Plate XIV, “Plans Elevations and Sections of the Alhambra” illuminated by Owen Jones, 1809-1874

Plate XIV

Owen Jones, 1809-1874, illuminator

1845

60 x 44 cm.

Source: Plans Elevations and Sections of the Alhambra

Beckwith, Victorian Bibliomania catalogue no. 46

Owen Jones began his careers as architect, printer, and book designer simultaneously with these volumes about the Alhambra palace in Granada. Unable to find a company willing to print his very large detailed drawings in color, he set up his own chromolithographic press in 1835, assisted by the commercial printers Day and Haghe. The Alhambra is one of the major monuments of early chromolithography, printed in red, blue, and gold with as many as six to seven printings per illustration. [continued below]

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Commentary by Alice H. R. H. Beckwith

The Alhambra proved a financial failure, but became a design and technical foundation for Jones. His work on The Alhambra stimulated his appreciation of Moorish forms, and he used Alhambra patterns in his illuminated texts (cat. 47). Most books from the Victorian era linking architectural ornament and book design show the process as one which proceeds from book to building. The Alhambra reverses the influence. Owen Jones's distinctive tightly curled pen flourishes take their inspiration from the striated, curved leaf abstractions seen in plate 14 from Volume II. Plate 14 also illustrates Jones's typical flat tints in a spreading pattern which flows over the page without establishing a center. Such ornament could be easily adjusted to the needs of a planar surface, whether of a book or a building. Subscribers to The Alhambra, which came out in parts between 1836 and 1845, included thirty architects, among them A. W. N. Pugin, Lewis Vulliamy (Jones's teacher), W. and L. Cubitt, and J. Town of New York.

Along with rediscovery of their Gothic past, Britons in the Victorian era were coming to terms with their increasing dominion in the East. Owen Jones addressed the attractions of non-English art in attempting to discover universal principles of design. His best-known book. The Grammar of Ornament (cat. 47), successfully presented his wide-ranging studies of ornament from all cultures. His appreciation of the East even influenced his studio practice. One of his assistants, M. C. J. Culliford, described Jones, at work on The Alhambra, as sitting cross-legged like a Turk on his studio floor amidst his color pots with a drawing pad on his knees (Wakeman 62).

Related Material

References

Beckwith, Alice H. R. H. Victorian Bibliomania: The Illuminated Book in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Exhibition catalogue. Providence. Rhode Island: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1987.

Jones, Owen, and Jules Goury (d. 1834). Plans Elevations and Sections of the Alhambra with the Elaborate Details of this Beautiful Specimen of Moorish Architecture from Drawings Taken on the Spot in 1834 and 1837. 2 vols. London: Owen Jones, 1836-45. Internet Archive version of a copy in the Library of the Smithsonian Institution. Web. 22 December 2013. [The 1987 exhibition included a copy of this book from the John Hay Library, Brown University. — George P. Landow.]

Wakeman, Geoffrey, and Gavin D. R. Bridson. A Guide to Nineteenth-Century Colour Printers. Loughborough: The Plow Press, 1975.

Last modified 22 December 2013