Some plates from the exhibit at the James P. Adams Library, July 2008

RACINET, Auguste (1825-1893). L'Ornement Polychrome. Paris: Fermin-Didot et Cie, [1885], 3rd. ed., 1st and 2nd series, 2 vols. This beautiful plate is from the second series, and is taken from Persian tile work. French craftsmanship, as established in the seventeenth century by Colbert, had always maintained the highest standards of excellence. With the renaissance of British design through the Schools of Design under Sir Henry Cole, Jones and his friends were able to challenge French supremacy in every day objects and even luxury items. But the French renewed their commitment to the industrial arts during the 1870s. Racinet’s beautiful volumes are instrumental in this resurgence in quality object d’art in the later years of the nineteenth century and helped maintain the French upper hand in luxury goods into the twentieth century.

JONES, Owen (1809-1874). Paradise and the Peri. Tho[ma]s Moore. London: Day and Son, [1860]. These illuminated designs by Owen Jones with figures by Henry Warren, were executed on stone by Albert Warren, Henry Warren’s son and a pupil of Jones. The illuminated books of the 1860s are a high point of Jones’ mastery of the art form. His collaboration with Henry Warren began about twenty years earlier with Ancient Spanish Ballads; Historical and Romantic, 1841. The integration of ornament, drawn text, and illustrated figure is unique in the history of printing. These are beautiful pairs of pages that owe their inspiration to Persian manuscripts and illustrated Korans as the content itself is indebted to the Sufi tradition of poetry and spirit.

JONES, Owen (1809-1874). The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones. Illustrated by examples from various styles of ornament. London: Day and Son, 1856. Plate LVII is taken from various Burmese ornaments exhibited at the Crystal Palace of 1851, many of which were selected by Jones and A.W.N. Pugin, his colleague, for inclusion into the collections of the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum. The remainder of the plate’s ornaments are copies from the Caves of Ajunta in India which were also exhibited at the Crystal Palace.

JONES, Owen (1809-1874). The Illuminated Calendar and Home Diary for 1845. Copied from the Hours of Anne of Brittany of 1499 (?). London, Longman and Co., 1845. The luxury calendar and diary was illuminated by Owen Jones and Noel Humphreys. Humphreys’ Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages (London: Longmans, 1844) established him as an authority in medieval studies, and three plates in the Grammar on Medieval Ornament draw from this source for the illustrations.

JONES, Owen (1809-1874). Gray's Elegy. London: Longman and Co.; New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846. This is the first “relievo” binding designed by Jones and executed by Remnant and Edmonds. In this process the leather was heat-pressed possibly over built-up areas of fibrous plaster, in imitation of carved wooden covers. Owen Jones’ monogram can be seen on the rear cover.

JONES, Owen (1809-1874). The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones. Illustrated by examples from various styles of ornament. London: Day and Son, 1856. This is plate XCVI in this printing of the Grammar, but plate XCVIII in subsequent printings. The plate by Christopher Dresser gained him the Ph.D. from the University of Jena and demonstrates that all form has its basis in geometry. The proposition 8 in the Grammar states that “all ornament should be based upon a geometrical construction”. Dresser’s plate shows how forms in nature can be abstractly treated to bring out their inherent geometry, in this case by conforming to the two-dimensional surface of the page.