Grammar of Ornament | Hacker News Reader

Grammar of Ornament

nms.ac.uk

77 pointslioeters24 comments

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

"this app isn't compatible with your device because it was made for an older version of android"

sigh

Aw, that's a shame! I guess the publisher hasn't kept the Android port up-to-date over the years.

Seems to be unavailable for PC/Linux, so even if I must I can't.

It's on Steam [0] and GOG (DRM-free) [1]. ProtonDB says it works perfectly on Linux via Proton [2].

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/557600/Gorogoa/

[1] https://www.gog.com/game/gorogoa

[2] https://www.protondb.com/app/557600

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. "!

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”.

> 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.

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.

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.

I had to brace myself before opening House & Garden, because, as a (posh?) English person myself, these magazines don't usually go more than surface-level deep, tending to show a studio picture rather than somewhere in which people actually live. And to be fair, most of the designs aren't that bad aesthetically, but there are still glaring issues with practicality: for a start, can you spot a single power socket?

A lot of antique furniture requires care and attention that most of the designers featured in the magazine don't need to worry about, because they move straight onto their next project after completing one. Wood furniture needs to be polished and kept dry, and one is only ever one hot cup away from leaving a heat ring that destroys the wood's finish forever! Brass is also really time-consuming to clean. Incandescent light bulbs are expensive and fail quickly. Antique clocks might need winding every day. Paying someone else to do the cleaning and maintenance doesn't always fix the problem either - my grandmother's cleaner unwittingly polished the patina off a 2000-year-old Roman glass jug!

Part of the philosophy of the Arts and Crafts movement (approx. 1880 to 1910), which is often featured in the magazine, was that a cleaner, more straightforward interior design is healthier and easier to live in. Unfortunately, a lot of designers don't understand that intention when they assemble much 'busier' interiors using Arts and Crafts antiques.

I live in a Victorian house with plenty of embossed wallpaper, period fabrics, ornamental plaster ceiling roses, chandeliers, antique cabinets and trinkets. Much of it is really nice and gives me pleasure every day, but to be honest, the effect is broken now and then by the power cords snaking between the bear-paw legs of Edwardian drinks cabinets, the patches of dust that occasionally get forgotten on the mantelpiece or the nested tables, and - most visibly - the piece of clear tape holding together the drawing room window because they don't make glass like that any longer.

Well I guess the grass is always greener on the other side, but when visiting the Netherlands last year, I found the houses there to be the most tasteful I have ever seen :)

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.

"we"

I know, I know.

Some nice patterns can also be found in Hittorff, L'Architecture Polychrome chez les Grecs (1846)

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.

Don't have a full copy but this is where I got some of the plates: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/book/restitution...

Thank you :-)

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.

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?

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.

.. 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

> 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.

Better links, for some specific value of "Better". But then they're not exactly a "15 min read". Here you go

   https://archive.org/details/grammarofornamen00joneuoft

   https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/grammarornament00jone

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