[HN Gopher] Grammar of Ornament
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Grammar of Ornament
Author : lioeters
Score : 65 points
Date : 2024-01-04 12:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nms.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nms.ac.uk)
| gilleain wrote:
| Another take on this book from the V&A:
|
| https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/owen-jones-and-the-grammar-of...
|
| Including some details such as:
|
| > Henry Cole, another key figure in design reform, had helped
| Jones publish The Grammar of Ornament, and in his capacity as
| first director of the South Kensington Museum, asked Jones to
| design a series of galleries known as the 'Oriental Courts'. The
| Oriental Courts comprised of two galleries: an Indian Court and a
| Chinese and Japanese Court, which showcased the museum's growing
| collection of objects from these countries.
|
| > The Oriental Courts had closed to the public by the end of the
| 19th century and unfortunately Jones's designs were later painted
| over.
|
| Then "The rooms were used as the kitchens for the V&A restaurant
| for many years. "!
| swayvil wrote:
| I had this book. It was published tiny. Like 5x6. Not good. If
| you buy it you need a big one. Like 12". Great book tho. A feast,
| truly.
| masfuerte wrote:
| The Princeton University Press edition looks nice but one of
| the Amazon reviews slates the printing quality. That said,
| reviews are often attached to the wrong edition so it might be
| fine. Can anyone recommend a good edition?
| omsimun wrote:
| If you're just curious, you might not need a glossy physical
| copy.
|
| The Met recommends (https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/in-
| circulation/2018/grammar-...) this scanned version of the
| 1856 edition at the Internet Archive:
|
| https://archive.org/details/grammarornament00Jone/
|
| As someone with a training in architecture and architectural
| history, I'd think twice before paying money for an edition
| of this. Any plate from the book is very recognizable. It's
| marginally useful as a sourcebook, but you won't learn much
| from it, and its limitations start to grate pretty quickly.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| .. as others have mentioned, current practices rival Soviet
| design .. we are at an all time low in some ways. Anyone
| who is interested ought to be encouraged IMHO
|
| ref: 1900 architecture texts from Columbia University --
| Greek revival at the time
| efields wrote:
| I used to have a copy of this book. I hope I still do. Thanks for
| posting.
|
| Amazing how these cultures developed such intricate and beautiful
| ornament systems -- which is functionally a design system -- and
| the best we get now is all white and plywood.
|
| I know, I know.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| "we"
| efields wrote:
| I know, I know.
| schrijver wrote:
| Today I binged the Youtube of House & Garden, an upmarket
| English interior design magazine... now I was aware that in the
| mainstream minimalism has peaked, but I learned that all along
| there's been this whole subculture of posh English people
| designing rooms with ornamental wallpapers, fabrics, moulding,
| antiques, trinkets--without it looking stuffy. My own house is
| going to look nothing like this but I found it inspiring
| regardless.
| efields wrote:
| It's been happening for a couple years. Part of it is we
| really did pare designed spaces down to the bone in terms of
| style and functionality, so there's nowhere left to go but
| the opposite direction, and the pendulum had a lot of
| potential energy built up. Maximalism with modern sensibility
| is in.
| mintplant wrote:
| If you enjoyed this, you simply _must_ play Goragoa [0]. It 's a
| beautiful, intricate puzzle game centered around interlocking
| logics of ornamentation, crafted over seven years by the creator
| [1].
|
| [0] https://gorogoa.com
|
| [1] https://kotaku.com/the-puzzle-of-a-lifetime-1821235999
| froh wrote:
| "this app isn't compatible with your device because it was made
| for an older version of android"
|
| sigh
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Pre-modernism: "Let's decorate everything!"
|
| Modernism: "Let's think about form and function, and try to use
| space, structure, and material to convey emotion and express
| intent without resorting to overt decoration"
|
| Post-modernism: "Let's decorate everything!"
|
| ---
|
| See also Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown: "duck" vs
| "decorated shed".
| mcphage wrote:
| > and try to use space, structure, and material to convey
| emotion and express intent without resorting to overt
| decoration
|
| They may have tried this, but I think they failed pretty badly.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Some nice patterns can also be found in Hittorff, L'Architecture
| Polychrome chez les Grecs (1846)
| mcphage wrote:
| Are you aware of a digital copy online? This sort of book often
| has a copy at the Internet Archive, but I didn't find it there.
| twic wrote:
| > The Grammar's purpose was thus not to encourage others to copy
| or revive these older decorative arts, but to help young
| designers make use of the rich underlying design principles - the
| grammar - in their own work.
|
| So what was this grammar?
|
| This article, and the V&A one someone posted in a comment, do
| this infuriating thing that seems to be standard practice for
| museum curators, where they tell you all about the biography of
| some figure, and show you their work (with titles, dates,
| materials, all the metadata), but make absolutely no attempt to
| actually explain it. As if you could somehow stare at a sequence
| of these drawings and exactly reproduce Jones's thinking
| yourself! Or stare at Kandinsky's shapes and colours and
| understand what he was trying to do, etc.
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