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Ornament as Idea: Indirect Imitation of Nature in the Design Reform MovementAuthor(s): Barbara Whitney KeyserReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of Design History, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1998), pp. 127-144

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BarbaraWhitney Keyser

Ornament s I d e a ndirect mitation o f

N a t u r e i n t h e s i g n Re fo rm Movement

This paperplaces the theoriesof the Victoriandesign reformmovement n the intellectual contextof Victorianscience. Recent

scholarship n history of science treats romanticsciencesympathetically;viewedin this light, design reformcan beinterpreted

as an attempt to reconcilemodernscience and ancient wisdomas applied to art and design. Victoriantheoriesof design were

poised on a knife-edgebetweenclassical, humanistic theoriesof art and modernism.Their use of arguments rom the natural

philosophyof theirday was not positivism, becausemid-Victorianscience was not positivistic. Theresultwas a now-lost but

rich conceptionof indirect imitation of nature-a hybridof romantic nature aesthetics and a British traditionof practical

Platonism. While the conceptionsunderlying theprinciple of indirect imitation of nature are obsolete, ts richness, complexity

and applicationof ideal beautyto decorativeobjectsoffera constructive alternative paradigm to the extremismof twentieth-

century abstractionand purism-indeed, the very impurity of Victorian design theory acquits it of the charge of scientism.

Keywords: design reformmovement-designtheory-Dresser, Christopher-GreatBritain-ornament-Schoolsof Design

The designer's mind must be like the vital force of the visual arts in early modern Europe and the ex-

plant, ever developing itself into the forms of beauty, treme formalism and abstraction of the twentieth

yet while thus free to produce, still in all cases gov- century lies a little-documented stage of indirect

erned by unalterable laws. representation of nature; its visible manifestation

Christopher Dresser' in art was ornament composed in arbitrary colour

and stylized shapes. In 1849 the architect JamesFergusson created the terms 'eumorphics' and

Permanent Revolutions'euchromics' from the Greek. He used them to

Were the Victorian design reformers' arguments distinguish pure arts of form and colour from

from science the beginning of a slide from human- subject painting: eumorphics was the beauty of

istic aesthetics to dogmatic modernism, or were form and proportion independent of representa-

these arguments completely different in kind tion, while euchromics was the beauty of colour

from twentieth-century scientism? In a subtle harmony.3 The story of euchromics has been told

and valuable essay, David Brett has argued for elsewhere: Victorian decorative painting, illustra-

the former.2 Design reform certainly is a transi- tion and ornament reversed the relationships of

tional stage between classical humanism, as exem- form and colour found in representational paint-

plified in the tradition of academic subject ing. Furthermore, the rationales for colour har-

painting, and the spare (if one is being compli- monies were based on now-obsolete natural

mentary) or sterile (if one is being derogatory) philosophies of chemistry.4

visual arts of the twentieth century. However, the This article examines the parallel ideas under-

design reformers' invocation of science in support lying eumorphics and finds its source in a new

of 'laws' of beauty was rooted in a metaphysical relationship between art and anatomy: the highest

optimism and unitary world view totally foreign ideal of beauty was transferred from the human

to twentieth-century modern sensibilities. body and human action to stylized plant form.

Between the representational realism of the 'Art botany', as it came to be called, was a

Journal f DesignHistoryVol.11 No. 2 ? 1998 TheDesignHistorySociety 127

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cornerstone of teaching in the mid-century 1760s.11 There was even a strain of Neoplatonism

London Schools of Design. Like the chemical that was linked to industry and illustrates the

rationales for colour harmony, it was based on a close connection between aestheticized science

now-obsolete branch of natural philosophy, tran- and artistic industry. For example, one of the

scendental anatomy. Destroyed by Darwinism, most important members of the English Neo-

transcendental anatomy treated the laws of platonist movement at the turn of the nineteenth

nature as the thoughts of God and likewise as century was Thomas Taylor, who translated the

eternal principles of beauty. As we shall see, it works of both Pythagoras and Plato into English.provided a rationale for adapting Victor Cousin's Surely it is no coincidence that he came of age

philosophy of beauty to the design of ornament during the Greek revival movement in art and

and raising the status of the designer to that of the archaeology. He was connected closely to the

painter. Wedgwood pottery and their neo-classical

Design reform-here taken in its narrower designer, John Flaxman. He was also secretary

sense as the mid-Victorian campaign against the of the Society of Arts, which promoted useful

excesses of florid, naturalistic ornamentation- knowledge and art manufactures. 2 Thus early

occupies its ambiguous place in the pre-history on in Britain industrial technology was closely

of modernism because it arose from an art-science connected with art manufactures, Naturphiloso-

complex that cuts across present disciplinary phie, and mathematical mysticism.

boundaries. Design reform, in all its ramifica- Like Taylor, Wedgwood and their fellow indus-tions,5 combines the two permanent revolutions trialist-virtuosi, the mid-century design reformers

of the early nineteenth century: the industrial and saw themselves as reconciling ancient wisdom

the romantic.6 In brief, the arts of eumorphics and with modern achievements-and the natural

euchromics were based on aestheticized science; philosophy of plant form was a prime example

at the same time, they guided the design of objects of the aestheticized science that was part of the

made, as often as not, by machines for a consumer legacy of romanticism. Indeed, the invocation of

market. It is true that the self-conscious search for transcendental anatomy for the design of orna-

appropriate style in art and design was, as Gom- ment was actually the first response in the visual

brich has noted, partly a response to an increasing arts of the calls of Goethe, Herder and Schiller for

sense of distance from the past wrought by indus- art based on indirect imitation of nature. It was a

trialization and commercialization.7 However, central part of the development of non-classical,examination of the scientific context of the non-academic art during the nineteenth century.

design reform movement shows that it was To make this development clear, the following

neither scientistic nor positivistic as we under- questions must be addressed: what was the philo-

stand those terms today.8 sophical underpinning of indirect imitation of

Nor were the early British industrialists one- nature in romantic art theory? What was its

sided philistines, but rather polymaths in the relationship to contemporary conceptions of nat-tradition of seventeenth-century virtuosi. Boime ural science? Why did it emerge belatedly in the

has documented the exchange amongst late Victorian design reform movement, which is often

eighteenth-century societies devoted to science, considered scientistic and sterile? Why did it all

manufactures and the arts, while Wedgwood's but disappear from the history of modernism?

pottery epitomizes this confluence of interests.9 Lastly, does it have any meaning for current artRomantic philosophy of nature, chemical science and design?and applied chemistry were united in the work

of Sir Humphry Davy. 0 Furthermore, a connec- andtion between mathematics, science, numerical

mysticism and applied sciences ranging from The transfer of the highest ideal of beauty fromarchitecture and engineering to machine design human subjects to stylized vegetable forms wascan be traced from Newton to the Lunar Society based on two ideas: first, that the deep structure of

of Birmingham industrialists founded in the plants united the ideal and the real by exhibiting

128 BarbaraWhitney Keyser







the perfect balance of the aesthetic principles of Kant's conception of judgement was the moment

unity and variety; secondly, that ornament using in the formation of knowledge when concepts

this indirect imitation of nature had principles of were joined to sensuous intuitions. Some tradi-

its own that were equal to but distinct from tional academic philosophers were dismayed by

subject painting. This reinterpretation of human- that notion, but, for Goethe, Kant's statement that

istic art theory was rooted in the notion of an ideal concepts without sensuous content were empty

type underlying the variety of natural forms. In provided a rationale for immersing himself in

the first half of the nineteenth century, this con- sensuous intuition. Goethe observed that Kantcept acquired epistemological, aesthetic and theo- had limited himself to discursive intelligence,

logical significance that is difficult to grasp today. but he had at least conceived of an intuitive,

How, then, did the type concept contribute to a synthetic, universal intelligence at the level of

total transformation of the classical notion of ideal Reason. Why, Goethe asked, should this be lim-

beauty in the design reform movement? ited to the metaphysical, moral realm? He

As a first stage, German romanticism produced believed that his searches for primal images and

an aestheticized type of science just as aesthetics prototypes, as well as valid ways of representing

itself was being elevated to the highest type of them, were the sort of 'adventure of reason' which

human knowledge around 1800.13 Significantly, Kant had in mind. Thus he also commented, 'I

the works of Naturphilosophie that J. W. von wrote my Metamorphosisof Plants before I knew

