Owen Jones: The History of Joseph and His Brethren

Owen Jones (1809-1874) was a British architect, decorative artist, author and educator. Through his efforts to publish his findings on the historic use of colour in decoration, he also became one of the pioneers of chromolithography. He published many seminal and definitive works, including The Grammar of Ornament (1856), a highly influential book in ornamentation and decorative arts.

The borders alone make this illuminated book memorable, and the illustrations are wonderful too. These images come from a completely disbound and very discolored, spotted and darkened copy I came across. I had to do a lot of image enhancement after the initial scans, and while I have restored most of the luster there may be some distortion from the original shades. This seen on some of the matched borders, which originally were identical but are now slightly different in some of the images.

For anyone who is interested I have the raw, unedited, full pages as a separate sub-album. They are larger (and very dirty and ragged), so not as useful for most purposes.

Day & Son, 1869.