This book's "inspiration came from the pioneering architect and designer Owen Jones. His observations of decorative art on his extensive travels in Europe and the Near East were employed to improve the poor quality of Western designs. His goal was to change the Victorian habit of mixing elements from a wide variety of sources and applying this mix indiscriminately to buildings, graphic design and products. His resulting study is a comprehensive analysis of a remarkable collection of styles of ornamental design - from Ancient Egypt and Greece to Imperial China and Renaissance Italy." - inside cover.

"This project is the first comprehensive study of a phenomenon that not only dominated the American arts of the 1870s and 1880s, but also helped set the course of such later developments in the United States as the Arts and Crafts movement, the indigenous interpretation of Art Nouveau, and even the rise of modernism. In fact, the early history of the Metropolitan--its founding, its sponsorship of a school of industrial design, and its display of decorative works--is inextricably tied to the Aesthetic movement and its educational goals. "In Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement" comprised some 175 objects including furniture, metalwork, stained glass, ceramics, textiles, wallpaper, painting, and sculpture. Some of these had rarely been displayed; others, although familiar, were being shown in new and even startling contexts. The exhibition and catalogue are arranged thematically to illustrate both the major styles of a visually rich movement and the ideas that generated its diversity"--From publisher's description.

These in-depth, historical, and critical essays study the meaning of ornament, the role it played in the formation of modernism, and its theoretical importance between the mid-nineteenth century and the late twentieth century in England and Germany. Ranging from Owen Jones to Ernst Gombrich through Gottfried Semper, Alois Riegl, August Schmarsow, Wilhelm Worringer, Adolf Loos, Henry van de Velde, and Hermann Muthesius, the contributors show how artistic theories are deeply related to the art practice of their own times, and how ornament is imbued with historical and social meaning.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.

Investigating the study of art and design education in Italy, France, Britain, Germany and the United States, this text traces the philosophies of teachers from the age of the guilds and the academies, setting them in the context of the general educationtheories of their times.