The inventor of movable types, says the venerable Teufelsdröckh, was
disbanding hired armies, cashiering most kings and senates, and creating
a whole new democratic world. Has any one yet said what great things are
being done by the men who are trying to banish ugliness from our streets
and our homes, and to make both the outside and inside of our dwellings
worthy of a world where there are forests and flower-tressed meadows, and
the plumage of birds; where the insects carry lessons of color on their
wings, and even the surface of a stagnant pool will show us the wonders
of iridescence and the most delicate forms of leafage? They, too, are
modifying opinions, for they are modifying men’s moods and habits, which
are the mothers of opinions, having quite as much to do with their
formation as the responsible father—Reason. Think of certain hideous
manufacturing towns where the piety is chiefly a belief in copious
perdition, and the pleasure is chiefly gin. The dingy surface of wall
pierced by the ugliest windows, the staring shop-fronts, paper-hangings,
carpets, brass and gilt mouldings, and advertising placards, have an
effect akin to that of malaria; it is easy to understand that with such
surroundings there is more belief in cruelty than in beneficence, and
that the best earthly bliss attainable is the dulling of the external
senses. For it is a fatal mistake to suppose that ugliness which is
taken for beauty will answer all the purposes of beauty; the subtle
relation between all kinds of truth and fitness in our life forbids that
bad taste should ever be harmless to our moral sensibility or our
intellectual discernment; and—more than that—as it is probable that fine
musical harmonies have a sanative influence over our bodily organization,
it is also probable that just coloring and lovely combinations of lines
may be necessary to the complete well-being of our systems apart from any
conscious delight in them. A savage may indulge in discordant chuckles
and shrieks and gutturals, and think that they please the gods, but it
does not follow that his frame would not be favorably wrought upon by the
vibrations of a grand church organ. One sees a person capable of
choosing the worst style of wall-paper become suddenly afflicted by its
ugliness under an attack of illness. And if an evil state of blood and
lymph usually goes along with an evil state of mind, who shall say that
the ugliness of our streets, the falsity of our ornamentation, the
vulgarity of our upholstery, have not something to do with those bad
tempers which breed false conclusions?
On several grounds it is possible to make a more speedy and extensive
application of artistic reform to our interior decoration than to our
external architecture. One of these grounds is that most of our ugly
buildings must stand; we cannot afford to pull them down. But every year
we are decorating interiors afresh, and people of modest means may
benefit by the introduction of beautiful designs into stucco ornaments,
paper-hangings, draperies, and carpets. Fine taste in the decoration of
interiors is a benefit that spreads from the palace to the clerk’s house
with one parlor.
All honor, then, to the architect who has zealously vindicated the claim
of internal ornamentation to be a part of the architect’s function, and
has labored to rescue that form of art which is most closely connected
with the sanctities and pleasures of our hearths from the hands of
uncultured tradesmen. All the nation ought at present to know that this
effort is peculiarly associated with the name of Mr. Owen Jones; and
those who are most disposed to dispute with the architect about his
coloring must at least recognize the high artistic principle which has
directed his attention to colored ornamentation as a proper branch of
architecture. One monument of his effort in this way is his “Grammar of
Ornament,” of which a new and cheaper edition has just been issued. The
one point in which it differs from the original and more expensive
edition, viz., the reduction in the size of the pages (the amount of
matter and number of plates are unaltered), is really an advantage; it is
now a very manageable folio, and when the reader is in a lounging mood
may be held easily on the knees. It is a magnificent book; and those who
know no more of it than the title should be told that they will find in
it a pictorial history of ornamental design, from its rudimentary
condition as seen in the productions of savage tribes, through all the
other great types of art—the Egyptian, Assyrian, ancient Persian, Greek,
Roman, Byzantine, Arabian, Moresque, Mohammedan-Persian, Indian, Celtic,
Mediæval, Renaissance, Elizabethan, and Italian. The letter-press
consists, first, of an introductory statement of fundamental principles
of ornamentation—principles, says the author, which will be found to have
been obeyed more or less instinctively by all nations in proportion as
their art has been a genuine product of the national genius; and,
secondly, of brief historical essays, some of them contributed by other
eminent artists, presenting a commentary on each characteristic series of
illustrations, with the useful appendage of bibliographical lists.
The title “Grammar of Ornament” is so far appropriate that it indicates
what Mr. Owen Jones is most anxious to be understood concerning the
object of his work, namely, that it is intended to illustrate
historically the application of principles, and not to present a
collection of models for mere copyists. The plates correspond to
examples in syntax, not to be repeated parrot-like, but to be studied as
embodiments of syntactical principles. There is a logic of form which
cannot be departed from in ornamental design without a corresponding
remoteness from perfection; unmeaning, irrelevant lines are as bad as
irrelevant words or clauses, that tend no whither. And as a suggestion
toward the origination of fresh ornamental design, the work concludes
with some beautiful drawings of leaves and flowers from nature, that the
student, tracing in them the simple laws of form which underlie an
immense variety in beauty, may the better discern the method by which the
same laws were applied in the finest decorative work of the past, and may
have all the clearer prospect of the unexhausted possibilities of
freshness which lie before him, if, refraining from mere imitation, he
will seek only such likeness to existing forms of ornamental art as
arises from following like principles of combination.