Goethe, Hans Christian Oersted, Alexander von anything of Kant, and yet it is entirely in the spiritHumboldt and Lorenz Oken produced in the of his ideas.'16

early i8oos all appeared in English translation Goethe was one of the founders of morphology,

between 1830 and 1850, long after romantic the study of form in nature; this contribution to

science had fallen from favour in Germany. 4 science was appreciated by British transcendental

These works-together with the German-influ- anatomists in the mid-nineteenth century. How-

enced aesthetics of Victor Cousin-proved crucial ever, Goethe's dictum, 'Alles ist Blatt' (all is leaf)

to the development of British theories of ornament did not mean, as it was later interpreted, that all

in mid-century. the organs of the plant were modifications of

Goethe's teacher, Johann Gottfried von Herder leaves. Rather, Blatt was that which had no

(1744-1803), held that scientific and artistic form, and the metamorphosis was the process of

achievements were both creative and required formation which was more significant than thethe power of the imagination. Just as symmetry shape of the parts at any single moment. The

and order were heuristic principles in science, so movement of growth generated the series; it was

nature had its own aesthetic quality, manifest in a form-making power. For Goethe, this movement

Pythagorean ratios of proportion and unity-in- was not a plan as such; rather, it was the unity

variety. Herder called for a new art based on which contained all possible shapes. This unity,

these principles: old allegorical subjects and clas- which could not be observed directly in any

sical myths were losing their meaning, and art individual plant, was the primal phenomenon

should be inspired directly by nature.1 However, underlying all of its particular manifestations. In

this call was not answered in the visual arts for this way, the moment of judgement, or insight

almost fifty years-and then in a way Herder into the nature of the type, reconciled the intellec-

could not have foreseen. tual and the sensuous.17Goethe's own conception of artistic style was Like Cassirer, Brady argues that Goethe's con-

interconnected with his conception of morpho- ception of morphology was a conscious and

logical types. The apprehension of both was a deliberate response to Kant's question whether

creative act of 'sensuous judgement'. Goethe con- the noumenal ideas of Reason could be sensibly

sidered Kant's CritiqueofJudgementa revelation: it portrayed. Even when stripped of these meta-

brought together his interest in natural and physical overtones-as it was in Britain, only to

human creativity, so that the power of teleological be replaced, as we shall see, by natural theology-

and aesthetic judgement illuminated each other. the German speculations on the unity of nature

Ornamentas Idea 129







ordered the facts gathered by purely empirical spread in art theory. For example, the French art

approaches to natural history. Also, Goethe's theorist A. C. Quatremere de Quincey noted that

conception of the archetypal plant (Urpflanze) only metaphysicians separated the double mean-

and its generation from the 'leaf' came to be ing of eidos-idea and image-and made the idea

interpreted as the schema or common plan of all purely supersensuous and the image material. For

plants [X] n parallel with mid-nineteenth-century 'ideas' were sense in combination with intellect,

conceptions of the unity of animal structure [21.18 and the 'ideal' in art was that which, though

Goethe discussed both the meaning of the mor- visible, partook of the mind. Thus the theory ofphotype and the philosophy of art with Schiller, art did not require the metaphysical division, but

and the type became associated with aesthetic merely recalled it. 'Ideal imitation' was produced

conceptions of style and the ideal in art. 9 As by human intelligence when art imitated not the

Goethe put it, a person accustomed to strictly exterior form revealed to the senses, but the

logical thinking might find it hard to accept that underlying 'reasons of nature', which were the

an 'exact sensory imagination' might exist, but art fruit of deep study of nature. That is, the 'ideal' in

was unthinkable without it.20Goethe discussed its art was the 'typical' which was formed not from

implications for art in an essay on style of 1789, isolated and arbitrarily chosen individuals, but

where he wrote that style was the highest level of according to the generality of natural laws.23

artistic expression: 'Style is based on the profound- As we shall see, the philosophy of Victor

est knowledge, on the essence of things insofar as Cousin (1792-1867) is an especially useful touch-we can recognize it in visible and tangible forms.'21 stone for comparing eighteenth-century notions

In fact, just as deep insight into form in nature of mimesis, the early to mid-nineteenth-century

revealed the typical-that is, the ideal in the conception of indirect imitation, and twentieth-

actual-so art at the level of style was also a visible century abstraction. In 1817 Cousin went to Ger-

representation of the typical or ideal.22 many to study Kant; there he met Hegel, Schel-

By the 1820S, this idea was explicit and wide- ling and Jacobi. He then became an important

interpreter of German idealism in France, and, by

translation of his works, in England and Scotland.

Cousin also translated the works of Plato into

French.24 Cousin's self-admitted eclecticism-the

doctrine that all forms of philosophy contain part

of an underlying deeper truth-proved particu-larly congenial to British thought in the mid-

nineteenth century.25

Cousin's aesthetics are outlined in Du vrai,de/-4S-y 2p4X9 aid beauet du bienof i837.26 There Cousin attempted

g- <^<)l l? > to reconcile the conflicting notions of imitation of

nature that prevailed in the eighteenth century:whether 'nature' should be considered the source

in empirical reality of objects to be represented or

imitated in figurative art, or whether nature was

an essence or Platonic idea of a kind that is but

imperfectly realized in empirical reality. The

affinity of the latter idea to Goethe's type conceptis clear, and it provides the link of transcendental

anatomy to the design of ornament.

Cousin noted that the 'real' school of beautyi Later interpretation of Goethe's Urpflanze, depicting parts assembled the most beautiful parts of manyof plants as modifications of leaves (J. A. Thompson &Patrick Geddes, Life:Outlinesof GeneralBiology,Williams & models into one representation; the resultingNorgate, 1931, Vol. i, Figure 95, p. 677) beauty was, in Cousin's terms, collective but not

