Wallpaper design, Owen Jones, July 1860

Design for a wallpaper, branches of green leaves, with veins and outlines in white and sprays of small white leaves against a grey background.

In Britain it was generally believed that the standard of drawing floral and other botanical forms, especially for wallpaper and textile patterns, had severly declined since the beginning of the nineteenth century under the impact of the Industrial Revolution. The huge demand for novelty from the public and the manufacturers that supplied them meant that designs for mass-production were often perceived by the design establishment as hurried, badly drawn and eccentric. Owen Jones tried to draw up a list of rules for making legitimate patterns, which took as their inspiration the example of the art of the past added to an observation of nature. This design illustrates his demand that a pattern should be based on close and scientific study of nature, but be stylized, be strictly two-dimensional without modelling, and have a firm outline and solid colour. The leaves recall the final plates in 'The Grammar of Ornament (1856), which encouraged designers to look beyond the traditional plants of the classical repertoire.

[Charles Newton, 'British Design at Home', p.51]

D.756-1897