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    The Principles of Ornament
    The Principles of Ornament
    The Principles of Ornament
    Ebook245 pages2 hours

    The Principles of Ornament

    By James Ward

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    "The Principles of Ornament" by James Ward. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGood Press
    Release dateNov 19, 2019
    ISBN4057664136787
    The Principles of Ornament
    Author

    James Ward

    James Ward is the author of the Tales of MI7 series, as well as two volumes of poetry, a couple of philosophical works, some general fiction and a collection of ghost stories. His awards include the Oxford University Humanities Research Centre Philosophical Dialogues Prize, The Eire Writer’s Club Short Story Award, and the ‘Staffroom Monologue’ Award. His stories and essays have appeared in Falmer, Dark Tales and Comparative Criticism. He has an MA and a DPhil, both in Philosophy from Sussex University. He currently works as a secondary school teacher, and lives in East Sussex.

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      Book preview

      The Principles of Ornament - James Ward

      James Ward

      The Principles of Ornament

      Published by Good Press, 2019

      goodpress@okpublishing.info

      EAN 4057664136787

      Table of Contents

      INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS

      INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER

      THE PRINCIPLES OF ORNAMENT

      CHAPTER I

      CHAPTER II

      CHAPTER III

      CHAPTER IV

      CHAPTER V

      CHAPTER VI

      CHAPTER VII

      CHAPTER VIII

      CHAPTER IX

      APPENDIX ON THE ORDERS OF ARCHITECTURE

      The Ionic.

      The Tuscan.

      The Roman Doric.

      The Roman Ionic.

      The Roman Composite.

      A CHAPTER ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOME FIGURES AND CURVES IN PRACTICAL PLANE GEOMETRY USEFUL IN ORNAMENT.

      CONIC SECTIONS.

      GLOSSARY OF TERMS USED IN ORNAMENT

      INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS

      Table of Contents

      A, B, C, D, E, F, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, V, W.

      INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER

      Table of Contents

      IT may not be amiss to point out the advantages of studying ornamental art even to those who do not mean to be artists. The course to be adopted, after acquiring the necessary geometry, is to draw or model plants and to learn their anatomy. This will make the student accurately acquainted with the forms of plants and of their parts, and as he progresses he will find out beauties which have escaped him in a cursory view; the further he proceeds, the more his admiration will be excited by those subtle beauties he finds so hard to render and so easy to miss. The student will then notice, how many illustrations of plants are near enough to the originals to be unmistakable, but that the grace of the plants has evaporated. As soon as he is sufficiently advanced to study with advantage the best examples of ornamental art, he will find out the difficulties the great ornamentalists have overcome in applying the beauties of nature to works of art; and will then take a deeper interest in these masterpieces, and receive a corresponding delight. He will learn from these studies to reverence the artists and to admire the nation that produced them; for art is the mirror of a nation’s civilization.

      I have spoken only of floral ornament, though the highest ornament is the human figure, and after that animal forms. The severity, however, of the requisite studies to become a figure draughtsman, which demand a knowledge of the skeleton and of the muscles, unfortunately deters amateurs, and not unfrequently ornamentalists, from learning to draw the figure, so that their works fall short of the excellence of the Greeks and Italians, who were above all things figure draughtsmen. Amateurs too will greatly aid the art, for as a rule excellence is only attained when there are many educated lovers of it, who can appreciate a beautiful creation, and reward the artist by their judicious admiration.

      For twenty years I have pointed out that Nature offers her beauties gratuitously to mankind for its solace and delight; perhaps, however, the following words of Emile de Laveleye, in his book on Luxury, will have more weight:—

      "Might not the man of the people, on whom the curse of matter weighs with so heavy a load, find the best kind of alleviation for his hard condition, if his eyes were open to what Leonardo da Vinci calls la bellezza del mondo—‘the beautiful things of the earth’? … Pindar says, ‘In the day when the Rhodians shall erect an altar to Minerva, a rain of gold will fall upon the isle.’ The golden rain which falls on any people when literature and the fine arts are encouraged … is a shower of pure and disinterested delights."

      I am tempted to say something on the prospects of ornamental art. Nothing in this world can be had without paying for it, but though we must all live, those who have devoted their lives to the creation of the beautiful, look more to the delight they give and the admiration they excite, than to mere pecuniary rewards. No art will ever flourish unless there are educated and enthusiastic admirers of its masterpieces. The artist will never devote his talents to an art, and undergo the ceaseless toil requisite to create beauty, unless he be rewarded by the praise of real judges. I fear we cannot as yet make the Greek boast that we love the beautiful; but until we do love it, we can hardly expect to rival those who did.

      The whole ornamental art of the world is now before us, and it is not to be believed that artists would not elaborate something new and beautiful from all the knowledge they have gained, if there were a passionate desire for it among the people. This can never be so long as the public is content with paraphrases of deceased art, or merely asks for a jumble of discordant scraps. Novelty we must needs have, for this generation does not inherit the precise tastes of former days, not even those of its immediate predecessor, and it is this generation that wants to be charmed: it is true that it gets novelty, but it should want beautiful novelty, and not that which is commonplace or ugly. Novelty in art is not an absolute difference from what has gone before, for that is sure to be bad, but only that difference and that improvement which one instructed generation can give to the past excellence it builds on. It is therefore necessary for the student who is born an artist, and hopes to create new loveliness, to be steeped in the beauties

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