Owen Jones' The Grammar of Ornament

Above, top, color plate from The Grammar of Ornament, 1856. TGoO was originally published in installments for subscribers. Owen Jones's illustrated plates and design motifs drew from nineteen different cultures including the ornament of Oceania, Rome, Byzantium, ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, Rome, and Moorish Spain. The Grammar was adapted to architectural decoration, fabrics, textiles, tile design, furniture and wallpaper during the second half of the nineteenth century. It has remained influential among designers worldwide. The book feels a bit like anthropology:

and the history of design. Jones' narrative is quite engaging.

Here is a great site for the book.

William Morris: the quintessential Pre-Raphaelite

Morris' The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1896)

William Morris was deeply influenced by the writings of John Ruskin (on the social and moral basis of architecture, particularly the chapter "On the Nature of Gothic" in The Stones of Venice, that came to Morris "with the force of a revelation"). After taking his degree in 1856, he entered the Oxford office of the Gothic Revivalist architect G.E. Street. He visited Belgium and France, with fellow Burne-Jones, where he first saw the 15th-century paintings of Hans Memling and the Van Eyck brothers and the cathedrals of Amiens, Chartres, and Rouen. It all confirmed his passion for medieval art. At this time that he came under the powerful influence of the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who persuaded him to give up architecture for painting and enrolled him among the band of friends who were decorating the walls of the Oxford Union with scenes from Arthurian legend based on Le Morte D'Arthur by the 15th-century English writer Sir Thomas Malory. Only one easel painting by Morris survives: "La Belle Iseult," or "Queen Guenevere" (Tate Gallery, London). 

what is the pre raphaelite credo?

Boticelli is the pre-raphaelite par excellence. this is his idealized Portrait of a Lady (Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci as Nymph), ca. 1475. 

look at some influences:

Veronese Lucretia, (1580)

ante Gabriel Rosetti's Veronica Veronese, (1872)

 Jan Van Eyk's The Annunciation, (1434)

John Everett Millais' Mariana, (1851)

The group's early doctrine emphasized: 

1. to have genuine ideas to express;
2. to study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express it;
3. to sympathize with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parading and learned by rote;
4. most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.

"what's wrong with Victorian design? almost everything" - Alfred George Stevens

How could one define elements of Victorian design? ECLECTIC!

1- Excessive ornament (flowery, symmetric, etc.),
2- The exotic (amalgamation of Moorish, Japanese and Indian styles),
3- A Medieval revival

4- Celtic revival,

5- Fabrics: velvet, serge or damask curtains trimmed with ball fringes and tassels
6- Colors: Heavy flock wallpapers in deep red, dark green or blue, covered with exaggerated damask patterns and almost hidden by large realistic paintings in wide gilded frames,

which brings me to this gargantuan piece of furniture:

michael jackson's commissioned victorian sofa

 

yet, today Victorian design is experiencing a comeback!

the miracle of chromolithography

Victorian chromolithography card, 1880's

chromolithography is a method for making multi-color prints. 

(let's see this interesting short video on chromolithography)  
 

chromolithography was a revelation! (from a private library):

 

let's begin with lithography, a mechanical planographic process in which the printing and non-printing areas of the plate are all at the same level, as opposed to intaglio and relief processes in which the design is cut into the printing block. lithography is based on the chemical repellence of oil and water. 

designs are drawn or painted with greasy ink or crayons on specially prepared limestone. the stone is moistened with water, which the stone accepts in areas not covered by the crayon. an oily ink, applied with a roller, adheres only to the drawing and is repelled by the wet parts of the stone. the print is then made by pressing paper against the inked drawing.

 

the lithography process was refined over the next several decades to include color illustrations. now multiple stones were used, one for each color, and the print went through the press as many times as there were stones. the problem for the printers was keeping the image in register, making sure that the print would be lined up exactly each time it went through the press so that each color would be in the correct position and the overlaying colors would merge correctly....  overprinting. the use of silver and gold inks widened the range of color and design.

novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe called it "magic colouring." 

 

 

illustrations like the one above were sold by the thousands and exhibited in the houses of America's middle class,
 

 L. Prang & Co. sold cards like this by the millions,

 

 

even though chromolithographs served many uses within society at the time, many were opposed to the idea of them because of their perceived lack of authenticity. these new art forms were sometimes tagged as "bad art" because of their deceptive qualities.

many felt that it could not serve as a form of art at all since it was too mechanical and that the true spirit of a painter could never be captured in a printed version of a work. 

what do we have here?

1- cheaper prints because of the simplification of the number of colors used,

2- popularization of a type of image,
3- the refinement in detail in the image.

A. H. Mackmurdo (arts and crafts)

a. h. mackmurdo's chair and the celebrated title page to (Mackmurdo's Wren's City Churches, 1883). 

observe plant forms stylized into flamelike, undulating rythms that compress the negative space between them. this established a positive and negative interplay between blak ink and white paper. 

good things come in small bottles: mackmurdo's foliage is the first art nouveau design. 

mackmurdo's house in london

Thomas Nast, master of political satire

Thomas Nast is perhaps 19th Century best political cartoonist. He came up with the idea of using animals to represent political parties. In his cartoons, the Democratic Party was a donkey and the Republican Party an elephant. Nast also helped to develop the character, Uncle Sam, to represent the United States. 

