THE GRAMMAR OF ORNAMENT ... ILLUSTRATED BY EXAMPLES FROM VARIOUS STYLES OF ORNAMENT....

London: Day and Son, Lithographers to the Queen, 1856.. Large folio (57 x 38 cm; 22.5 x 15 inches). Publisher's three quarter dark maroon morocco and brown cloth, with large gilt red morocco title label on upper board. Letterpress title in red and black, additional chromolithographed title and one hundred chromolithographed plates (a few tinted, the majority in brilliant colors). Joints and extremities worn, with cracking to upper joint (with 20 cm narrow separation down from top), thumb-size surface snag in cloth on lower board, 9 x 6 cm light angular discoloration at top of front board, two 20th century ownership inscriptions on front endsheet, occasional offset from plates to tissue guards, tissue guard for plate 46 torn and detached, rare modest foxing and/or finger smudging to the margins of an occasional plate and more often to tissue guards, rear endsheets heavily foxed, with consequent foxing to plate 100, which also has a shallow tidemark in the top margin toward the gutter. Withal, internally a very good or somewhat better copy. First edition. Illustrated with 100 folio plates numbered in (with an exception or two) Roman, drawn on stone by F. Bedford and printed in colors by Day and Son. With additional wood-engraved illustrations in text. Jones (1809 - 1874) brought to his career as an artist his experiences as an architect, which influenced the subject of his DETAILS AND ORNAMENTS FROM THE ALHAMBRA, and this, "the culminating work of Jones's career ... Jones's remarkable synthesis is not only a notable illustrated book, but a great book tout court" - Ray. It enjoyed successive editions, the monumental production expenses being justified by the book having been adopted as a required text for use in the British schools of design. In addition to the illustrative element, Jones included in the text his rationale for ornamental art, and thirty-seven propositions concerning the arrangement of color in architecture and decorative arts. Ray, THE ILLUSTRATOR AND THE BOOK IN ENGLAND FROM 1790 TO 1914, 228.