Some nice patterns can also be found in Hittorff, L'Architecture Polychrome chez les Grecs (1846)
Grammar of Ornament
11–20 of 25 posts
Re: Grammar of Ornament
#12I 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.
Re: Grammar of Ornament
#13If 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
Re: Grammar of Ornament
#14> 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.
Re: Grammar of Ornament
#15I 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.
"we"
I know, I know.
Re: Grammar of Ornament
#16I 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 inspiri…
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.
Re: Grammar of Ornament
#17Pre-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.
Re: Grammar of Ornament
#18Some 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.
Re: Grammar of Ornament
#19If 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
Seems to be unavailable for PC/Linux, so even if I must I can't.
Re: Grammar of Ornament
#20Better 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