Design History Society

The Interpretation of Ornament

Author(s): David Brett
Source: Journal of Design History, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1988), pp. 103-111
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Design History Society
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David Brett

The of Ornament
Interpretation

In this paper I attempt to analyse and explain was specially suited to the requirements of the
aspects of nineteenth-century ornament in terms of manufacturer, to reproductionby painting, weaving,
contrasting ideological positions, tracing these back stamping, etc., to which naturalistic renderings do
to the disruption of culture by positivism which, not readily lend themselves'.3 To reinforce this ana-
by undermining the basis of metaphor, renders lytical study there were regular lectures by estab-
traditional symbolism invalid. I propose to do this lished botanists and other scientists. These included
initially by examining the well-known opposition EdwardForbes, Professorof Botany at King's College,
between 'conventional' and 'natural' drawing as London, and John Lindley, one of the founders of Kew
exemplified by the intellectual duel between Dresser Gardens. Christopher Dresser was both a product of
and Ruskin; and then to look at, and contrast, some this educational method and a leading authority on
examples. The intention of the paper is interpretive; plant form.4
it seeks to understand why there should have been Nineteenth-century 'art botany' was the first at-
a debate about the decorative arts, and what mean- tempt to combine scientific instruction with design
ings the choices of ornamental style might have training. This had many consequences in terms of
entailed. decorative style, and set in motion organicist design
Nineteenth-century ornament has been more often theories which have continued down to this day.5
described than satisfactorily explained. Terms such But the movement also demonstrates something of
as 'historicist', 'eclectic', 'conventional', and 'natu- the perpetual aporia of industrial society, since it
ralistic' only take on analytic usefulness when they raises the question of the meaning of ornament and
are part of a larger explanatory structure. Such a abstract form in a positivist culture.6 What would
structure would, to be complete, require extensive this new ornamental art signify? And what was the
social study into the creation of ideals of domesticity, character of the botany on which 'art botany' so
and modern identity. Any conclusions made here are much depended?
tentative: this paper is addressed to the intellectual At the start of the century botany was still an
history of design. It makes no attempt to embrace Aristotelian science, mostly concerned with classifi-
technological factors, and has nothing to say about cation and naming; it did not yet attempt explana-
the social history of consumption, although there tory structures of thought. When explanation was
are a number of signs that the material is being felt for-as one might explore a darkened room-
created from which such a structure could be the results were infused with idealism and expressed
built.' through metaphor. And this idealist or symbolist
By mid-century an orthodoxy had developed in strain in botanical science persisted, even in the
the British Schools of Design, that had come to be work of those who were trying to overcome it.
known as the 'South Kensington System'. It was Botany had yet to undergo that transformation
based on a strict drawing curriculum that began into a normal science-a transformation that was
with simple linear elements and went on, by means formally an epistemological revolution, but psychi-
of complex combinations of elements, to create cally an act of courage. One writer has described
decorative motifs; the 'System' also included careful this transformation as it occurred in physics, in the
analysis of botanical forms.2 Redgrave described this following terms:
as 'a method wholly new'; the student had to To lookforwardout of the RenaissanceintoGalileo'sworld
perform 'an ornamental analysis ... displaying each was to stand alone, peering into a nature deprivedof
part [of the plant] separately according to its normal sympathyand all humaneassociation.Thatrequiredboth
law of growth, not as viewed perspectively, but courage and the power of abstractthought, which, one
diagrammatically flat to the eye ... this flat display of the greatestgifts, goes againstthe grain in all but the
Journalof DesignHistory Vol. I No. 2 ? TheDesignHistory Society 0952-4649/88 $3.00 103

