General principles in the arrangement of form and color
in architecture and the decorative arts.

by Owen Jones (1809 - 1874)

about the author:
Owen Jones was one of the most influential designers and design theorists of the 19th century. Her was an English architect, designer, and teacher of design . He was Superintendent of Works for the Great Exhibition of 1851 and his decoration of the Crystal Palace was widely admired. He travelled extensively and was one of the first designers to study Hispano-Moresque art. Throughout his lifetime, he greatly influenced the evolution and development of the arts.

Proposition 1: (general principles)
The decorative arts arise from, and should be properly attendant upon, Architecture.


Proposition 2:
Architecture is the material expression of the wants, the faculties, and the sentiments, of the age in which it was created.
(Style in Architecture is the peculiar form that expression takes under the influence of climate and materials at hand.)


Proposition 3:
As Architecture, so all works of the Decorative arts, should possess fitness, proportion, harmony, the result of all which is repose.


Proposition 4:
True beauty results from that repose which the mind feels when the eye, the intellect, and the affections, are satisfied from the absence of any want.


Proposition 5:
Construction should be decorated. Decoration should never be purposely constructed.
(That which is beautiful is true; that which is true must be beautiful.)


Proposition 6: (on general form)
Beauty of form is produced by lines growing out one from the other in gradual undulations: there are no excrescences; nothing could be removed and leave the design equally good or better.


Proposition 7: (decoration of the surface)
The general forms being first cared for, these should be subdivided and ornamented by general lines; the interstices may then be filled in with ornament, which may again be subdivided and enriched for closer inspection.


Proposition 8:
All ornament should be based upon a geometrical construction.


Proposition 9: (on proportion)
As in every perfect work of Architecture a true proportion will be found to reign between the members which compose it, so throughout the Decorative Arts every assemblage of forms should be arranged on certain definite proportions; the whole and each particular member should be a multiple of some simple unit.
(Those proportions will be the most beautiful which it will be most difficult for the eye to detect. Thus, the proportion of a double square, or 4 to 8, will be less beautiful than the more subtle ration of 5 to 8; 3 to 6, than 3 to 7; 3 to 9, than 3 to 8; 3 to 4, than 3 to 5.)


Proposition 10: (on harmony and contrast)
Harmony of form consists in the proper balancing and contrast of, the srtait, the inclined, and the curved.


Proposition 11: (distribution, radiation, and continuity)
In surface decoration all lines should flow out of a parent stem. Every ornament, however distant, should be traced to its branch and root.
(oriental practice)


Proposition 12:
All junctions of curved lines with curved or of curved lines with strait should be tangential to each other.
(oriental practice in accordance with natural law)


Proposition 13: (on the conventionality of natural forms)
Flowers or other natural objects should not be used as ornaments, but conventional representations founded upon them sufficiently suggestive to convey the intended image to the mind, without destroying the unity of the object they are employed to decorate.
(Universally obeyed in the best periods of art, equally violated when art declines.)


Proposition 14: (on color generally)
Color is used to assist in the development of form, and to distinguish objects or parts of objects one from another.


Proposition 15:
Color is used to assist light and shade, helping the undulations of form by the proper distribution of the several colors.


Proposition 16:
These objects are best attained by the use of the primary colors on small surfaces and in small quantities, balanced and supported by the secondary and tertiary colors on the larger masses.


Proposition 17:
The primary colors should be used on the upper portions of objects, the secondary and tertiary on the lower.


Proposition 18: (Field's chromatic equivelents, the proportions by which harmony in coloring is produced)
The primaries of equal intensities will harmonize or neutralize each other, in the proportions of 3 yellow, 5 red, and 8 blue, - integrally as 16.
The secondaries in the proportions of 8 orange, 13 purple, 11 green, - integrally as 32. The tertiaries, 19 citrine, 21 russet, 24 olive, - integrally as 64.
It follows that, each secondary being a compound of two primaries is neutralized by the remaining primary in the same proportion. Each tertiary being a compound of two secondaries, is neutralized by the remaining secondary.


Proposition 19:
When a full color is contrasted with another of a lower tone, the volume of the latter must be proportionatly increased.


Proposition 20:
When a primary tinged with another primary is contrasted with a secondary, the secondary must have a hue of the third primary.


Proposition 21: (positions the several colors should occupy)
In using the primary colors on molded surfaces, we should place blue, which retires, on the concave surfaces; yellow, which advances, on the convex; and red, the intermediate color, on the undersides; separating the colors by white on the vertical planes.


Proposition 22:
The various colors should be so blended that the objects colored, when viewed at a distance, should present a neutralized bloom.


Proposition 23:
No composition can ever be perfect in which any one of the three primary colors is wanting, either in it's natural state or in combination.


Proposition 24: (law of simultaneous contrasts of colors)
When two tones of the same color are juxtaposed, the light color will appear lighter, and the dark color darker.


Proposition 25:
When two different colors are juxtaposed, they recieve a double modification; first, as to their tone, second as to their hue. Each will be tinged with the complementary color of the other.


Proposition 26:
Colors on white grounds appear darker, on black grounds lighter.


Proposition 27:
Black grounds suffer when opposed to colors which give a luminous complementary.


Proposition 28:
Colors should never be allowed to impinge upon each other.


Proposition 29: (increasing the harmonious effects of juxtaposed colors)
When ornaments in a color are on a ground of a contrasting color, the ornament should be separated from the ground by an edging of lighter color; as a red flower on a green ground should have an edging of lighter red.


Proposition 30:
When ornaments in a color are on a gold ground, the ornaments should be separated from the ground by an edging of a darker color.


Proposition 31:
Gold ornaments on any colored ground should be outlined with black.


Proposition 32:
Ornaments of any color may be separated from grounds of any other color by edgings of white, gold, or black.


Proposition 33:
Ornaments in any color, or in gold, may be used on white or black grounds, without outline or edging.


Proposition 34:
In "self-tints", tones, or shades of the same color, a light tint on a dark ground may be used without outline; but a dark ornament on a light ground requires to be outlined with a still darker tint.


Proposition 35: (on imitations)
Imitations, such as the graining of woods, and of the various colored marbles, allowable only, when the employment of the thing imitated would not have been inconsistant.


Proposition 36:
The principles discoverable in the works of the past belong to us; not so the results. It is taking the end for the means.


Proposition 37:
No improvement can take place in the arts of the present generation until all classes, Artists, Manufacturers, and the Public, are better educated in Art, and the existence of general principles is more fully recognised.