130 BarbaraWhitneyKeyser







2 Richard Owen's archetype

-. a~- of the vertebrate skeleton

~~~~~~~(R. Owen, OntheArchetypec,C~ )l andHomologies ftheVertebratekeleton,ohnVanVoorst, 1i848,fold-out insert)

ideal. The 'ideal' school, on the other hand, made Art Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote: 'The most perfect

a complete abstraction of the models of nature, forms of each of the general divisions of the

arguing that by starting with the ideal, the Greeks human figure are ideal, and superior to any

had achieved perfect beauty. According to individual form of that class; yet the highest

Cousin, both of these extreme views of visual art perfection of the human figure is not to be

were incorrect. The answer, for him, was that the found in any one of them.'31 Reynolds's legacy

ideal is poised between the last degree of the was carried into the nineteenth century in the

finite, or nature, and the last degree of the infinite, work of Charles Bell (1774-1842).

or God. Thus God and nature were the twin An anatomist and surgeon, Bell taught ana-

sources of art.28For him, even inorganic bodies tomy to artists, including the future president ofwere subject to law, and where there was law, the Royal Academy, Sir Charles Eastlake.32About

there was intelligence. As Cousin himself put it, the same time as Magendie in France, Bell dis-

'All is symbolic in nature. Form is not form only, it tinguished the roots of the sensory and motor

is the form of something.'29 Nature, then, was nerves in the spinal cord. His Treatise on Ex-

beautiful because it expressed divine intellect. pression, which went through five editions

Cousin's views were reiterated by a Danish between 18o6 and 1865, was itself a re-working

contemporary, the physicist and Naturphilosoph of the long-standing tradition of delineation of

Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851): the passions in academic art instruction tracing

back to the seventeenth-century diagrams ofThe laws of nature in the external world are the same Charles LeBrun in the French Academy-not toas the thoughts within ourselves. The former are the mention the studies of Leonardo da Vinci. In fact,

eternal thoughts which science unfolds, and by which Bell discovered the origins and destinations of theall things are regulated, though they are unconscious sensory and motor nerves in the course of tracingof it themselves; the latter are the same eternal the movements of the muscles of the face underthoughts, but produced in ourselves.Thus, wherever the influence of emotion.a varietyof natural aws co-operateunder one govern-

ing unity, we find everywhere a fulness of ideas; and Bell augh tt anaomy was more than a

I maintain that our inner sense, which is constructed drawing aid; it exposed the deep reasons for thein conformityto the same laws, comprehends this as changes in the body in response to 'intellectualthe Beautiful.30 power and energy'. This was essential in portray-

ing the emotions of actors in subject pictures and

Thus philosophers and physicists concurred that raised historical painting to the level of poetry and

there was a deep connection between the order of history. As Bell put it, 'Anatomy, in its relation to

nature, divine intelligence and timeless principles the arts of design, is, in truth, the grammar of that

of beauty. language in which they address us. The expres-

However, Cousin's real and ideal schools of sion, attitudes, and movements of the human

beauty lingered on in the early nineteenth cen- figure are the characters of this language.'33

tury, and each was connected to a particular However, Bell did not encourage the belief in an

relationship of art and anatomy. The real school ideal beauty underlying appearances. Modems

of the eighteenth century was characteristic of the should not try to duplicate the efforts of antiquity,

English Royal Academy, and in the Discourses on he wrote; for modem society was different from

Ornament s Idea 131







ancient times and should produce beauty of its fabric of nature's works'. The type was the unity

own. Bell's notion of beauty was pragmatic and in diversity; indeed, Coleridge and Schelling were

down-to-earth: artists should not attempt to imit- the first to understand the organic form of know-

ate the divine, because they could not know what ledge itself. Green added that both the artist and

it looked like. Furthermore, classical canons were the artisan-the 'workers' in both the fine and the

lifeless without nature's variety. There was no useful arts-produced by design, that is, 'after a

human power, he added, capable of disengaging pattern in his mind, which he would give an

ourselves from things and rising to a sphere of outward existence to.'37intellectual ideas; for painters had nothing in their In Green we find the adumbration of

heads but what was put there by experience.34On eumorphics and euchromics, as well as the idea

the other hand, study of the anatomical structures that plant form offered the perfect balance of

by which the mind expressed emotion, and the unity and variety. For Green, the elementary

emotions which in turn controlled and modified symbols of visible beauty were lines and colours;

the mind, produced accurate knowledge of the the former could exist alone, but the latter were

relationship between the mind and the body. The perceived only in combination with outline. If line

principles of knowledge so obtained connected was the archetype of beauty in nature, colour was

the depiction of emotion to philosophy and made the archetype of expression. Thus Green reas-

painting a liberal art.35 serted the co-relative role of colour and form in

Clearly Bell was thinking of delineation in visual art. Straight lines alone, he continued,representational subject paintings. To this concep- expressed the character of the lifeless in nature.

tion of anatomy as the principle of variety-that As the line took on curvature, it became asso-

is, expression and the particular-another ana- ciated with the vegetal. The growth of plants

tomist and aesthetician, Joseph Henry Green began with the recently discovered cell, which

(1791-1863), would add the transcendental ana- was the basis and primary element of every

tomists' contribution: the contrary, but co-relative organic structure. The elongation of the sphere

principle of unity-that is, the commonality of the in development and growth showed the straight

deep structure of nature. line subordinated to the curve; and so mere sym-

Green was born in London and educated in metry passed to the proportional. Here, Green

Germany. He returned to London, studied medi- added, we 'begin to feel the satisfaction of the

cine andbecame the demonstrator of anatomy at reconciliation of the powers of Intelligence andSt Thomas's Hospital. In 1817-the same year as Freedom.' Crystals were the highest inorganic

Cousin-he returned to Berlin, where he studied expression of form and the limit of simple recti-

philosophical aesthetics with the Schellingian Karl lineal beauty. The plant represented a higher

W. F. Solger. Green re-crossed the channel and order of unity: that of the spiral curve of life

became a prominent surgeon; he taught anatomy harmonized with linearity. The spiral had both

at the Royal College of Surgeons and at the Royal the character of the straight line, yet showed

Academy of Art, where he remained until 1852. progression and continuity. It symbolized the

He also became a close friend of Samuel Taylor continuance of the past in every present, as well

Coleridge and resolved to finish his magnumopus as the anticipation of the future. The Gothicon philosophy.36 cathedral, viewed in this light, could be regarded

Green's aesthetics show clearly the two faces of as a 'petrifact of a vegetative life, that, withartistic anatomy: expression as variety and the instinctive intelligence, had grown into a self-

deep structure of organisms as unity. The latter constructed temple.'38

was explicitly related to Goethe's conception of The actual scientific discovery of laws of formthe type. A beautiful object resembled nature's in nature were a significant aspect of the devel-

balance of the centripetal force of unity and the opment of abstract ornament. When the sciences

centrifugal force of variety. In addition, the goal of of crystallography,39 botany40 and comparativescientific knowledge was the type, which was the anatomy4 discovered the principles of the deep

identity of the idea: the keystone of the 'arched structure of natural objects, these confirmed the








Neoplatonists' belief in the 'power of similitude'. that all the works of nature and man were subjectThe conviction grew that science had rediscov- to the great principle of unity in variety. The order

ered and corroborated the ancient Greeks' use of of the natural world, he continued, proceeded

beautiful proportion in art. When the geometric from divine intelligence and was addressed to

structure of form was wedded to the canon of human intelligence. For example, the crystallo-

complementary colour, the ultimate result was a grapher HaUy had reduced the forms of the

reversal of the principle of representational paint- inorganic realm to a few primitive types. In

ing. The pure forms underlying the multiplicity of addition, Schleiden's discovery of plant andappearances were used to contain areas of flat animal cell structure showed that cells were the

colour in intricate geometrical arrangements. 'stones of the great temple of nature'; this workThen Victorian abstract ornament, not anecdotal showed also that the primal shape in nature was a

subject paintings, came to embody Cousin's and globe, and the first regular form, a spiral. Finally,