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rarest temperaments.For sentiment rebels against the existent form, but the general laws that produce
conditionthat nature sets the natural philosopher.This form:
is, that science communicatesin the languageof mathe-
matics, the measureof quantity,in which no termsexist Maxim93: No individualpersistent,or ratherapparently
for good or bad, kindor cruel, and that she abandonsour persistent,form,but only the courseof its developments,
can be the objectof the studyof formin Botany.1
languageof will and purposeand hope ...7
It is these highly generalized 'actual laws of
To take that step away from 'humane association'
Nature' that become transformedin design theory into
was held by many to be incompatible with human
Owen Jones's 'laws of the distribution of form in
culture and history. This was seen by Ruskin as the
source of a new barbarism springing, as we shall nature', which ornamental designers should follow.
That transformation can be caught on the wing in
note, from a disregardfor 'natural facts'. Christopher
Lindley's lectures on 'The Symmetry of Vegetation',
Dresser, on the other hand, held that 'Knowledge is
Power'. given to design students in I852, in which he asks:
The transformation of botany required the decay Is it not possiblethat devicesof botanistsnot intendedfor
of natural philosophy. By natural philosophy I mean decoration,but for the representationof ideal truth, may
the application of qualitative thought to the study lend some assistanceto the manufacturer.Botanistsare
of Nature, expressed in the language of humane accustomed . . . to project the parts of plants . . . upon
associations. This did not happen easily or rapidly; plane surfaces, preservingall the organs in their due
and non-metaphorical, positive botany carried along positionswithrespectto eachother,butneglectingform...
such projectionsthey call diagrams. . by certainslight
with it some smuggled metaphysics, not least in the alterationsof formor proportionin the constituentparts,
notion of 'typical' or 'ideal' plants.8 A leading figure the samediagramcan be madeto changeits whole aspect,
in this transformation, whose work was well known withoutchangingits materialform,and of thesechangesI
in design circles, was M. J. Schleiden; through his shouldthinkthat intelligentartistsmightavailthemselves.
investigation of cell structure he opened the way to Some hundredsof thousands,nay, millionsof variations
a systematic explanation of botanical form. A popular of this sort are conceivable,and they seem to answerall
account of his work appeared in England in 1848. the exigenciesof manufacturingart.12
The Plant; a biographyin a series of popularlectures, The fusion of art and science had to take place in
begins with a vehement attack on: and through drawing before it could take on realized
the pratingsof the physio-philosophers of the Schelling form. The investigation of plant anatomy required
school .... Science has no need of these fopperies ... the abandonment of tonally rendered illustrative
false tinsel . . . which would substitute poetry for drawing and its replacement by diagrammatic con-
truth, imaginationfor knowledge.. ., etc.9 ventions which neatly coincided with the 'conven-
tional' drawing of the Schools of Design in the hard,
The chapters most relevant here are those on
dry manner of its draughtsmanship, its elementary
morphology and 'The Aesthetics of the Vegetable character and spatial organization. Both plant form
World'. and the development of decorative motifs were seen
Morphology is 'the most important branch of as combinatorial activities, in which 'millions of
teaching in all botany'. It variations' were conceivable.l3
has to seek for the knowledgeof laws and must, at least The value to a designerof a scientificcomprehensionof
as a preliminarystep,arrangethe multitudeof appearances the world is the insight it gives him into the possible
under primary points of view, . . . and so gradually variationsof the original,and the inexhaustiblesources
approachnearer to the discoveryof the actual laws of of grace and beauty; whence so much that is new, and
Nature.10 yet consistent,may be derived,towardsthe followingout
of nature'splan.14
We are not to look for ideal archetypes which are
'mere unsubstantial play of imagination'. Above all Here was the key to the 'infinite variety' that the
we are to avoid 'Anthropopathy', 'the humanization study of Nature would bring to manufactures: the
[that] is without meaning in the presence of Nature'. combinatorial methods of conventional drawing
The proper study of morphology is not particular could be allied to the generative systems of the
104 DavidBrett

