This document summarizes key figures and developments in the Arts and Crafts movement from the mid-19th century through early 20th century. It discusses Owen Jones and his influential 1856 book Grammar of Ornament which served as a visual sourcebook of historical ornament. It also outlines the founding of government schools of design in Britain to improve manufacturing, and the establishment of the Victoria & Albert Museum. Key figures like William Morris, the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Henry van de Velde, and the rejection of ornament by Adolf Loos are summarized.

1. ARCH 417
Fall 15

2. agenda 9.16.15
go over paper assignment
finish Arts + Crafts
Art Nouveau/Jugendstil
Wiener Werkstätte/Josef Hoffmann
Adolf Loos and the rejection of ornament

3. Owen Jones (1809–74)
traveled through Greece, Italy and Turkey
spent 6 months in Spain studying the Alhambra
increasing interest in polychromy
responsible for interior decoration of the Crystal Palace,
1851
Grammar of Ornament, 1856

4. Grammar of Ornament (1856)
https://archive.org/details/grammarofornamen00joneuoft
visual compendium of ornament from every place and
period in history
sourcebook, history, and a theory of ornament
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/grammar-of-
ornament#/?tab=about

6. Government Schools
of Design
Founded in 1837, for purpose of improving British goods.
"The true office of Ornament is the decoration of Utility.
Ornament, therefore, ought always to be secondary to
Utility."
"True Ornament does not consist in the mere imitation of
natural objects; but rather in the adaptation of their
peculiar beauties of form or colour to decorative purposes
controlled by the nature of the material to be decorated,
the laws of art, and the necessities of manufacture."
Owen Jones helped select objects from 1851 Exhibition
for the School of Design's teaching collections.

7. Victoria & Albert
• These early teaching collections became known as the
Museum of Ornamental Art,
• moved to a site in South Kensington, later renamed the
Victoria & Albert. (V&A)
• Henry Cole was the first director of the South Kensington
Museum, and he asked Jones to design a series of
galleries known as the 'Oriental Courts': an Indian Court
and a Chinese & Japanese Court. These galleries
displayed objects from the respective countries.

8. Designer: Philip Webb
Manufacturer: Morris,
Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Artist: Edward Burne-
Jones
Cabinet
1861
Painted pine, oil paint on
leather, brass, copper
73 x 45 x 21 inches

11. William MORRIS
Morris & Company
c. 1890
Block-printed wallpaper
Sheet: 27 x 21 1/2 inches

12. Morris designed...
• stained glass
• textiles
• tapestries
• furniture
• books
• wallpaper: "any decoration is futile … when it does not
remind you of something beyond itself." He turned to
nature for inspiration, seeking to "turn a room into a
bower, a refuge."
• 1862 founded Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.

13. intellectual side
• Arts and Crafts movement flourished during the 1860s in
England though the name was not coined until 1888.
• rejection of alienated labor, desire to rejoin craftspeople
with their products.
• turn toward medieval English styles and traditions in order
to recover lost ways of life.

14. commercial side
Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. established 1862
Morris & Co. established 1875
handcrafted goods that reflected the maker's creativity and
individuality (qualities missing from industrial mass
production)
Unsurprisingly, this made their products quite expensive.
Their work becomes a sign of elite good taste, not a "design
for all."

15. Red House, designed by Philip Speakman Webb for William and Jane Morris. Designed
1859; completed 1860. Bexleyheath, Greater London.

24. Charles Rennie
MACKINTOSH
born Glasgow, Scotland
(1868-1928)

25. Hill House
built 1902-3 for wealthy Scottish businessman
outside Glasgow, overlooking River Clyde

35. House for an Art Lover
(1989)
based on a 1901 unbuilt design by Mackintosh
outside Glasgow

39. Bed and mirror by Gustave Serrurier-Bovy
(1898-99), now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris

40. Mahogany armoire
Gustave Serrurier-Bovy
1899
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

41. Henry van de Velde
1892 he gave up painting, turning to interior design and
decorative arts
designed interiors and furniture for Samuel Bing, founder
of L'Art Nouveau gallery in Paris 1895
Bloemenwerf in Ukkel, Belgium was the first home in a
series that he designed for himself.

42. Bloemenwerf, outside
Brussels (1895)
Van de Velde designed the entire house as a single work of
art. Furniture, wallpaper, fittings all shared the same motifs.

43. Bloemenwerf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GOOhoDQgjs

48. Compare Sonia Knips, patron of Josef Hoffmann
and Gustav Klimt

49. Hoffmann-designed brooch
owned by Sonia Knips
Knips in a Werkstätte design

50. Klimt's Adam and Eve hanging in her
sitting room, designed by Hoffmann

51. Adolf Loos (1870—1933)
• born in Austro-
Hungarian Empire
• his father was German
and a stonemason
• studied locally and then
in Dresden
• traveled in US 1893-6
(attended World's
Columbian Exposition)
• returned to Vienna to
practice architecture

52. "Ornament and Crime"
design diatribe by Adolf Loos
• written in 1908
• first given as lecture on 21 January 1910 in Vienna
• first published in Cahiers d'aujourd'hui (1913) in French
• not published in German until 1929

55. Loos' conclusion
"The evolution of culture marches with the elimination of
ornament from useful objects."
"No ornament can any longer be made today by anyone who
lives on our cultural level ... Freedom from ornament is a sign
of spiritual strength."