The Principles of Ornament

The arabesques of the Vatican have been noticed before; there were, however, arabesques on the ceiling of the Sala del Cambio at Perugia, painted by Perugino, Raphael’s master,...

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 g...

GEOMETRICAL ARRANGEMENT, PROPORTION, STABILITY, REPETITION, CONTRAST, SYMMETRY, RADIATION, TANGENTIAL JUNCTION, REPOSE, VARIETY, SUBORDINATION, BALANCE, UNITY, SERIES, GROWTH, S...

The ornamentalist is more indebted to plants and flowers, both for materials and suggestions in design, than to any other division in the domain of nature. The best conventional...

Before speaking of the decoration of mouldings, a few words must be said on the mouldings themselves. The Greeks were the first people who carried the art of moulding or profili...

In setting out spaces for decoration the chief aim should be to get them in harmonic proportion. The Greeks were the great masters of this art, the most subtle proportions being...

Having previously considered the principal elements of ornament, it is now advisable to classify ornament in accordance with the spaces it has to fill, and these may roughly be...

Ornament is the proper enrichment of an object or surface with such forms, or forms and colours, as will give the thing decorated a new beauty, while strictly preserving its sha...

The “_symbolic_” and “_mnemonic_” classes of ornament are large, and are interesting alike to the historian, the antiquary, and the student of art. It is not easy to draw the li...

The _elementary forms_ used in ornament form the next division. It is assumed that the space is given that we are required to ornament; for example, a ceiling, a wall, a frieze,...

Outline and Division of Surfaces--Proportion of Rectangular Surfaces--Spacing and Decoration of Circular and Curved Objects--Decoration of Various Shapes, of Planes and of Large...