Schelling's idealist aesthetic which had originally the type was the basis of all knowledge of plantbeen invoked to raise fine art to the level of the structure, which was first presented in its true

noumenal. Yet in the eyes of its protagonists, this light by Goethe. Not only was the type in nature

development was not a travesty. We have seen 'suited' to the human mind; but the concept ofthat in the early nineteenth century the notion of biblical types, likewise, could be extended toan ideal type underlying the variety of natural types in nature, which were the handiwork of

forms unified natural philosophy and aesthetics God.44as well as the general and the particular. In Between 1825 and i86o, transcendental ana-

Victorian Britain, it was also considered the tomy dominated natural history in Edinburgh asmark of the divine Designer of the universe. well. The leading British exponent of transcend-

All of these ideas were brought together in ental anatomy was Richard Owen (1804-92), a

transcendental anatomy, which was defined as student of Green who became keeper at the

'the highest department of anatomy; that which, Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Sur-

after details have been ascertained, advances to geons and later at the British Museum in London.

the consideration of the type or plan of structure, In the 184os he expounded his theory that the

the relations between the several parts, and the

theoretical problems thus suggested.'42 Rehbock

adds that the philosophy oftranscendental ana- neural spine

tomy came chiefly from Germans such as Oken

and Goethe and its empirical content from France, zyga~popss. - lbut its variety and longevity were British. Its

principal tenets were that all plants and all ani- -neurapophysis

mals were built on one basic plan, that the plan diapoophyis

was an a priori centripetal force acting against

diversifying environmental factors, that the plan @ - pi'eurapophirs

had no perfect actual exemplar but was discover-

able by creative insight, and that eventually com- , -

parative anatomy would reveal that the apparent pophysis

diversityof natural

thingswas

actuallya

unity.43hmemapophysis

This view was compatible with both Neoplaton-ism and natural theology. A striking example is zygapophysis l

the thought of the Scottish transcendental ana-

tomist and clergyman James McCosh. In a review hwmaJ spine

of the works of Goethe, Richard Owen (the most

important British member of the movement), 3 Richard Owen's ideal vertebra; even the skull, on his

M theory, was made up of fused vertebrae (R. Owen, On theMatthias Schleiden (founder of cell theory), and Archetype and Homologies of the VertebrateSkeleton, John Van

the Rev. Fairbairn's Typologyof Scripture,he noted Voorst, 1848, Figure 14)

Ornament as Idea 133







animal form was an elaboration of an ideal verte- transcendental anatomy in the Edinburgh Aes-bra [3]4 thetical Club. Hay also elaborated principles of

To indicate the complex connections between beauty peculiar to decorative art and thereby

this second generation of natural philosophers, raised its status-and that of the designer.

the leader of the Edinburgh group, Owen's Hay's widowed mother, though educated, was

teacher Robert Knox (1793-1862) studied with poor and had to apprentice her son to a printer.

the great French anatomist Georges Cuvier, The boy showed artistic aptitude, and for a time

admired Goethe and was also taught by a col- he was a successful animal painter. However,league of Charles Bell at the University of Edin- decorative painting proved more profitable, and

burgh. He became Professor of Botany at King's Hay established a successful business in Edin-

College, London, in 1842. Like Bell and Green, burgh in 1828. He attracted the attention of Sir

Knox was interested in the relationship of art and Walter Scott and won a place in the best intellec-

anatomy and wrote Great Artists and Great Ana- tual society in Edinburgh. The interior decorations

tomists in 1852.46 Edward Forbes was another of the National Gallery of Scotland and Queen

Edinburgh transcendental anatomist; his friends Victoria's apartments in Holyrood Palace were his

included transcendental chemists such as Samuel most prestigious commissions.49 He was also well

Brown. Thus Forbes speculated on the transfor- known in London, since he was called to testify

mations of elements and, like Oersted, believed for the 1836 special committee on the status of art

that abstract patterns governed the phenomena of manufactures in England and received the com-nature. mission to decorate the hall of the Society of Arts

Knox's student and Forbes's friend, John Good- in 1846.50 Several of his students, most notablysir (1814-67), provides a direct connection Thomas Bonnar and Robert Carfrae, became suc-

between transcendental anatomy and cessful decorators, and his writings on colour and

'eumorphics'. Goodsir was a friend of the decora- aesthetics went through numerous editions ontor D. R. Hay and founded the Edinburgh Aes- both sides of the Atlantic.51

thetical Club in 1851. He sought geometric Hay's aesthetic theories linked transcendental

regularities in biological form and was fascinated anatomy, Neoplatonism, and the application of

by the ratio of the logarithmic spiral.47This curve abstract principles of pure form and colour in

had been discovered by a Cambridge mathemati- decorative schemes. Hay defined aesthetics as

cian, John Leslie; and, in 1821, Leslie suggested the 'science of beauty'; its principal element wasthat it might be a fundamental organic curve, proportion. The Greeks had developed proportion

suitable for architectural ornament. In 1838, it to the highest level, he continued, but simply

was found to be the ratio of growth of the copying Greek works was not appropriate to

chambered nautilus: it had the unique property modern times. However, natural philosophy hadof growing without changing its shape. In addi- recently traced nature's simplest elements, andtion, it defined the 5:8 rectangle, the Golden good results had been obtained in the useful

Section used in classical Greek temples. Mean- arts. Thus Hay proposed that basic geometricwhile, in the 1830s, German botanists had discov- forms combined in harmonious proportions of

ered that spiral lines could be drawn through the unity and variety were the basis of beauty inleaf attachments of plants and were stunned to design. Citing Charles Bell, Hay proposed that

find that they hadmathematical properties akin to expression was the principle of variety, and geo-the logarithmic curve. The Golden Section then metry the principle of unity. Harmony was the

took on an almost mystical significance as the union of these contrary principles in proportion toprinciple of life and beauty. In 1852, Goodsir each other.52read a paper which claimed that these laws of Like Green and Cousin, Hay argued that thegrowth coincided with the principles of beauty.48 aesthetic response aroused by harmonious combi-

It was the interior decorator David Ramsay Hay nations in the beautiful object conveyed to the(1798-1866) who explicitly appropriated Cousin's mind a pleasure superior to mere sensation, justaesthetics to ornament, under the influence of as intellect was superior to instinct. Hay explicitly








identified beauty with the abstract formality of Welby Pugin's Contrasts of 1836 and Floriated

mathematics: the principles of harmony were Ornamentof 1849. Furthermore, the visual inspira-

mathematical combinations or motions of the tion of flat pattern in medieval art proved com-

elements of matter that aroused analogous patible with the principles of 'symmetrical

responses in the human mind. The knowledge of beauty', and design reform was not totally incom-

their 'modes of reciprocity' constituted the science patible with the Gothic revival. Charles L. East-

of aesthetics. Furthermore, as Oersted also taught, lake (1836-1906), nephew of Sir Charles Eastlake

Hay believed that the harmony of the eye was as (1793-1865), is a striking example. As a furnituremathematical as the harmony of the ear. Visible designer, he was a colleague of Christopher Dres-

beauty was of two kinds, beauty of form and ser and wrote the extremely influential Hints on

beauty of colour, which were mutually enhanced Household Taste in 1868. Yet he also championed

when combined in a single object; thus harmonies the Gothic as the model for contemporary archi-

of colour independent of form were insufficient.53 tecture in The History of the Gothic Revival of 1872.

In this way, Hay began to distinguish between John Ruskin used the crystal-versus-plant meta-

the requirements of 'picturesque' and 'symmetri- phor in his defence of naturalistic-as opposed to

cal' beauty; and it was by this circuitous route that stylized-plant form:

German idealist aesthetics came to be applied to

decorativerather han fine art. Citing Cousin, Hay The mineral crystals group themselves neither in suc-

stated thatwhile beauty was an 'absolute idea', its cession nor in sympathy; but great and small reck-statemboditwhinebeartynvold th interp eden e lessly strivefor place, and deface or distorteach other

eofdthenrea nd ideal. Cnvoun tha interdhepadded, as they gather into opponent asperities.The confused

ot.somethn mualed crowd fills the rock cavity, hanging togetherin a glit-that the English made beauty somethingmutable tering,yet sordid heap ... But the order of the leaves

and special, not universal as the French and the is one of soft and subdued concession ... Each awaits

Germans did. It was true that without the real, art its appointedtime, accepts its preparedplace.55

was lifeless; but without the ideal, it was imper-

fect. The way to create beautiful form was to find Peter Fuller adds that an intermediate stage of

and apply the geometric principles underlying the Ruskin's career was his promotion of 'scientific

