A gold mine of inspirational motifs
By David Batterham. From the book "The World of Ornament"
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In The World of Ornament we bring together the work of two of the great encyclopaedic collections of ornaments from the 19th-century chromolithographic tradition, Auguste Racinet's L'Ornement polychrome (2 volumes, 1869/1885) and A. Dupont-Auberville's L'Ornement des tissus (1877).
Little is know about Racinet beyond the fact that he trained at first to be a painter. Fortunately for us, however, at the Ecole de la Ville de Paris he seems to have recognised at an early stage that he lacked the imagination to be an artist and instead devoted his remarkable skill as a draughtsman to recording and reproducing the decorative images of the past. In fact he was now following in his father's footsteps, his father being a printer. He worked on a number of books during the period 1845 - 1865 and showed a particular understanding of and fondness for the Renaissance period. Although an encyclopaedist in the sense of attempting to bring all the accumulated knowledge of the past to the service of the present, he was more than simply a technician. As a Renaissance man, he believed in the power of art to enrich our lives. His work is re-offered to the public in the same spirit.
Dupont-Auberville's background was very different. He was a rich man, a passionate and erudite collector of antiquities, mainly porcelain and textiles. His textile collection was exhibited at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 1880, and part of his collection was offered for sale at the Hôtel Drouot, the Parisian saleroom, in a two-day sale in February 1885. Further sales followed his death in 1891. Superficially, Dupont-Auberville's approach was similar to that of Racinet, but being concerned with textiles it was also fundamentally different in some important ways. The fact that the two works are presented in a similar format suggests that perhaps Dupont-Auberville was inspired by the earlier work to complement it with one dealing with textiles, based primarily on his own collection. Ever since Isaac gave Joseph his coat of many colours, decorated textiles have played an important part in our cultural and even our political lives, for so often they are associated with status or used in connection with symbols and ritual. In our own day, when textiles are mass-produced and we take them for granted, it is easy to forget or overlook how different things were in the past.
Page [1] [2]
Page [1] [2]
In The World of Ornament we bring together the work of two of the great encyclopaedic collections of ornaments from the 19th-century chromolithographic tradition, Auguste Racinet's L'Ornement polychrome (2 volumes, 1869/1885) and A. Dupont-Auberville's L'Ornement des tissus (1877).
Little is know about Racinet beyond the fact that he trained at first to be a painter. Fortunately for us, however, at the Ecole de la Ville de Paris he seems to have recognised at an early stage that he lacked the imagination to be an artist and instead devoted his remarkable skill as a draughtsman to recording and reproducing the decorative images of the past. In fact he was now following in his father's footsteps, his father being a printer. He worked on a number of books during the period 1845 - 1865 and showed a particular understanding of and fondness for the Renaissance period. Although an encyclopaedist in the sense of attempting to bring all the accumulated knowledge of the past to the service of the present, he was more than simply a technician. As a Renaissance man, he believed in the power of art to enrich our lives. His work is re-offered to the public in the same spirit.
Dupont-Auberville's background was very different. He was a rich man, a passionate and erudite collector of antiquities, mainly porcelain and textiles. His textile collection was exhibited at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 1880, and part of his collection was offered for sale at the Hôtel Drouot, the Parisian saleroom, in a two-day sale in February 1885. Further sales followed his death in 1891. Superficially, Dupont-Auberville's approach was similar to that of Racinet, but being concerned with textiles it was also fundamentally different in some important ways. The fact that the two works are presented in a similar format suggests that perhaps Dupont-Auberville was inspired by the earlier work to complement it with one dealing with textiles, based primarily on his own collection. Ever since Isaac gave Joseph his coat of many colours, decorated textiles have played an important part in our cultural and even our political lives, for so often they are associated with status or used in connection with symbols and ritual. In our own day, when textiles are mass-produced and we take them for granted, it is easy to forget or overlook how different things were in the past.
Page [1] [2]
The World of Ornament
Hardcover + DVD, 29 x 44 cm (11.4 x 17.3 in.), 528 pages
$ 200.00
$ 200.00
The most beautiful patterns in all of history
Chinese Art - Painted and gilded ornamental motifs on lacquered wood