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natural world. In a long series of articles in The Art based on the unity of art and religion, and that in
Journal, Dresser described the sort of drawing 'art present times 'want of unity in feeling has caused
botany' required: a want of unity in expression'.l8 Dresser takes this
as his starting point. Ornamental composition, he
Theartistsmust acquireat leastan elementaryknowledge
embodies Mind.
of botany . . . for without this knowledgeit is impossible argues,
to see objects, thereforeto delineatethem. Although it What must find utterancein a nationalsystemof decor-
may seem a strangeassertion,that we do not accurately ation,is our secularknowledge-our knowledgeof nature,
see objectsuntil we understandthem, it is nevertheless as revealed to us through the sciences, and of refine-
true ... a truthfulfigurationof principleas well as form ment.
must be given ... the views which he will generallyhave
to give will be thosethat coincidewith the architect'splan The use of symbolism based on common belief is no
of the building. . . also drawingof details . . . and the longer possible: 'We cannot hope that symbolism
formsof the variedmembersindividually,and of the union will again prevail.' Accordingly:
of membersor of joists .... For ornamentalpurposeswe
deem literalcopies altogetherinsufficient;representation causing decorativeforms to express thoughts, feelings,
of a more rigid character and analytic nature being and ideaswithoutthe aid of recognizedsymbols,becomes
necessary . . . what is requiredis a series of drawings of interest.
which shall convey a perfectknowledgeof every part, so
Dresser then develops the idea of linear vectors
accurateindeed,that if a modelof the plantwererequired,
the drawing alone would be necessary to enable the expressing, in a humorous manner, sensations of
modeller to produce a true facsimile of the vegetable rising and falling
organism.. . . We are not to draw particularplants as suchas inducethe mindto createto itselfgiventhoughts...
they really exist-blown about and deformed,but as we in orderto show the possibilityof setting forth thoughts
know them to be. and occurrencesin conventionalforms ... We hope they
Such research through drawing is incremental, in will manifestthe possibilityof ideas being expressedby
conventionalformswithoutthe aid of symbols.19
the manner of scientific research:
If you would save the tedious processof study through These ambitions become the main theme of his later
which your forefathershave passed,acceptthe resultsof book TheArt of DecorativeDesign (1862).
theirscrutinisingresearches... we also urgethe necessity In a later essay Dresser develops these ideas into
of the knowledgeof the principlesof floralgrowth, upon something approaching a fully fledged concept of
the groundsthat this knowledgealone can suggest the abstract expression, in which:
principlesof nature which we may so advantageously
those workswhich are most fullyof mentalorigin. .. are
appropriatefor our purpose.
those which are most noble; that pictorialart can, in
These principles or 'intentions' are 'what [Nature's] its highest development,only symbolizeimaginationor
productions would be were they unmodified by emotion by the representationof idealizedreality; that
external influences'.l5 Many similar quotations from trueornamentationis of purelymentaloriginand consists
this and other sources might be adduced'6, but the of symbolizedimaginationor emotion only. I therefore
point is sufficiently made; art botany taught an it argue that ornamentationis not only a fine art ... that
is indeedeven a higher art than that practisedby the
analytic and cognitive drawing in order to express
pictorialartist,as it is wholly of mentalorigin.20
the ideal form and principles of vegetation, not its
natural state. Such ideas were widespread, and their This is not simply subversive of figurative painting;
relation to the practice of a Mackintosh, a Tiffany, it overturns the entire academic pyramid and puts
or a Sullivan are clear enough. I have elsewhere the lowly activity of the decorative designer at the
described this as a 'normative tradition'.17 very top. Indeed, the whole argument of the South
But by going to Nature in this way, by escaping Kensington School leads toward a resystematizing of
from the restrictions of style and period, the orna- art, craft, and design. And this is entirely consistent
mental designer is left with a problem of meaning. with the utilitarian and positive ideology of its
What does his ornament signify? Owen Jones had drawing programme, which leads towards the
argued that the unity of traditional cultures was apotheosis of abstract decoration. There is in this
The Interpretation of Ornament 105

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something of the dialectical reversal with which work. Because science employs a language shorn of
Schleiden concludes his final chapter, already cited: humane associations, it cannot, he argues, be used
for the ethical and experiential purposes of art. It is
And here the Developmentcloses itself into a ring; at
a or 'biographical' natural philosophy
the highest stages of culture we again receive with only poetical
consciousnessand refinedinsight, that with which the that can be so used; one that is based on what
unconscious, childishunderstanding set out . . nought elsewhere he calls 'local custom and historical
is left but the mysteryof Beauty.2' memory'.
Drawing and painting were, for Ruskin, the means
I have presented these long quotations from of
gaining the higher knowledge of form on which
Dresser and others because they are the exact anti- excellence in
design depends; in this he was as firmly
thesis of Ruskin's theory of drawing and his own rooted in academic tradition as he was elsewhere
'aesthetics of the vegetable world'. Some of his subversive. A full exposition of his drawing theory
writings appear to be aimed exactly at these passages. had appeared years earlier in TheElementsof Drawing
It is to the opposition to conventional drawing and
(1857), which should be read as a counter-blast to
art-botany that we must now turn. Many quotations conventional pedagogy:
might be given; Ruskin is a fountainhead of articu-
late and deeply pondered anti-industrial and anti- The manuals at presentpublishedon the subjectare all
directed. . . to one or other of two objects.Eitherthey
positivist attitudes. The whole of Letter 5 in the first
volume of Fors Clavigerais exactly pertinent: 'All
true science is "savoir vivre". But your modern
science is the contrary of that. It is "savoir mourir".'
Something of Ruskin's conception of science can
be gleaned from TheEagle'sNest ( 872): 'The natural
history of anything, or of any creature,
divides itself properly into three branches. We have
first to collect and examine the traditions respec-
ting the thing . .' This is 'to know the poetry of it'.
Secondly, we have to 'examine and describe the
thing, or creature, in its actual state, with utmost
attainable veracity of observation'. This is to know
'the actual facts of its existence'. 'Lastly, we have to
examine under what laws of chemistry and physics
the matter of which the thing is made has been col-
lected and constructed.' This is to discover 'physical ..""
.......
.?...
"
. .l
............
. . ....

