Product Review

The Practical Decorator and Ornamentist was the last and one of the most important of the great chromolithographic collections of decorative ornament produced in the Victorian era. Created by two noted British architects and published in 1892, it presents a magnificent array of finely drawn patterns and designs in full color.
The designs are primarily flat ornament ideal for the purposes of interior design, and were directed to architects, painters, decorators, and designers of the period for use in their commissions. This beautiful book brings back into print all 100 of the original plates. Every effort has been made to duplicate the splendid achievement of the original.
The royalty-free patterns and motifs span a wide spectrum of ornamental styles: Greek and Neo-Greco moldings, panel decorations, corner ornaments, friezes and pilaster designs; medieval roof or ceiling ornamentation, "masonry" and "brick" patterns, fabric designs and decorations for rafters and beams; Renaissance coffer or panel ornamentation, rosettes, and diaper patterns; Japanese fret bands or borders, characteristic powderings of medallions, flowers and leaves, and Imperial crests; conventional floral ornament, including studies of the rose, patera or panel ornaments, and crestings of conventionalized flowers; and a miscellaneous grouping of bands, borders, powderings, centerpieces, pillars, finials, and more. All were drawn and painted with the supple flourish and superb attention to detail for which the Victorians were famous.