Grammar of Chinese Ornament
128pp, with over 100 full colour plate illustrations. Red cloth-covered boards with gilt titles on spine. Burgundy endpapers. Folio. . Boards very, very slightly rubbed on extreme corners, else neat, clean, bright and tight throughout. In its original, handsome dust jacket, lightly bumped at edges. After the fall of the Ti-Ping rebellion in China in the middle of the 19th century, public buildings all over the country were plundered and hundreds of works of Chinese ornamental art were brought to Europe. Owen Jones, author of The Grammar of Ornament (1856) was delighted by this: he collected as wide a variety of styles as he could, many of which are reproduced in this volume.