causes'.22 This is an order of importance. Ruskin's

thought is defiantly anti-teleological. It follows from
this that:
in representingthis organicnature,Art has nothingto do
with structures,causes or absolutefacts; but only with
appearances ... in representing these appearances, she is
more hinderedthan helped by the knowledgeof things
that do not externallyappear. . . You are, in drawing,to
try only to representthe appearanceof things,neverwhat
you know the thing to be ... the artist has no concern
with invisiblestructures,organicor inorganic.23
It is easy to dismiss the core of the argument in the ...........?...
.. :
::.~'.:.....
same offhand way the modern reader will dismiss
Ruskin's rhetoric. Easy but mistaken, since he points i Frank Furness, Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art Entrance,
toward the ethical and experiential centre of artistic detail of column

106 DavidBrett

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proposeto give the studenta powerof dexteroussketching elements and synthetic rationalism of Dresser and
with pencil and water colour ... or they proposeto give the South Kensington System. The consequences of
him such accurate commandof mathematicalforms as this for design follow, of course, and Ruskin spelt
may afterwardsenablehim to designrapidlyand cheaply them out in several lectures, but principally in 'The
for manufacturers . . . the second is the object kept Deteriorative Power of Conventional Art over the
chieflyin view at MarlboroughHouse,and in the branch Nations', delivered in the lion's den at the South
GovernmentSchoolsof Design.24
Kensington Museum in January 18 5 8. (The evidence
The drawing he proposes to teach is not linear, since of the dates and of phrasing suggests that it was
'the world around you presents itself to your eyes deliberately aimed at Jones and Dresser.) As is well
only as an arrangement of patches of different known, Ruskin takes as his main theme, Indian
colours, variously shaded'.25 His drawing will be ornament. This was not a neutral topic, since such
tonal, and the greater part of the book is concerned work was immensely admiredby Jones and the whole
with the perception and rendering of tone and the South Kensington circle. Indian pattern, Ruskin
relation of hue to tone. This is not simply a manner observes:
of drawing that is different, but the epistemology on
has one curiouscharacterdistinguishingit fromall other
which drawing is founded: artof meritin design-it neverrepresentsa naturalfact...
We see nothing but flat colours . . . the whole technical to all the factsandformsof natureit wilfullyandresolutely
powerof paintingdependson our recoveryof what may opposesitself . . . [but] no great school has ever existed
be called 'the innocenceof the eye'; that is to say, of a which had not for primalaim the representationof some
sort of childishperceptionof these flat stains of colour, naturalfact as truly as possible. . . let it once quit hold
merely as such, without consciousness of what they of the chain of naturalfact ... and fromthat hour its fall
signify-as a blindman would see them if suddenlygifted is precipitate.
with sight.
The effect on moral sentiment of an art without
The highly accomplished artist is one who has nature is 'savagery'.27
managed 'to reduce himself as nearly as possible to The attack on conventional anti-naturalism con-
this condition of infantine sight'.26 tinues all through this and other lectures with great
Such an epistemology, which combines Locke with force and clarity of example. It follows from the
Rousseau, is fundamentally opposed to the a priori Ruskinian concept of drawing and drawing's relation

M, i2 Frank Furness, Philadelphia

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of Ornament
TheInterpretation 107