variety of appearances. In Hay's reinterpretation Gothic' designs for science museums such as that

of Green, beauty became the harmonious relation of Oxford University, which is still in use. In the

of regularity, or the ideal (unity) and irregularity, 1850s, the idea of building a Gothic scienceor the real (variety).54Thus Hay blended Green's museum was not at all incongruous: as a con-

transcendental anatomy with Cousin's aesthetics temporary commentator wrote, 'Surely where

to produce a mathematical theory of beauty of nature is to be enshrined, there especially ought

abstract colour and form. The resulting prestige of every carved stone and every ornamental device

design and transcendental anatomy lived on at to bear her marks and to set forth her loveliness.'56

the Schools of Design as 'art botany'. The original plan of Ruskin was to show all the

orders of plants in naturalistic carvings on the

Art Botany capitals of the columns, and the geological epochsin the varieties of stone in the columns them-

By the mid-nineteenth century, plant form had selves. Ruskin denied that plant form was beauti-

acquireda

significance borderingon

themeta- ful because of its function; rather, it was beautiful

physical. For example, from the early nineteenth because it was appointed by God-hence his

century onwards crystalline and vegetal form hostility to the design reformers, who stripped

came to be associated with the classical and plants of their particular details and based designs

Gothic styles of architecture and thereby acquired on their underlying geometrical form.57

moral as well as aesthetic overtones. In this way, From the foregoing it is clear that the argu-

too, Victorian fascination with botanizing was ments from natural philosophy in favour of

combined with admiration and nostalgia for plant forms as ideal beauty were anything but

Gothic architecture in works such as Augustus positivism and scientism. Conceptions of scien-

Ornaments Idea 135







tific knowledge in Victorian Britain were not Redgrave was 'converted' to the notion of

limited to dry empiricism, and the Cambridge stylized ornament in 1849, and as an instructor

philosopher and historian of science William in the Schools of Design he taught that style was

Whewell (1794-1866) taught that the moment of not to be found in the imitation of old works.

induction was that which connected facts and Rather, only a thorough acquaintance with nature

ideas to go 'beyond the information given'.58 could produce a style: 'The true law of ornament,

This view was thoroughly compatible with a is to be deduced from the study of nature's laws of

Cousin-like conception of art as a fusion of real growth.' He asked rhetorically, what is the rightand ideal beauty, as well as the ideal type in expression of our love of nature in ornament?

nature too as a fusion of the real and the ideal. Against Ruskin, the answer was not imitative

Even the conception of style itself was, as it had rendering of flowers and foliage. To found a

been for Goethe, connected to the type and to a new style, the ornamentist must be a deeper

Platonic sense of Idea. When Whewell travelled student: 'If he seeks out the mode of development

to Germany to study mineralogy, he also wrote a of vegetable growth, he will find that regularity

treatise on Gothic churches. Significantly, botany and symmetry are the normal laws, while all that

provided the model for describing and compar- is irregular is accidental and extraneous' (emphas-

ing architectural features. In addition, just as he is added). This, he continued, was in accord with

used the history of the various sciences to dis- the principles of ornament in the best periods;

cover the common form of their metamorphoses indeed, this was the true distinction betweenas their leading idea became increasingly rea- pictorial and ornamental art. For, he concluded,

lized, so too with the arts. Comparing the Gothic 'Mere pictorial imitation regards the accidents

with the Greek style, he proposed that the Gothic and disturbances of growth only. The normal

arose out of the Classic style and became, after laws instruct the ornamentist that nature is devel-

an awkward beginning, a different and opposite oped in strict geometrical and numerical

kind of architecture-but one that was equally rhythm.'61

perfect. Eventually, he concluded, the idea, or Another teacher at the Schools of Design was

internal principle of unity and harmony, became the Welsh architect and designer Owen Jones. As

as clear as that which pervaded the buildings of a youth he attended the Royal Academy; then he

antiquity.59 toured Europe in 1831, where he met Semper in

This complex connection between the type, Athens and studied classical architectural poly-style, idea and plant form made up the centre of chromy.62 He travelled on to Cairo, Istanbul and

the self-conscious search for a style appropriate Granada; there he developed a love of Moorish

for the mid-nineteenth century at the Schools of design and earned the nickname 'Alhambra

Design in London. Three of the most prominent Jones'. On returning to England, he supervised

teachers there were Richard Redgrave (1804-88), the interior decoration of the Crystal Palace Exhi-

Owen Jones (1809-74), and Gustav Semper (1803- bition. His classic Grammarof Ornament, which is

79); their most outstanding graduate was Chris- virtually a museum of world ornament in a book,

topher Dresser (1834-1904), whose work both is still widely used. Its aim was to reproduce

reflects and culminates this set of ideas. world ornament so their principles could be ascer-

Richard Redgrave's oeuvre as a painter and tained and emulated, rather than their appearance

designer itself illustrates the principles of pictur- merely copied. The Grammarhas been called 'one

esque and symmetrical beauty as well as art of the founding documents of aggressive modern-

botany. He was a more than competent painter ism',63 but it could also be appreciated as anof genre scenes, many with feminist themes; he opening of European taste to non-European art

also designed art manufactures and wallpapers. forms.

Extremely versatile, he was also a historian of Jones drew an analogy between the unifying

British painting and, in addition to being a principles of structure underlying the manifold

member of the Royal Academy, he became appearances of nature and the structure of gram-

Keeper of the Queen's Pictures.60 mar underlying the various lexicons of languages.








He advised students of ornament to study the

single message expressed in the many languages /

of world ornament: for ornament was beautiful

only when it obeyed the laws of form in nature, r

which likewise represented only a few leading l

ideas. Brett makes this analogy part of his 'slip- G /

pery slope' argument; however, it was widely

current in the mid-nineteenth century. In hisparallel advocacy of the Gothic as a basis for

modern architecture, Charles Eastlake also

invoked it: 'By help of theory and precept . . . 7

the grammar of an ancient art [Gothic] has been i

mastered. Shall we ever be able to pronounce its

language-not in the measured accents of a schol-

astic exercise, but fluently and familiarly as our

mother-tongue?' Eastlake explained that learning

the 'grammar' of a style enabled the architect to | /

reproduce its spirit, without necessarily imitating /' ,

its details.'4Like Hay, Jones recommended a geometrical I P

substrate for ornamental form. Harmony of form

consisted of the proper balance and contrast of -I

straight, inclined and curved lines. Proportions

were to be multiples of a unit, but the most (7

beautiful proportions were subtle and not imme-

diately evident. Representations of natural things, < =

he taught, should be conventionalized to display

the principles, not the superficial appearance, of

their form.Furthermore, single leafcontainedall 4 ChristopherDresser, 'Leavesfrom Nature No. 2', plate in

laws of form in the self-sameness of its

Owen Jones's Grammarf Ornament(0. Jones, Grammarf

nature's lwoffrmthsefsmnsoft Ornament, Day & Son, 1856)parts and in the proportional diminutions of a

series of leaves on a stem.65 Paris and Italy and then practised architecture in

Jones also likened the Alhambra to the Parthe- Dresden, where his opera house still stands. How-

non. The criterion was that of Whewell: for the ever, he was forced to flee during the revolution

Moorish style, like the Classical and the Gothic, of 1848, and spent the years 1849-55 in England

was a completely realized 'idea' or 'type' of with mixed success. He became frustrated with

style.66 According to Jones, the still-unrealized the government's general lack of support for

new style of the nineteenth century would draw artistic institutions and moved to Zurich in 1855.68

on the analogous lessons of nature's types and the Semper defined style as the accord of an art

history of human responses to nature in styles of object with its 'conditions of existence': its genesis

ornament: 'The futureprogress

of ornament is and all thepreconditions

and circumstances of its

best secured by engrafting on the experience of becoming.69 As Semper put it, 'Art, like nature,the past the knowledge we may obtain by a return displays a similar variety of combinations, but

to Nature for fresh inspiration.'67 Perhaps it was cannot exceed nature's bounds by an inch; its

for that reason that Jones included plates of principles of formal configuration must be in

leaves, drawn by his student Christopher Dresser, strict accordance with the laws of nature.'70 In

in his compendium of world ornament [41. this sense, Semper's conception of style resembled

Gottfried Semper also intimately connected the the theory that form in nature was the product of

