Online Autumn Lecture Series
Crossing Boundaries: Victorian art, Design and Architecture
We are used to the idea of Victorian architecture, art and design as separate disciplines, with their own historians. But that seriously misrepresents the way that many nineteenth-century architects and designers thought and practiced. They conceived of the fine and decorative arts as part of an architectural whole – a total work of art.
These lectures will boldly break down disciplinary boundaries in a discussion of the use of colour and texture across the whole range of Victorian design and analyses of the important roles played by mosaic, stained glass, embroidery and three-dimensional wall coverings.
Owen Jones and the V&A
Wed 20 November, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Owen Jones was one of the most influential designers and theorists of mid-19th-century Britain. He also had a particularly close relationship with the engine of design education that was the South Kensington Museum. This talk will examine each of the projects that linked Jones and the early V&A: his famous illustrated publication The Grammar of Ornament (1856), his decorative scheme for the so-called ‘Oriental Court’, and his relatively little-known book Examples of Chinese Ornament (1867). Drawing on research for Owen Jones and the V&A: Ornament for a Modern Age (2023), this lecture will shed new light on both Jones’s ideas about architecture, ornament, and the identity of the early V&A.
Dr Olivia Horsfall Turner is Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, where she looks after the collection of design drawings and models. She is the author of Owen Jones and the V&A: Ornament for a Modern Age (Lund Humphries/V&A, 2023).
All attendees will be sent a recording of the talk.
Image: 2019LJ3915: Design by Owen Jones for Plate 10 in Examples of Chinese Ornament (1867), 1866. V&A E.54-2018. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.