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 pina (I879), to reinvent botany in terms of myth-
ology, 'passion', and 'historical association'. This
endeavour was not lacking in pathological elements
drawn, not from Ruskin's personal pathology, but
from the much deeper psychic dislocation of a cul-
ture torn between two contraries; for when a natural
philosophy decays it gives rise to two fractions-
positivism and irrationality, neither of which can
tolerate or make a coherent critique of one another.
Ideas, of course, are never the sufficient cause of
objects; but neither are the social and technical
forces that also shape design. In something so
3 Frank Furness, Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art. Stairwell, culturally complex we must reject monocausal 'ex-
detail of brasswork planations'. But I believe the foregoing gives a
perspective on certain historical questions, and will
form part of a structure for interpretation.
to design; and the allied mistrust of precision that Ruskin's opposition to conventional drawing was
had led him to the idealization of craft work. His based on his perception that it was the kernel of a
ascription of savagery to the South Kensington design theory he utterly rejected; his own 'natural'
System is not, as we can clearly see, whimsical or drawing was, likewise, the kernel of a revived craft
rhetorical. It is a flash of insight into the dehistoricized ethic. His ideas are part of the much larger counter
and decultured world of positivism; a vision of a revolution against industrial ideology that came
world shorn of humane associations. about in late nineteenth-century Britain. The Arts
As Ruskin's thought unfolded, he had to dismiss and Crafts movements came, in course of time,
Dresser's notion of science (and therefore of drawing) to provide the ruralizing form-language for the
as 'unclean stupidity . . . essentially the work of gentrification of a new managerial class-'minister-
human bats; men of semi-faculty or semi-education, ing to the swinish luxury of the rich', as Morris
who are more or less incapable of seeing, much less called it. What had been a critical reaction became
of thinking'.28 He was driven, in the pages of Proser- a new orthodoxy. This enables us to understand the

Is~ii ~ - I - 4 Ruskin, Deane and

Woodward, O'Shea brothers,
University Museum, Oxford.
Detail of base of column

... .----- ----

108 DavidBrett

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relative failure of Art Nouveau to 'take' in Britain.
In so far as the new styles depended on art botany-
and in the case of Mackintosh they did-so far it
was not available for forming a ruralizing taste. Art
botany can now be seen as one of the foundations
of modernist movements. The foregoing further helps
us to understand something of the enthusiasm for
Japanese design since, in the domain of surface
pattern, Japanese textiles successfully combined both
naturalistic renderings and geometrical motifs and
5 Ruskin, Deane, and Woodward,
Ohea
brothers.
University.
organization. This, at the level of taste, appeared to
resolve the cultural dilemma. But I would suggest
that this short investigation also has something to ...... ..
give to the study of American decorative arts.
For example, the architectural decoration of Frank
Furness, especially in the Philadelphia Academy of
Fine Arts, appears, approached from this viewpoint,
to be the culmination of the South Kensington Oxfo...
..Museum, p..it.

System. The architect and his assistants were cer-

tainly well aware of the ideas of Jones and Dresser,
and similar ideas current in France. As O'Gorman
T,.
observes:
in several of Furness' preserveddrawings flowers are
renderedin 'plan'and 'elevation'showingtheirgeometric
symmetrylike the working drawings of a building; in
othershe seemedto probebeyondexternalappearanceto
discoverthe underlyinggeometricpattern, the axes of
growththat give them their uniqueform.29
The brasswork, the carved flower motifs, the bosses Oxford.
Museum, Capital
at the intersection of rails, and all those details that
seem halfway between machined vegetation and
of the inner meaning of art botany.3' When the
organic mechanism, appear to this author as what works of man have the infinite variety and unerring
Britishconventional ornament might have become.30
fitness of Nature, human perfection through progress
[1-3] A comparison with the Ruskin-inspiredUniver- will have been achieved. This is the mystical contra-
sity Museum in Oxford is instructive. Both are band in the positivists' luggage:
buildings of similar cultural import, both are highly
finished and carefully ornamented. But the meticu- The knowledgethat he invokes in orderto interpretthe
lous naturalism of the decoration in the English meaning of positive knowledgedoes not itself meet the
building, its cloister plan and pedagogy, place both standards of the positive spirit . . . it is only through
it and the science it was intended to embody in an metaphysicalconcepts that positivismcan render itself
earlier age. [4-5] comprehensible.By being unreflectivelyput aside they
retaintheirsubstantialpowereven overtheiradversary'.32
Louis Sullivan's 'System of Architectural Orna- In Schleiden's words, 'here the development closes
ment' combines, in a very marked fashion, the Thus 'scientifico-poetic theory' justifies a
into a ring'. We observe the pattern ofhis
itself Sullivan's
synthetic methods of conventional art with a cosmic ornament by giving it metaphysical grounding, just
vision of man as 'a solitary ego within a universe of as Dresser validated his work by an appeal beyond
energy' whose 'creations are but parallels of himself. symbolism to a creation 'purely mental in origin'.
His doctrine of parallelism 'between man and nature,
and between man and his works' is the distillation itself into a ring'. We observe the pattern of a
TheInterpretationof Ornament 109

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confidentindustrialculturesecretingtranscendental Stuart Durant, op. cit., remarks that 'Lindley was a great
botanist and his injections of real botany into the Owen
abstraction. Jones-Marlborough House aesthetic must have been one
of the earliest attempts to incorporate modem science into
DAVID BRETT
design.'
Universityof Ulster 13 What we are dealing with here is the concept of a generative
system, extended by analogy from botany to design. Goethe's
'The Metamorphosis of Plants' was published in the Journalof
Notes Botany' in 1863. The anonymous fragment issuing from
I See, for example, Leonore Davidoffand Catherine Hall, Family Goethe's circle and known as 'Die Natur' was published in a
Fortunes; men and women of the English middleclass, I780- translation by T. H. Huxley in 'Nature' in 1869. This speaks
1850, Hutchinson, 1987; see also work by Agnes Heller, of Nature as 'sole artist; from the simplest material she passes
Pierre Bourdieu and others. There is also an increasing body to the extremest diversity'. For reprint and discussion see
of interesting unpublished work in the USA, by J. K. Jespersen, Agnes Arber in ChronicaBotanica,no. 10, 1946.
J. G. Rhodes, Deborah Silverman, etc. This paper is part of a 14 Forbes, E., article in TheArt JournalIllustratedCatalogueof the
larger work in progress. GreatExhibition',London, 1851.
2 See Brett, D. 'Drawing and the Ideology of Industrialisation', 15 Dresser,C. 'Botany as Adapted to the Arts and Art Manufactur-
in DesignIssues, vol. 3, no. 2, 1987, pp. 59-72. This is a short ing', The Art Journal,vol. 20, 1857, pp. 17-19 and vol. 21,
study of drawing pedagogy in the firstdecades of the nineteenth 1858, p. 362. The entire article is eleven parts long and
century. It makes reference to Dyce, Hay, Field, contains, among other things, the first application of micro-
and Robson in Britain, and to Froebel and Pestalozzi and scopic drawing to design. For 'intentions' see also Redgrave,
others in Germany and the USA. See also studies by Clive R. in Journalof Designand Manufactures,vol. 3, i850, pp. 96-
Ashwin. Ioo. This idealism is not simply a quirk; if the decorative type
3 Redgrave, S. and R. A Century of Painters, London, i866, and the natural type are aligned with the ideal archetype,
pp. 564-5. And for useful general discussion see P. Macdonald, then the products of human industry have both necessity and
The History and Philosophyof Art Education,London, 1970. perfection.
4 At a number of points in this paper I am indebted to research 16 For example, see C. F. A. Voysey, interviewed in The Studio,
by Stuart Durant, notably 'Aspects of the Work of Christopher vol. I, 1893, p. 233; often quoted, rarely analysed.
Dresser', unpublished M.Phil thesis, Royal College of Art, 17 See Brett, D., unpublished Ph.D. thesis, 'Quantities and Quali-
1973. ties; the philosophy and ideology of design reform, etc.', Royal
5 The 'South Kensington System' was, from the outset, per- College of Art, 1984.
meated by biological and biotechnical analogies, whereby the 18 Jones, H. O. An attempt, etc. . . R.S.A. Pamphlet, 1852. See
'laws' of good design were conflated with the laws of natural also Darby, M. 'OwenJones and the EasternIdeal', unpublished
form. When (if) the practice of design followed the practice of Ph.D. thesis, University of Reading, 1974.
Nature, good design would follow as a matter of course; I9 Dresser, C. 'The Art of Decorative Design', The Builder, 15
manufactures so directed would attain what M. D. Wyatt March 1862, pp. 185-6. In the book of the same title he
called Nature's 'infinite variety and unerring fitness'. See also discusses affinities between music and ornament in terms
Steadman, P. The Evolution of Designs: Biological Analogy in based partly on George Field's 'analogical philosophy' and