conception of style and plant form. He studied in dynamic interplay between the interior force of

Ornament s Idea 137







growth, the ensemble of parts required to sustain style to the design of stylized ornament for

life, and exterior conditions. Of all the arrange- machine production. He worked closely with

ments theoretically possible, only a few types and Jones and Semper and graduated in 1854. He

their variants were actually viable. Semper com- lectured on botany at the Schools of Design and

pared his enterprise of working out a history of invoked art botany in the campaign against Rus-

architecture as the history of basic types to the kin's lingering advocacy of naturalistic ornament,

search for the fundamental 'plans' of animal ana- arguing like Hay that it was an inappropriate use

tomy. of pictorial art.73In 186o, Dresser married andHe recalled that in his student days he loved to established his own design studio, which was

stroll in the Jardin des Plantes and contemplate commercially successful until his death in 1904.

the unity and variety of their forms. Thus, like his He fell under the spell of Japanese art and design

English counterparts, Semper constructed a ra- and travelled widely in the Orient and the United

tionale for the beauty of plant form. The true States. He designed in all media, from furniture,

meaning and diversity of symmetry and propor- ceramics, metal and glass to wallpapers, carpets

tionality, he wrote, were combined in plants. The and textiles; his ceiling designs were heavily

plant began and ended its life in the self-contained influenced by Hay and Jones.74

microcosmic globe of the seed and fruit, but its Dresser's scientific botany continued the tradi-

growth was an interaction of its internal formative tion of Goethe, the transcendental anatomists, and

power and the macrocosmic force of gravity. the natural theology of McCosh. He stressed theGravity 'fought' with the distribution of leaves unity of the vegetable kingdom through all the

on the stem; the result was an ordered configura- phenomena of growth and development, organs

tion or proportion. As Semper put it, we 'divine and parts, and classification. Dresser held that the

more than perceive' the law of symmetry as it mutual relations of the 'great system of vegetable

'winds its way through proportionality', thereby creation' expanded the intellect and elevated the

creating the charm the vegetable world exerts on human mind. Underlying the seemingly trifling

the human sensibility. In terms reminiscent of details of botany was the single great principle of

Goethe, he added: truth, which bound the isolated facts and showed

that the system was the work of a single divineIn this struggle of the organic vital force (Lebenskraft) intelligence.75against both the material and will power, nature Dresser's treatise is easily summarized: inunfurls her most glorious creations; t is manifestedin p .a beautiful elastic curve of a palm, whose majestic eaf platted moificationsiof a csingl viafrccoronavigorously straightensup while bending to the produced unity in multiplicity. Echoing Semper,generallaw of gravitation.72 Dresser stated that all varieties of plant form were

produced by the developing energy of growth,Christopher Dresser unified and realized all of and the spiral ratios and proportions so produced

the scientific and aesthetic ideas outlined above. resulted from a single underlying order of gen-

Arguably, he was Europe's first industrial eration. All plants developed centrifugally; their

designer in the modem sense, and he applied a parts showed self-sameness of structure. For ex-

Cousin-like argument to art botany in his cam- ample, the roots and leaves both emerged from

paign to make design the fourth major visual art. the stem, and displayed equal angles. The proto-

For him, art botany united art, science and indus- type of all vegetable structure was the cell, so the

try. units of all plants were similar. Echoing Schleiden,

He came from Glasgow to the Schools of Design Dresser added that the crystals found in the cellsin London, where he also studied scientific botany of plants linked the vegetable and mineral king-

and the principles of form in plants at Kew doms. Not surprisingly, he concluded that there

Gardens. Dresser received an honorary doctorate was 'concord' between all the parts of one plant,

from the University of Jena for his work on between the stages of growth of all plants, and

Goethe's metamorphosis of plants, and he expli- that all plants were homologous.76

citly wedded Goethe's conception of type and However, Dresser used the biological ideas of








the first half of the century to create a style that of temporally and geographically remote 'unified

was indeed new. Dresser followed Goethe and cultures' that had passed away. The knowledge of

Semper in relating the biological type, which the nineteenth century was at hand, and it was

reconciled unity and variety in nature, with the expressible in beautiful forms that did not refer

theory of the successful and well-formed style in directly to visible things at all.80Thus the Roman-

art as the material representation of a distinct tic idea of expression through the indirect imita-

idea. The Art of DecorativeDesign of 1862 contains tion of nature was, in the visual arts, first realized

Dresser's aesthetic ideas, which combine those of in the design of ornament rather than painting [51.Goethe and Cousin. In a parallel with Goethe's By transferring a romantic conception of art as

essay on style-which may well have been delib- the embodiment of the ideal in the actual, prefi-

erate-Dresser argued that merely imitative, or gured in the biological type, from fine art to orna-

naturalistic design, was the lowest form of art. A ment, Dresser flirted with an aesthetic that would

slightly conventionalized natural form was some- dominate art in the first half of the twentieth cen-

what higher, but the highest was ornament on the tury: the notion that the highest art was the visual

level of the Urtyp in botany: 'Conventionalized representation of an idea that could not be seen.

plants, we say, will be found to be nature de-

lineated in her purest or typical form, hence they

are not imitations, but are the embodiment in

form of a mental idea of the perfect plant.'77Thus Dresser used Goethe's conception of style

to elevate ornament rather than fine art to the

realm of the ideal, since 'conventionalization' or

'adaptation' ('stylization' in modern terms) was

the contribution of mind to representation.

For Dresser as for Cousin, beauty was a distinct

sensuous representation of truth: mind embedded

in matter. He asserted that an 'ideal ornament'

was an idea suggested by nature, but like the 7 0

Urtyp it reproduced no existing object. The ideal

ornament was the most exalted artistic creation, 1 gand its design became a truly creative activity.78 0

Furthermore, beauty was the product of know-

ledge; conversely, the contemplation of beauty as .7complex order cultivated the mind. The most 0beautiful proportion was the most subtle, such 0

as the logarithmic spiral which underlay the

seeming lack of order in plant form. Dresser

praised the aesthetician Adolf Zeising's work on

the golden section: the ratio common to Greek

temples, the spiral arrangements of leaves, and

the economy of the universe in general. Suchorder, Dresser believed, had to be the product of 30the divine mind.79

Finally, this interconnection between know-

ledge and creation was the key to breaking awayfrom superficial imitation of the ornament of the

past. Harking back to Herder's call for science asthe subject matter of art, Dresser stressed the

5 ChristopherDresser,designfor a stained-glasswindow (C.futility of merely copying the cultural symbols Dresser,ModernOrnamentation,ondon,1886)

Ornamentas Idea 139







Ornament versus Abstraction late nineteenth century were characterized by cur-

What, then, became of the paradigm of indirect vilinear, stylized plant forms whether the designer

of nature? We have seen how it emerged had the anti-technological bent of a William Morrismitation~~~~~~~~~orhe industrial bent of a Christopher Dresser. The

from classical art theory and transferred the ideal argumeindtrisa art otanyhastoher radigm ofof beauty from human to vegetal form. However, indiret imitai o at was a pariou b-

whn arins rgi. Sece apeae in '9indirectimitationof naturewas a precariousbal-

whpenDecarwin OrigincestofrSpsppebiologicarn ance of the tensions of modernism; it mediated-types became ancestors and biological form sucsfly. brel-h scetii rainls

became a by-product of natural selection. The .s . b

scientific rationale underlying transcendental ana-and functionalism of the public sphere of industrial

tomy and natural theology was destroyed: technology and the subjective, emotional and.di-vidual private sphere. Itwas an inherently unstable

Strict classification of forms supposed constant synthesis that broke down in the 1920s into puristicexcludes in fact any naturalrelationship. The type modernism on the one hand and kitsch on thetheory, the theory of unity of organic composition, other.and the like, are susceptible indeed of two explana- Margaret Olin concurs that the design reformtions-they may be regarded as either expressing a movement of the mid- to late nineteenth centurycreativeplan, or taken as purely Platonic and arche-typal ideas. Bothare tenable on theologicaland meta- involved a complex theory of representation which

physical grounds respectively, but the fact must not has been obscured by controversies around func-

