There is no larger collection of ornament in print anywhere today. This more than 600 page volume contains 3765 different illustrations on 400 full page plates! Indispensable for artists, designers, illustrators, architects, craftsmen, students, and anyone else searching for distinctive, authentic design, individual illustrations are royalty-free--buy the book and thousands of unusual drawing are yours for the using.
Where are the ornaments from? The vanished civilizations of ancient Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, Phoenicia, Judah, India, Greece, Rome, Pompeii, the Celts, the Etruscans; from China, Japan, Arabia, India, Cambodia; from Russia, Scandinavia, the United States, Germany, France, Italy, England, Austria, Spain, and other countries.
What periods are covered? Prehistoric and primitive; antiquity; the Middle Ages, including early-Christian ornaments of the Lombards, Visigoths, Franks, and Byzantines, Romanesque ornament, Mohammedan ornament, and Gothic ornament; Renaissance ornament in Florence, Venice, Portugal, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Poland; Rococo ornament throughout Europe; Colonial style in the United States: nineteenth century classical revival, with designs of Sheraton and Hepplewhite; Empire; and Biedermeier and Neoclassical ornament in Germany.
What design elements and objects? Gargoyles; Buddhas; dragons; capitals, bases, and shafts of columns; necklaces, rings, other jewelry; urns, vases; friezes; buildings of brick, wood, stone; tables, chairs, mirrors, chests, hardware; tapestries and cloths; statues; suits of armor, helmets, lances; mitres; fantastic animals, centaurs, cupids; religious objects; keyholes; sedan chair; bridges; coats of arms; and hundreds of others. This wide spectrum of styles will almost literally be a bottomless treasury of source material that you will use again and again, each time finding something different.
The first German edition of this worit was published in 1904 and met with such signal success that its author Herr Alexander Speltz was called upon to tiring out a second edition two years later. In this edition the number of plates was increased from three to four hundred which enabled the author to give a more complete representation of ornament as developed in England and America than had been at first contemplated. The original work was undertaken with the object of representing the entire range of ornament in all its different styles from pre-historic times till the middle of the 19 century and to illustrate the different uses to which it had been applied. The whole of the illustrations which were taken from the best authorities on each subject and period were drawn specially for the work and evince the remarkable industry and knowledge of the author and his artistic power in representing ornament. In fact it is only necessary to glance through the several plates to see how closely the author has caught the style and character of each period. Acknowledgments of the sources are made throughout the work and in addition a special list of books of reference, including those which have been drawn upon for illustrations, has been inserted at the end of the volume. An English edition was published in America in 1906 for sale in that country only, but the historical accounts were not in accordance with the latest research and many of the descriptions to the plates had suffered so much in translation that very considerable revision was necessary in preparing the present issue. Three new plates of English Ornament have been added to this edition taking the place of others which it was found necessary to delete, various changes have also been made in the headings to some of the chapters and in the terms employed, more particularly in the section devoted to the Ren
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