Architectureand the AppliedArts, Cambridge University Press, partly upon scientific analysis of vibrations (see esp. chap. 4).
1979. These ideas, of course, are widely current later in the century,
6 By 'positivist' I mean here the belief that all genuine knowledge in a fine art context. See also Brett, D. 'The aesthetical science;
is contained within the bounds of science, and that whatever George Field and the Science of Beauty', Art History, vol. 9,
questions cannot be settled by scientific methods will remain no. 3, Sept. I986, pp. 336-50.
unanswered. I have not wanted to be more specific than this, 20 Dresser, C. 'Ornamentation considered as a high art', Journal
but there is good evidence that Owen Jones, Henry Cole, of the Society of Arts, vol. xix, o Feb. 1871.
and others were Saint-Simonians; the triad of 'art, science, 21 Schleiden, op. cit., pp. 315-19. Schleiden is a good example
industry' is a characteristic slogan of the movement. Later, of what Gillispie has called 'the anxiety of cultured scientists
HerbertSpencer's blending of evolutionary theory with positiv- not to be divorced from culture by their own creation of
ist social thought appears to inform Dresser's writings. science'. See Gillispie, op. cit., p. 197.
7 Gillespie, C. C. The Edge of Objectivity,Princeton University 22 Ruskin, J. The Eagle's Nest, 1872, para. i80.
Press, 1960, p. 43. 23 Ibid., paras. 148-50, i6i, 171-2, etc.
8 For a discussion of this issue see Ritterbush, P. C. Overturesto 24 TheElementsof Drawingwas written in 18 5 6 and firstpublished
Biology; the speculations of I8th century naturalists, Yale in 1857; subsequently there was a second edition in the same
University Press, 1964; also Arber, A. TheNatural Philosophy year, and reprints of this in 1859, 1864, I882, I886, etc.
of Plant Form, Cambridge University Press, 1950. All quotes here are taken from the 3rd edn. of 1900.
9 Schleiden, M. J. The Plant; a biography. . ., trans. Henfrey, 25 Ibid., p. xv.
London, 1848, pp. 2-3. Schleiden was the leading botanist at 26 Ibid., pp. 5 ff. Ernst Gombrich has written that 'the postulate
the Univerity of Jena, which awarded Christopher Dresser a of the unbiassed eye demands the impossible', and describes
doctorate 'in consideration of the services he has rendered to Ruskin as laying the 'explosive charge which was to blow the
scientific botany' in 1859. academic edifice sky high'; Art and Illusion, 3rd. edn., 1968,
Io Ibid., p. 82. p. 251 and p. 12.
iI Ibid., p. 93. 27 Ruskin, J. TheTwoPaths; beinglectureson Art andits application
12 Lindley, J. The Symmetry of Vegetation:an outline of the prin- to decorationand manufacture,Orpington, 1884 edn., pp. 9-
ciples to be observedin the delineationof plants, etc., London, IO.
I854. See also his Introductionto Popular Botany, 1848. 28 Ruskin, J. Proserpina,1879, chap. 3, para. 6.

110 DavidBrett

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29 O'Gorman,J. F. TheArchitectureof FrankFurness,Philadelphia syndrome of conventional drawing, industrial ideology, and
Museum of Art, 1973, p. 35. a positivist belief in science; all of which lead toward abstract
30 Dresser's writings were widely available in the United States. ornament and a rejection of traditional symbolism.
He is reported to have acted as a buyer for the firm of Tiffany, 3 Sullivan, L. A System of ArchitecturalOrnament;accordingwith
but I have not been able to confirm this. Also available to a philosophyof Man's powers,Eakins Press, N.Y., 1967 reprint.
Furness were the books and pamphlets of D. R. Hay of which 32 Habermas, J. Knowledgeand Human Interests,trans. Schapiro,
many copies can be found in East Coast libraries. But we are J., Heinemann, London, 2nd. edn., I978; p. 71 and p. 80.
less concerned here with 'influence' than with the typical

TheInterpretationof Ornament 111

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