confidence. Confident cultures engage with and appropriate from 'others'. Weak and weary cultures don't appropriate, they surrender to and are absorbed by the 'other', they apologise for their past, or else they over-compensate with vocal xenophobia, always a bad sign. The position of the West (and Britain) is different today. The encounter with the orient is torn and problematic. When we look at the Mahometan East now we do not see a world of sumptuous patterns and geometric beauty to be admired and desired, as did Mr Jones; instead we have reverted to the counter vision, the narrative about the bloodthirsty pretender and his satanic hordes. Pro-Mahometan opinion in the West, against this age-old reservoir of hostility, is insincere, uniformed, sentimental, self-hating and grows out of cultural exhaustion, not a confident encounter. It is pathological. There was no such pathology in the deeply sympathetic encounter Owen Jones and his fellow orientalist made with the East. 

The present writer, as many of these pages show, loves synergies and fusions of East and West, but the most fruitful of these were never made on equal terms. It is a case of occidental civilisation extending itself into alien worlds, usually after their military or economic subjugation. Cultures and civilisations do this all the time in history. It is one of the motors of civilizational history. Strong cultures absorb and integrate outside influences without feeling the 'other' as a threat. And appropriation is an act of humanising, because instead of being the vile styles of savages and heathens, the appropriation of cultural wealth involves giving that which is appropriated value.  Imitation, as they say, is a form of flattery. The fact is, that the orientalist admired the Mahometans and wanted to appropriate and integrate the best of Mahometan ways. The fact that this was done largely through the imagination - Europeans projected aspects of themselves upon the Mahometan 'other' - is not a fault in the project but rather one of its most beautiful features as a movement of cross-cultural fertilisation and historically exceptional. 

Those who would ponder the present vexed state of Mahometan/European encounter - the so-called 'Clash of Civilisations' - would acquire new and deeper context to their inquiries if they viewed Jones' Grammar of Ornament and asked what mode of culture can produce such a rich fusion? And what has changed? What has gone wrong? It is important to position the 'Clash of Civilisations' in this way. This is exactly what leftist post-colonial narratives - Edward Said etcetera - prevent. Poisoning the past is no foundation for its study. There is much to be learnt through the study of Owen Jones. The Grammar of Ornament is a key work of East/West synergy from a richer and less dangerous era. 

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SAMPLES

The standard editions of Grammar of Ornament feature extensive colour plates. The following are some examples:

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The Grammar of Ornament is prefaced by a series of eighteen propositions or axioms that set out the principles and philosophy of ornamentation as Mr Jones conceived it. This is an important declaration of objective principles, and it served to guide Victorian and early XXth century styles in all facets of decoration. Its wise principles can be applied to the arts in general. The text of the eighteen propositions follows:

GENERAL PRINCIPLES IN THE ARRANGEMENT OF FORM AND COLOUR IN ARCHITECTURE AND THE DECORATIVE ARTS

EIGHTEEN PROPOSITIONS

1.The Decorative Arts arise from, and should properly be attendant upon, Architecture.

2. Architecture is the material expression of the wants, the faculties, and the sentiments, of the age in which it is created. Style in Architecture is the peculiar form that expression takes under the influence of climate and materials at command.

3. As Architecture, so all works of the Decorative Arts, should possess fitness, proportion, harmony, the result of all which is repose.

4. True beauty results from that repose which the mind feels when the eye, the intellect, and the affections, are satisfied from the absence of any want.

5. Construction should be decorated. Decoration should never be purposely constructed. That which is beautiful is true; that which is true must be beautiful.

6. Beauty of form is produced by lines growing out one from the other in gradual undulations.

7. The general forms being first cared for, these should be subdivided and ornamented by general lines; the interstices may then be filled in with ornament, which may again be subdivided and enriched for closer inspection.

8. All ornament should be based upon a geometrical construction.

9. As in every perfect work of Architecture a true proportion will be found to reign between all the members which compose it, so throughout the Decorative Arts every assemblage of forms should be arranged on certain definite proportions: the whole and each particular member should be a multiple of some simple unit.

Those proportions will be the most beautiful which it will be most difficult for the eye to detect.

Thus the proportion of a double square, or 4 to 8, will be less beautiful than there subtle ratio of 5to 8; 3 to 6, than 3 to 7; 3 to 9, than 3 to 8 3 to 4, than 3 to 5.

10. Harmony of form consists in the proper balancing, and contrast of, the straight, the inclined, and the curved.

11. In surface decoration all lines should flow out of a parent stem. Every ornament, however distant, should be traced toitsbranchandroot. Oriental practice. 

12. All junctions of curved lines with curved or of curved lines with straight should be tangential to each other.

13. Flowers or other natural objects should not be used as ornaments, but conventional representations founded upon them sufficiently suggestive to convey the in- tended image to the mind, without destroying the unity of the object they are employed to decorate.

14. Colour is used to assist in the development of form, and to distinguish objects or parts of objects one from another

15. Colour is used to assist light and shade, helping the undulations of form by the proper distribution of the several colours.

16. These objects are best attained by the use of the primary colours on small sur- faces and in small quantities, balanced and supported by the secondary and ter- tiary colours on the larger masses.

17. The primary colours should be used on the upper portions of objects, the secondary and tertiary on the lower.

18. The primaries of equal intensities will harmonise or neutralise each other in the proportions of 3 yellows, 5 red and 8 blue - integrally as 16. The secondaries in the proportions 8 orange, 13 purple, 11 green - integrally as 32. The tertiaries, citrine (compound of orange and green), 19; russet (orange and purple)—, 21; olive (green and purple) 24 - integrally as 64.

It follows that:

Each secondary being a compound of two primaries is neutralised by the remaining primary in the same proportions: thus - 8 of orange by 8 of blue, 11 of green by 5 of red, 13 of purple by 3 of yellow.

Each tertiary being a binary compound of two secondaries is neutralised by the remaining secondary, as 24 of olive by 8 of orange, 21 of russet by 11 of green, 19 of citrine by 13 of purple.

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As well as the Grammar, Jones wrote numerous other works, include the 1869 illustrated book The History of Joseph and his Brethren. Jones produced the illustrations. He used the work to demonstrate the practical application of the principles set out in the Grammar. Examples follow below:

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black