be disguised that of this unity of type no explanation tionalism and the role of ornament in the earlyin the least scientific,i.e., in terms of the phenomena twentieth century. She adds that modernists inter-of the natural world, does or can exist. The needful preted design reform as functionalist, or as unclearsolution was effected by Darwin. The 'Urpflanze' of gropings towards pure form. Indeed, the historio-Goethe, the types of Cuvier, and the like, at once graphy of art in the early to mid-twentieth centurybecame intelligible as schematic representations of has often been interpreted whiggishly as a marchancestral organisms, which in various and varying towards an art with no objects.85 Olin's line ofenvironments,have undergone differentiationnto the argument develops Gombrich'sobservationthatvast multitude of existing forms. All the enigmas of the Victoriandesign reformers' twin preoccupa-structurebecome resolved.8' h itra einrfres wnpecua

tions, the problem of style and the establishment ofStill, the power of similitude in morphology as a scientific rationales for ornament and design, were

principle of form-like chemical rationales for unprecedented in the history of European artcolour harmony-lived on in design after fading theory. However, they disappeared from viewfrom view in science. As we have seen, Dresser's due to the rejection of ornament in the earlyremarkable development of art botany testifies twentieth century on the one hand, and the appro-against the view that the Schools of Design were priation of the aesthetic effects of pure colour anda failure.82Jenkyns adds that in the late nineteenth form in ornament by aesthetic formalism on thecentury practitioners in the 'minor' genres did as other.86 Aesthetic theories that began life in themuch, if not more, to form the taste of the age as applied arts as rationales for art forms which hadeasel painters did. By 1890 taste had swung from a lower status because they lacked humanisticnaturalistic to stylized ornament, and posterity content became the doctrine of fine art when thehas judged the change an improvement.83 notion that art must have content as well as merely

Theworks of Dresser, Morris, Tiffany, Voysey formal elements was excised from aesthetics in theand other members of the Arts and Crafts Move- early twentieth century.87

ment and practitioners of Art Nouveau-the first The eclipse of indirect imitation of nature isnineteenth-century style that was not a revival vividly shown by twentieth-century responses tostyle-are now admired as classics. Some years Victor Cousin's aesthetics. Mark Cheetham hasago, the architectural historian Peter Collins studied the ways in which modernists appro-noted that buildings of similar appearance could priated Cousin to raise the status of abstractreflect very different rationales in the minds of their painting. He critically examines the seeminglybuilders.84 In the same way, decorative arts of the natural connection between abstract painting








and the notion of purity as the symbol of absolute,

universal truth. He notes that abstract painting

'longs impossibly for the immaterial in the mater-

ial' and is 'attracted to the promise of ahistorical

security'.88As reinterpreted by French Symbolists,

Cousin was a direct source of such notions. His

combination of German idealism and Neoplaton-

ism claimed a revelatory power for art that latenineteenth-century positivism denied. As Chee-

tham puts it, Cousin's Neoplatonism 'corrected'

Plato by arguing that art could come into direct

contact with truth. However, since imitation of

nature was seen as preventing such contact with

the noumenal the idea of a non-mimetic art that

focused on the ideal itself appealed to these

artists. An art of non-mimesis was seen as raising

the status of art-and hence was polemically anti-

decorative.89

Cheetham also points out the tension betweenthe anti-scientific stance of abstract art and its

claim-like positivistic science-to be timeless

and universal. Here purist abstraction even coin-

cided with a truly scientistic twentieth-century

aesthetic doctrine: functionalism. For by defini-

tion functionalism embraced an absolute, uncon-

ditional, and timeless notion of beauty; as De

Zurko put it, 'The ardent functionalist maintains

that beauty, or at least a kind of formal perfection,

results automatically from the most perfect

mechanical efficiency.'90 Lastly, Cheetham notesthat like technological notions of art and the

machine aesthetic, dogmatically abstract art

became 'nostalgic for the future'-that is, for an

art that could purify society for ever, in parallel

with such disastrous social experiments as com-

munism and fascism.91

Viewed from an eighteenth-century perspect-

ive, design reform's marshalling of natural philo-

sophy to supplant narrative art with flat pattern

could indeed be seen as a subversion of classical,

humanistic values in art. However, from a twenti-eth-century perspective, this change was merelyan inversion and could even provide a positive

alternative to puristic, dogmatic modernism.

While the conceptions underlying the theory of

indirect imitation of nature are obsolete, its

hidden richness, complexity and holism-that is,

its very impurity-acquit Victorian design theory

of the charge of banality.

BARBARA WHITNEY KEYSER

Queen's University,Kingston, Ontario

Notes

Financial support for this research was generously

grantedby the SocialScienceand HumanitiesResearch

Councilof Canada.1 C.Dresser,TheArtofDecorative esign 1862),Amer-

ican LifeFoundation,1977,p. 189.

2 D. Brett, On Decoration,Lutterworth Press, 1992,

pp. 85-103. The principalnon-polemical survey of

Victoriandesign theory is A. Boe, FromGothicRe-

vival to FunctionalForm,Basil Blackwell, 1957. An

excellentsurvey of styles,which does full justiceto

the rising status of the designer and the complex

interactionof design reformand VictorianGothic

(mentioned below), is C. Gere & M. Whiteway,

Nineteenth-Centuryesign romPugin to Mackintosh,

Weidenfeld&Nicolson, 1993.3 J. Fergusson, An HistoricalEnquiry nto the True

Principles f Beauty n Art, Longman,Brown,Green

& Longman,1849.4 B. Keyser, 'Science and sensibility:chemistryand

the aestheticsof color in the early nineteenth cen-

tury', ColorResearch nd Application, ol. 21, 1996,

pp. 169-79.5 Thesocial and economicimpactof design reform n

itsbroad senseis discussedin detailby C. Campbell,

TheRomantic thicand theSpiritof ModernConsumer-

ism,Basil Blackwell,1987; ts historicalcontextand

implicationsfor architecturalheoryby M. Schwar-zer, GermanArchitectural heoryand the Searchor

Modern dentity,CambridgeUniversity Press, 1995,

pp. 88-127.

6 Forthe enduring egacyof romanticismn thevisual

arts, see C. Rosen & H. Zerner,'Romanticism: he

permanent revolution', in their Romanticism nd

Realism:The Mythologyof Nineteenth-Century rt,

W. W. Norton & Co., 1984, pp. 7-48; for relation-

ships between artistsand industrialists n the late

eighteenth century, see A. Boime,Art in an Age ofRevolution 750-1800, University of Chicago Press,

1987,pp. 185-213.7 E. Gombrich,TheSenseof Order,CornellUniversity

Press,1979, pp.33-62.

8 Sorell defines scientismas 'the belief that science is

the only valuable part of human learning, or the

view that it is always good for subjectsthat do not

belongto sciencetobe placedon a scientific ooting';see T.Sorell,Scientism,Routledge,1991, p. 1.

9 Boime, op. cit., pp. 201-9.

Ornament as Idea 141







lo T. H. Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature, Cambridge

University Press, 1981.

11 For mathematical-technical interests of the early

industrialists, see A. E. Musson & E. Robinson,

Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution,

University of Toronto Press, 1969, pp. 10-59; for

the tradition of mathematical mysticism in architec-

ture as well as in the thought of Newton, see A.

Perez-Gomez, Architecture and the Crisis of ModernScience,MIT Press, 1983.

12 K. Raine, Thomas Taylor the Platonist: Selected Writ-

ings, Princeton University Press, 1969.

13 For the relationship of aesthetics and knowledge,

including the views of Goethe, Herder and Kant, see

J. H. Zammito, The Genesis of Kant's Critique of

Judgment, University of Chicago Press, 1992, pp. 1-

44.14 For romantic science in its cultural context in both

England and Germany, see A. Cunningham & N.

Jardine (eds.), Romanticism and the Sciences, Cam-

bridge University Press, 1990.15 H. Nisbet, Herder and the Philosophy and History of

Science, Modern Humanities Research Association,

1970, pp. 306-10.

16 This account owes much to E. Cassirer, Rousseau,

Kant,Goethe:TwoEssays, Princeton University Press,

1945, pp. 61-96; the quotation is from J. W. von

Goethe, 'Influence of modern philosophy' (1820), in

D. Miller (ed. and tr.), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

Scientific Studies, Suhrkamp, 1988, p. 28; see also

Goethe, 'Judgement through intuitive perception'

(1820), in the same collection.

17 R. H. Brady, 'Form and cause in Goethe's morpho-logy', in F. Amrine, F. Zucker & H. Wheeler (eds.),

Goetheand the Sciences:A Reappraisal,Reidel, 1986,

pp. 257-300.l8 (P. Geddes), 'Morphology', EncyclopaediaBritannica,

Vol. i6, 1890, p. 839.

19 Goethe, 'Modem philosophy', op. cit., p. 30.

20 Goethe, 'Comment on Stiedenroth' (1824), in Miller,

op. cit., p. 46.

21 Goethe, 'Simple imitation of Nature, Manner, Style'

(1789) in J. Gage (ed. and tr.), Goethe on Art, Uni-

versity of California Press, 1980, p. 22.

22 W. Wetzels, 'Organicism and Goethe's aesthetics', inF. Burwick (ed.), Approaches o OrganicForm, Reidel,

1987, p. 84.

23 A. C. Quatremere de Quincey, Essai sur l'imitation

dans les beaux-arts,Treuttel & Wurtz, 1823, pp. 186-

96.

24 F. Coppleston, A History of Philosophy (1962-4),

Image Books, 1985, Vol. 9, pp. 42-7.

25 The English dye chemist and philosopher George

Field, who seems to be James Fergusson's source on

classification of the arts, embraced a similar view;