The Off Year, Harper's Weekly, (1877) Wood engraving

The American River Ganges. Harper’s Weekly (1871). Wood engraving.

After the ratification of the 14th Amendment, 1869.

(here is a short video about Thomas Nast)

photography goes to war (war reportage had a big audience)

 

  all the photographs above are shot by anonymous photographers.

designing fashion (1800's)

 
mid 19th-century french fashion goes for the bell shape. yet late 19th-century trend favors the slimmer silhouette: 

 

women were not alone in consuming fashion (circa the mid-nineteenth century).

(above) a difference in male tastes from 18th to 19th century.  

 below, the consummate English dandy, Oscar Wilde,

this is from his diary of an exquisite, London, 1819:

Took four hours to dress; and then it rained; ordered the tilbury and my umbrella, and drove to the fives' court; next to my tailors; put him off after two years tick; no bad fellow that Weston...broke three stay-laces and a buckle, tore the quarter of a pair of shoes, made so thin by O'Shaughnessy, in St. James's Street, that they were light as brown paper; what a pity they were lined with pink satin, and were quite the go; put on a pair of Hoby's; over-did it in perfuming my handkerchief, and had to recommence de novo; could not please myself in tying my cravat; lost three quarters of an hour by that, tore two pairs of kid gloves in putting them hastily on; was obliged to go gently to work with the third; lost another quarter of an hour by this; drove off furiously in my chariot but had to return for my splendid snuff-box, as I knew that I should eclipse the circle by it.

randolph caldecott (children books

While a bank clerk at Whitchurch, Shropshire, Randolph Caldecott began drawing for local magazines. Through his acquaintance with George Du Maurier he began contributing to the periodical London Society in 1871; the next year he settled in London and turned professional, ultimately drawing for Punch and Graphic, among other periodicals. He increased his skill by painting under Sir Edward Poynter and by sketching and modelling in the studio of J. Dalou.

In 1872 he went with his lifelong friend Henry Blackburn to Germany. His coloured picture books for children included W. Cowper's John Gilpin (1878), Oliver Goldsmith's Elegy on a Mad Dog (1879) and The Great Panjandrum Himself (1885). His works in other media include paintings, metal reliefs, and terra-cottas. (Taken from GMPD).

Caldecott's frogs are famous, 

His plate-and-spoons quibbles are quite imaginative,

Comics: The Examiner & Puck

Many illustrations in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century continued to rely on engraved relief blocks. Relief half-tone printing on high speed machines introduced COLOR to mass circulation magazines and newspapers.

(click here for a wonderful explanation of half-tone printing)

(let's look at this video to learn from photoshop halftone process)

The Return of the Prodigal Father, Joseph Keppler, 1883

Cartoonists exploited the compositional and stylistic possibilities of the new technology. Visual narratives caught the public eye as paper became a cheap commodity and color satisfied consumer's appetites for amusement in print (GDHCG).

by Frank Nankivell, 1910

Puck was America’s first successful humor magazine, which is to say it was long-lived (1876-1918), influential, and quite prosperous. It published three large color cartoons in each issue, which for the first ten years or so were all political in nature. Later they were increasingly purely comic or illustrative. At Puck’s height, the cartoons were among the country’s most important political pronouncements of the week. In addition to that, Puck played a critical transitional role in the evolution of American humor, moving the art from its tall-tales and dialect-laden roots toward the more urbane and literary humor associated with magazines like the New Yorker. It became a training ground for a generation of cartoonists, including beside its founder, Joseph Keppler, great talents such as Frederick Opper, Bernhard Gillam, Eugene Zimmerman, C. J. Taylor, Louis Dalrymple, J. S. Pughe, Harrison Fisher, Rose O’Neill, F. M. Howarth, Joseph Keppler, Jr., Will Crawford, and many others. (Vulture)

Frederick Opper's cartoons for the Chicago Herald.

 

"This is the real point of this book. I want men and women to be able to think sex, fully, completely, honestly and cleanly. Even if we can't act sexually to our complete satisfaction, let us at least think sexually, complete and clear"*

Gerda Weneger, ?, 1920's

Gerda Weneger, ?, ca 1920's

Louis Icart, Retiring, 1920's

S. Sauvage, 1924

M. E. Philip, Heisser Tag, 1931

William Wallace, Fantazius, 1922

Blaine Mahlon, Venus Nova, 1939

For erotica bibliophiles, here.

Juxtapoz has a cool selection of contemporary artists doing erotica (courtesy of JUXTAPOZ):

Into the Pit, by Pit

Olivia de Bernardinis (1948- )

Giuseppe Petrilli, backline #2

__________________
The quote heading the post is from D. H. Lawrence's introduction to the privately printed unexpurgated Paris edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover: