The Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra was a massive undertaking, lavishly illustrated with 101 chromolithographic plates, most of them based on Jones’s own drawings.
The Alhambra project proved a costly business, and Jones had to sell off some land that he had inherited from his father in order to finance it.
The Great Exhibition proved an overwhelming success. The splendor of the event was a source of immense national pride, especially since so many of the objects on show came from places under British control.
We have no principles, no unity; the architect, the upholsterer, the paper-stainer, the weaver, the calico-printer and the potter, run each their independent course; each struggles fruitlessly, each produces in art novelty without beauty, or beauty without intelligence.
Its reputation also remained intact into the 20th century, when Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright acknowledged a debt to it. Some of these figures rebelled against the rigid theorizing of Jones and his colleagues, claiming that designers should enjoy the same artistic liberty as painters, but all of them respected the scholarship, the scope, and the sheer physical beauty of one of the greatest publications of the Victorian age.
I have ventured to hope that, in thus bringing into immediate juxtaposition the many forms of beauty which every style of ornament presents, I might aid in arresting that unfortunate tendency of our time to be content with copying, whilst the fashion lasts, the forms peculiar to any bygone age, without attempting to ascertain, generally completely ignoring, the peculiar circumstances which rendered an ornament beautiful, because it was appropriate, and which, as expressive of other wants when thus transplanted, as entirely fails.
It is more than probable that the first result of sending forth to the world this collection will be seriously to increase this dangerous tendency, and that many will be content to borrow from the past those forms of beauty which have not already been used up ad nauseam. It has been my desire to arrest this tendency, and to awaken a higher ambition.
As Architecture, so all works of the Decorative Arts, should possess fitness, proportion, harmony, the result of all which is repose.
True beauty results from that repose which the mind feels when the eye, the intellect, and the affections, are satisfied from the absence of any want.
Harmony of form consists in the proper balancing, and contrast of, the straight, the inclined, and the curved.
The primary colors should be used on the upper portions of objects, the secondary and tertiary on the lower.
In using the primary colors on moulded surfaces, we should place blue, which retires, on the concave surfaces; yellow, which advances, on the convex; and red, the intermediate color, on the undersides; separating the colors by white on the vertical planes.
If the surfaces to be colored should give too much yellow, we should make the red more crimson, and the blue more purple — i.e., we should take the yellow out of them; if the surfaces should give too much blue, we should make the yellow more orange and the red more scarlet.
Gold ornaments on any colored ground should be outlined with black.
The principles discoverable in the works of the past belong to us; not so the results. It is taking the end for the means.
From the universal testimony of travellers it would appear, that there is scarcely a people, in however early a stage of civilization, with whom the desire for ornament is not a strong instinct. The desire is absent in none, and it grows and increases with all in the ratio of their progress in civilization. Man appears everywhere impressed with the beauties of Nature which surround him, and seeks to imitate to the extent of his power the works of the Creator.
The highest ambition is still to create, to stamp on this earth the impress of an individual mind.
From to time a mind stronger than those around will impress itself on a generation, and carry with it a host of others of less power following in the same track, yet never so closely as to destroy the individual ambition to create; hence the cause of styles, and of the modification of styles. The efforts of a people in an early stage of civilization are like those of children, though presenting a want of power, they possess a grace and naivete rarely found in mid-age, and never in manhood’s decline. It is equally so in the infancy of any art. Cimabue and Giotto have not the material charm of Raphael or the manly power of Michael Angelo, but surpass them both in grace and earnest truth. The very command of means leads to their abuse: when Art struggles, it succeeds; when revelling in its own successes, it as signally fails. The pleasure we receive in contemplating the rude attempts at ornament of the most savage tribes arises from our appreciation of a difficulty accomplished; we are at once charmed by the evidence of the intention, and surprised at the simple and ingenious process by which the result is obtained. In fact, what we seek in every work of Art, whether it be humble or pretentious, is the evidence of mind — the evidence of that desire to create to which we have referred, and which all, feeling a natural instinct within them, are satisfied with when they find it developed in others. It is strange, but so it is, that this evidence of mind will be more readily found in the rude attempts at ornament of a savage tribe than in the innumerable productions of a highly-advanced civilization.
With the same limited means of production, it would be difficult to improve upon it.
We thus see how readily the possession of a simple tool, even by the most uncultivated, if guided by an instinctive observation of the forms in which all the works of Nature are arranged, would lead to the creation of all the geometrical arrangements of form with which we are acquainted.
The secret success in all ornament is the production of a broad general effect by the repetition of a few simple elements; variety should rather be sought in the arrangement of the several portions of a design, than in the multiplicity of varied forms.
The stamping of patterns on the coverings of the body, when either of skins of animals or materials such as this, would be the first stage towards ornament after the tattooing of the body by an analogous process.
The most skillful and the bravest would desire to be distinguished from their fellows by the possession of weapons, not only more useful, but more beautiful.
The ornament of a savage tribe, being the result of a natural instinct, it necessarily always true to its purpose; whilst in much of the ornament of civilized nations, the first impulse which generated received forms being enfeebled by constant repetition, the ornament is often misapplied, and instead of first seeking the most convenient form and adding beauty, all beauty is destroyed, because all fitness, by superadding ornament to ill-contrived form. If we would return to a more healthy condition, we must even be as little children or as savages; we must get rid of the acquired and artificial, and return to and develop natural instincts.
A few examples were brought to the West as curios, but, by and large, Europeans received a distorted image of Polynesian culture. Its finest artifacts were the spirited sculptures of ancestral gods, but most of these were destroyed by early Christian missionaries.
The Architecture of Egypt has this peculiarity over all other styles, that the more ancient the monument the more perfect is the art. All the remains with which the are acquainted exhibit Egyptian Art in a state of decline.
The Egyptians are inferior only to themselves. In all other styles we can trace a rapid ascent from infancy, founded on some bygone style, to a culminating point of perfection, when the foreign influence was modified or discarded, to a period of slow, lingering decline, feeding on its own elements. In the Egyptian we have no traces of infancy or of any foreign influence; and we must, therefore, believe that they went for inspiration direct from nature.
The lotus and papyrus, growing on the banks of their river, symbolizing the food for the body and mind; the feathers of rare birds, which were carried before the king as emblems of sovereignty.
The column only a few feet high, or one 40 or 60 feet, as at Luxor and Karnac, was an enlarged papyrus plant: the base representing the root; the shaft, the stalk; and the capital, the full-blown flower, surrounded by a bouquet of smaller plants, tied together by bands.
We may imagine it the custom of the Egyptians in early times to decorate the wooden posts of their primitive temples with their native flowers tied round them; and this custom, when their art took a more permanent character, became solidified in their monuments of stones. These forms, once sacred, their religious laws forbade a change.
From the Greeks to our own time the world has been content with the acanthus leaf arranged round a bell for the capitals of columns of all architecture called classic, differing only in the more or less perfection of the modeling of the leaves, or the graceful or otherwise proportions of the bell: a modification in plan has but rarely been attempted.
When we find any of these characteristics wanting in a work of ornament, we may be sure that it belongs to a borrowed style, where the spirit which animated the original work has been lost in the copy.
The colors used by the Egyptians were principally red, blue, and yellow, with black and white to define and give distinctiveness to the various colors; with green used occasionally, though not universally, as a local color, such as the green leaves of the lotus.
It appears to be a universal rule that, in all archaic period of art, the primary colors, blue, red, and yellow, are the prevailing colors, and these used most harmoniously and successfully.
Assyrian sculpture seems to be a development of the Egyptian, but, instead of being carried forward, descending in the scale of perfection, bearing the same relation to the Egyptian as the Roman does to the Greek. Egyptian sculpture gradually declined from the time of the Pharaohs to that of the Greeks and Romans; the forms, which were at first flowing and graceful, became coarse and abrupt; the swelling of the limbs, which was at first rather indicated than expressed, became at least exaggerated; the conventional was abandoned for an imperfect attempt at the natural.
In all arts this is a symptom of decline, Nature should be idealized not copied.
The ornaments do not appear to be formed on any natural type, which still farther strengthens the idea that the Assyrian is not an original style.
Greek Art, on the contrary, though borrowed partly from the Egyptian and partly from the Assyrian, was the development of an old idea in a new direction; and, unrestrained by religious laws, rose rapidly to a high state of perfection, from which it was itself able to give forth the elements of future greatness to other styles. It carried the perfection of pure form to a point which has never since been reached; and from the very abundant remains we have of Greek ornament, we must believe the presence of refined taste was almost universal, and that the land was overflowing with artists, whose hands and minds were so trained as to enable them to execute these beautiful ornaments with unerring truth.
What is evident is, that the Greeks in their ornament were close observers of nature, and although they did not copy, or attempt to imitate, they worked on the same principles. The 3 great laws which we find everywhere in nature — radiation from the parent stem, proportionate distribution of the areas, and the tangential curvature of the lines — are always obeyed, and it is the unerring perfection with which they are, in the most humble works as in the highest, which excites our astonishment, and which is only fully realized on attempting to reproduce Greek ornament, so rarely done with success.
These changes have the same influence in the development of a new style of ornament as the sudden discovery of a general law in science, or the lucky patented idea which in any work of industry suddenly lets loose thousands of minds to examine and improve upon the first crude thought.
The whole style, however, of the decoration is so capricious that it is beyond the range of true art, and strict criticism cannot be applied to it. It generally pleases, but, if not absolutely vulgar, it oftentimes approaches vulgarity.
In the Greek temple it is everywhere apparent that the struggle was to arrive at a perfection worthy of the gods. In the Roman temple the aim was self-glorification. From the base of the column to the apex of the pediment every part is overloaded with ornament, tending rather to dazzle by quantity than to excite admiration by the quality of the work. The Greek temples when painted were as ornamented as those of the Romans, but with a very different result. The ornament was so arranged that it threw a colored bloom over the whole structure, and in no way disturbed the exquisitely designed surfaces which received it.
Unlike in this the Egyptian capital, where the stems of the flowers round the bell are continued through the necking, and at the same time represent a beauty and express a truth.
As specimens of modeling and drawing they have strong claims to be admired, but as ornamental accessories to the architectural features of a building they most certainly, from their excessive relief and elaborate surface treatment, are deficient in the first principle, viz. adaptation to the purpose they have to fill.
But this very imperfection gave birth to a new order of ideas; they never returned to the original model, but gradually threw off the shackles which the original model imposed.
The constructive features of the Arabs possess more grandeur, and those of the Moors more refinement and elegance.
Leading to the belief that these buildings have mostly been executed by artists differing in religion from themselves.
It will readily be seen, from the simple matter of their embroidery, that the art-instinct of the Turks must be very inferior to that of the Indians.
It is very difficult, nay, almost impossible, thoroughly to explain by words differences in style of ornament having such a strong family resemblance as the Persian, Arabian, and Turkish; yet the eye readily detects them, much in the same way as a Roman statue is distinguished from a Greek.
We find the Alhambra the speaking art of the Egyptians, the natural grace and refinement of the Greeks, the geometrical combinations of the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Arabs.
In any age of copying, like the present, when the works of the past are reproduced the spirit which animated the originals.
When seen at a distance, the main lines strike the eye; as we approach nearer, the detail comes into the composition; on a closer inspection, we see still further detail on the surface of the ornaments themselves.
Harmony of form appears to consist in the proper balancing and contrast of the straight, the inclined, and the curved.
All junctions of curved lines with curved, or of curved with straight, should be tangential to each other; this also we consider to be a law found everywhere in nature, and the Oriental practice is always in accordance with it.
As with proportion, we think that those proportions will be the most beautiful which it will be most difficult for the eye to detect; so we think that those compositions of curves will be most agreeable, where the mechanical process of describing them shall be least apparent.
In every period of faith in art, all ornamentation was ennobled by the ideal; never was the sense of propriety violated by a too faithful representation of nature.
Although we find in all somewhat of a local or temporary character, we yet discern in all much that is eternal and immutable; the same grand ideas embodied in different forms, and expressed, so to speak, in a different language.
In Oriental art, again, we always find the constructive lines of the building well defined by color; an apparent additional height, length, breadth, or bulk, always results from its judicious applications; and with the ornaments in relief it develops constantly new forms which would have been altogether lost without it.
It may be remarked that, among the Egyptians and the Greeks, the Arabs and the Moors, the primary colors were used almost entirely, if not exclusively, employed during the early periods of art; whilst during the decadence, the secondary colors became of more importance.
With the Moors, as a general rule, the primary colors were used on the upper portions of objects, the secondary and tertiary on the lower. This also appears to be in accordance with a natural law; we have the primary blue in the sky, the secondary green in the trees and fields, ending with the tertiaries on the earth; as also in flower, where we generally find the primaries on the buds and flowers, and the secondaries on the leaves and stalks.
On moulded surfaces they placed red, the strongest color of the 3, in the depth, where it might be softened by shadow, never on the surface; blue in the shade, and gold on all surfaces exposed to light. The several colors are either separated by white bands, or by the shadow caused by the relief of the ornament itself — and this appears to be an absolute principle required in coloring — colors should never be allowed to impinge upon each other.