for a summary, see Keyser, op. cit.

26 V. Cousin, Du vrai, du beau et du bien (1837); the

section on beauty was translated by Jesse Cato

Daniel and published as ThePhilosophyof the Beauti-

ful, Daniel Bixby, 1849.

27 See A. 0. Lovejoy, 'Nature as aesthetic norm',

Essays in the History of Ideas, Johns Hopkins Press,1948, pp. 70-7.

28 Cousin, op. cit., pp. 36-53.

29 Ibid., p. 129.

30 H. C. Oersted, The Soul in Nature, Henry G. Bohn

(1852), p. 36.31 J. Reynolds, Discourses on Art (1797), Collier, 1966,

p. 48.

32 For details, see L. Jordanova, 'The representation of

the human body: art and medicine in the work of

Charles Bell', in B. Allen (ed.), Towardsa Modern Art

World, Yale University Press, 1995, pp. 79-94.

33 C. Bell, TheAnatomy and Philosophy of ExpressionasConnectedwith the Fine Arts (18o6), 5th edn., Henry

G. Bohn, 1865, pp. 1-3.

34 Ibid., pp. 9-23.

35 Ibid., p. 213.

36 J. Green, Spiritual Philosophy: ounded on the teaching

of the late Samuel TaylorColeridge,Macmillan & Co.,

1865, biography of Green by J. Simon, pp. i-xxiii.

Just as Coleridge died without finishing his work

and passed it to Green, so Green frantically worked

on it until the age of 70, passing it to Simon when he

was on his deathbed.

37 J. Green, 'Beauty and expression as the elements ofthe fine arts', Royal Academy lecture published in

TheAthenaeum, no. 842, p. i1o8.

38 J. Green, 'The conditions of beauty in the beautiful

object', Royal Academy lecture published in The

Athenaeum,no. 843, pp. 1135-6.

39 In Essaid'une theoriede la structure des cristaux (Paris,

1784), ReneJuste HaUy (1743-1822) measured the

angles of fractured crystals and demonstrated that

there were only a few types of symmetry which

combined in several ways to produce a large

number of secondary forms.

40 The locus classicus for the history of this subject is A.Arber, The Natural Philosophy of Plant Form, Cam-

bridge University Press, 1950.

41 See E. S. Russell, Form and Function (1916), Univer-

sity of Chicago Press, 1982, for the history of animal

morphology, emphasizing the conflict of Cuvier's

functionalism and those who stressed an a priori

notion of type; see also d'A. Thompson, On Growth

and Form, Cambridge University Press, 1917.








42 American EncyclopedicDictionary (1894), quoted by P.

Rehbock, 'Transcendental anatomy', in Cunning-

ham & Jardine, op. cit., p. 144.

43 Ibid.44 J. McCosh, 'Typology', North British Review, vol. 15,

1851, pp. 389-418.

45 Rehbock, op. cit., p. 153; Owen's most important

works were On the Archetype and Homologies of the

VertebrateSkeletonof 1848 and On the Nature of Limbsof 1849.

46 P. Rehbock, The PhilosophicalNaturalists: Themes in

Early Nineteenth-Century British Biology, University

of Wisconsin Press, p. 37; Knox's book was reprinted

in 1977.

47 Ibid., pp. 91-6.

48 P. C. Ritterbush, 'Organic form: aesthetics and objec-

tivity in the study of form in the life sciences', in G.

S. Rousseau (ed.), Organic Form: The Life of an Idea,

Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, pp. 47-9.

49 I. Gow, The Scottish Interior: Georgian and Victorian

Decor, Edinburgh University Press, 1992, pp. 39-42and 75-9; I. Gow & T. Clifford, The National Galleryof

Scotland: An Architectural and Decorative History,

Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland,

1988, pp. 39-48.

5o Dictionary of National Biography, 1921, Vol. 9, pp. 253-

4.51 Gow, op. cit., p. 102; for the influence of Hay in

North America, see R. W. Moss & G. C. Winkler,

Victorian Interior Decoration:American Interiors 1830-

1900, Henry Holt & Co., 1986, pp. 65-75.

52 D. R. Hay, The Science of Those Proportions by which

the Human Head and Countenance as RepresentedinWorksofAncient GreekArt areDistinguished rom those

of OrdinaryNature,William Blackwood & Sons, 1849,

pp. 21-9.

53 D. R. Hay, The Principles of Beauty in Colour System-

atized, William Blackwood & Sons, 1845, pp. 1-10.

54 Hay, Scienceof Proportions,op. cit., pp. 32-6.

55 J.Ruskin,ModernPainters,London,186o,Vol. 5, p. 29.

56 G. E. Street, quoted by P. Fuller in Theoria:Art, and

the Absenceof Grace,Chatto & Windus, 1988, p. 96.

57 Ibid., p. 97.58 For the connections between the history and philo-

sophy of science and the history and philosophy ofart, see B. Keyser, 'Victorian chromatics,' unpub-

lished dissertation, University of Toronto, 1992,

pp. 171-213 and the literature cited there.

59 W. Whewell, ArchitecturalNotes on GermanChurches,

Deighton, 1830, p. i.

6o For Redgrave's multi-faceted career and works in all

media, see S. B. Casteras & R. Parkinson (eds.),

RichardRedgrave 1804-i888, Yale University Press,

1988. Chapter 5 by Anthony Burton, 'Redgrave as art

educator, museum offical and design theorist'

(pp. 48-70) is quite critical of Redgrave in these

roles. For Redgrave as a colour theorist, see

Keyser, 'Victorian chromatics', op. cit., Ch. 6.

6i G. R. Redgrave (son of Richard Redgrave) (ed.),

Manual of Design, Compiled from the Writings and

Addresses of Richard Redgrave,RA, Chapman & Hall,

1890, pp. 18-27.62 D. Van Zanten, The Architectural Polychromy of the

18305, Garland Publishing Inc., 1977. For Semper,

see pp. 52-77; for Jones, see pp. 256ff.

63 Brett, op. cit., p. 22.

64 C. L. Eastlake, A History of the GothicRevival (1872),

American Life Foundation, 1975, p. 372. For the

intellectual context of the intriguing but complex

relationship between comparative anatomy and lin-

guistics in the early nineteenth century, see E.

Picardi, 'Some problems of classification in linguist-

ics and biology', HistoriographiaLinguistica, vol. 4,

1977, pp.31-57.65 0. Jones, The Grammar of Ornament (1856), Van

Nostrand Reinhold Ltd., 1982, passim.

66 Ibid., p. 66. Recent works on design theory that treat

the Islamic tradition as the most perfect realization

of ornament as art include 0. Grabar, The Mediation

of Ornament,Princeton University Press, 1992, and

F.-L. Kroll, Das Ornament in der Kunsttheoriedes 19.

jahrhunderts,Olms Verlag, 1987; the latter emphas-

izes German theory after 186o.

67 Jones, op. cit., p. 2.

68 W. Herrmann, GottfriedSemper: n Searchof Architec-

ture, MIT Press, 1989, pp. 9-83.69 H. Mallgrave & W. Herrmann (eds. and tr.), Gott-

fried Semper:The Four Elements of Architecture and

Other Writings, Cambridge University Press, 1989,

p. 269.

70 G. Semper, Der Stil (186o) in Mallgrave & Herrmann,

op. cit., p. 209.

71 This sense is captured well in the German term for

biological type: Bauplan.Semper's primal types were

the hearth, enclosure, mound and roof (H. Quitzsch,

Gottfried Semper:Praktische Asthetik und politischer

Kampf,F. Vieweg & Sohn, 1981, p. 4).

72 Mallgrave & Herrmann, op. cit., p. 206.73 W. Hal6n, ChristopherDresser, Phaidon and Chris-

tie's, 1990, pp. 9-32. Fuller, op. cit., pp. 33-43,

explains Ruskin's advocacy of naturalistic ornament

by his interpretation of natural theology.

74 Ibid., passim; Halen devotes a chapter to each

medium.

75 C. Dresser, Unity in Variety, as Deduced from the

VegetableKingdom:beingan attemptat developingthat

Ornamentas Idea 143







oneness which is discoverablein the habits, mode of

growth, and principle of construction of all plants,

James S. Virtue, 186o, pp. xi-xiv.

76 Summarized from Ibid., Ch. 20, 'The unity of plants

from general considerations', which summarizes the

circular argument of the book.

77 C. Dresser, TheArt of DecorativeDesign, op. cit., p. 38.

78 Ibid., p. 40.

79 Ibid., pp. lo and 71-81; cf. A. Zeising, AesthetischeForschungen,Meidinger, 1855.

8o Ibid., pp. 167-8.

81 (P. Geddes), 'Morphology', EncyclopaediaBritannica,

Vol. i6, 1890, p. 840. See also G. Lauder, 'Introduc-

tion' to Russell, op. cit. For the singular inappropri-

ateness of Darwin's evolution by natural selection as

a biological rationale for art and design, see P.

Steadman, The Evolution of Designs: Biological Ana-

logy in Architecture and the Fine Arts, Cambridge

University Press, 1979. Steadman is sceptical of

organic analogies in general. While his section on

transcendental anatomy is brief (pp. 23-32), it is alsoextremely critical; however, his secondary sources

predate the revival of interest in and sympathy for

transcendental anatomy and romantic science

among historians of science. Another work that

emphasizes post-Darwinian disenchantment with

nature in art theory is C. Woodring, Nature into

Art: Cultural Transformations n Nineteenth-Century

Britain, Harvard University Press, 1989. See also

Fuller, op. cit.

82 S. Calloway, introduction to C. Dresser, Studies in

Design (1876), Studio Editions, 1988, u.p. For a

negative view of the Schools, see S. Macdonald,

The History and Philosophyof Art Education,Univer-

sity of London Press, 1970.

83 R. Jenkyns, Dignity and Decadence:Victorian Art and

the Classical Inheritance,Fontana, 1992, pp. 167 and

298.84 P. Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture

1750-1950, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1965,

p. loo. Here Collins notes the many, and often

conflicting, rationales for Victorian Gothic architec-

ture.

85 M. Olin, FormsofRepresentationn Alois Riegl's Theory

of Art, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992,

P. 39.86 E. Gombrich, op. cit., p. 54.

87 For details, see M. Muller, Die Verdringung des

Ornaments:Zum VerhdltnisvonArchitekturund Leben-

spraxis, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1977.

88 M. A. Cheetham, The Rhetoric of Purity: Essentialist

Theoryand theAdventofAbstractPainting, Cambridge

University Press, 1991, pp. xi-xii.

89 Ibid., pp. 35-45.

90 Edward Robert De Zurko, Origins of Functionalist

Theory,Columbia University Press, 1957, caption to

frontis (an illustration of gas-refining equipment).

91 Cheetham, op. cit., p. 64.


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