OWEN JONES AND THE EARLY V&A

Zoom lecture by Olivia Horsfall Turner FSA at 6.00 pm (London). Owen Jones, who died 150 years ago in April 1874, 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 new research it will shed light on both Jones’s ideas about design and the identity of the V&A.