The rays of light are said to neutralize each other in the proportions of 3 yellow, 5 red, and 8 blue; thus, it requires a quantity of blue equal to red and yellow put together to produce a harmonious effect, and prevent the predominance of any one color over the others.
However complicated the patterns may appear, they are all very simple when the principle of setting them out is once understood.
The Mohammedan architecture of Persia does not appear to have ever reached the perfection of the Arabian buildings of Cairo. Although presenting considerable grandeur in the main features, the general outlines are much less pure, and there would appear to be a great want of elegance in all the constructive features as compared with those of Cairo.
Although ornament is most properly an accessory to architecture, and never should be allowed to usurp the place of proper structural features, or to overload or disguise them, it is in all cases the very soul of an architectural monument; and by the ornament alone can we judge truly of the amount of care and mind which has been devoted to the work. All else in any building may be the result of rule and compass, but by the ornament of a building we can best discover how far the architecture was at the same time an artist.
Notwithstanding the higher antiquity of the civilization of the Chinese, and the perfection which all their manufacturing processes reached ages before our time, they do not appear to have made much advance in the Fine Arts. “China possesses scarcely anything worthy of the name of Architecture,” and that all their great engineering works, with which the land is covered are wholly devoid of either architectural design or ornament.
In their ornamentation, with which the world is so familiar through numerous manufactured articles of every kind which have been imported into this country, they do not appear to have gone beyond that point which is reached by every people in an early stage of civilization: their art, such as it is, is fixed, and is subject neither to progression nor retrogression.
On the whole, Chinese ornament is a very faithful expression of the nature of this peculiar people; its characteristic feature is oddness — we cannot call it capricious, for caprice is the playful wandering of a lively imagination; but the Chinese are totally unimaginative, and all their works are accordingly wanting in the highest grace of art — the ideal.
Even at its best the Renaissance of Germany is impure — her industrious affection for difficulties of the hand, rather than of the head, soon led her to crinkum-crankums; and scrap-work, jewelled forms, and complicated monsters, rather animated than graceful, took the place of the refined elegance of the early Italian and French arabesques.
Where great liberty is afforded in Art no less than in Polity, great responsibility is incurred. In those styles in which the imagination of the designer can be checked only from within, he is especially bound to set a rein upon his fancy. Ornament let him have in abundance; but in its composition let him be modest and decorous, avoiding over-finery as he would nakedness.
As the rules of Art became more complex, academies arose in which the division-of-labor system was introduced. The consequences, with certain rare and notable exceptions, were obvious; architects thought of little else but plans, sections, and elevations, in which the setting out of columns, arches, pilasters… were all in all; painters worked more in their studios, and less in the buildings, their works were to adorn.
These arabesques cannot fairly be compared with the ancient, as the former were executed by the greatest masters of the age, and are applied to the decoration of an edifice of the highest magnificence and importance, whilst the latter were the productions of a less distinguished period of Art, and those now in existence ornament buildings of a class relatively far less important to Imperial magnificence than the Vatican was to Papal.
Far be it from us to assert that beauty of the highest and most architectonic character may not be obtained in ornament entirely conventional in conception; but certain it is, that to be agreeable such ornament should be expressed in a simple and flat style of treatment, both as regards light, shade, and color.
Unable to divest himself of his recollections of the antique, and at the same time too egoistic to be content with its careful reproduction, the motives he borrowed from it assume an aspect of unquiet rarely to be recognized in the remains of classic antiquity. The motives he derived from Nature are equally maltreated, since he gathered flowers from her bosom only to crush them in his rude grasp.
The more closely nature is copied, the farther we are removed from producing a work of art.
It is for their use that we have gathered together this collection of the works of the past; not that they should be slavishly copied, but that artists should, by an attentive examination of the principles which pervade all the works of the past, and which have excited universal admiration, be led to the creation of new forms equally beautiful. We believe that if a student in the arts, earnest in his search after knowledge, will only lay aside all temptation to indolence, will examine for himself the works of the past, compare them with the works of nature, bend his mind to a thorough appreciation of the principles which reign in each, he cannot fail to be himself a creator, and to individualize new forms, instead of reproducing the forms of the past.
Who, then, will dare say that there is nothing left for us but to copy the five or seven-lobed flowers of the 13th century; the Honeysuckle of the Greeks or the Acanthus of the Romans — that this alone can produce art? Is Nature so tied? See how various the forms, and how unvarying the principles.