Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local

Description

This lavishly illustrated volume is the first major global history of ornament from the Middle Ages to today. Crossing historical and geographical boundaries in unprecedented ways and considering the role of ornament in both art and architecture, Histories of Ornament offers a nuanced examination that integrates medieval, Renaissance, baroque, and

Gulru Necipoglu is the Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art and director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University. She is the author of The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton) and The Topkapi Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture. Alina Payne is the Alexander P. Misheff Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University and Paul E. Geier Director of Villa I Tatti, The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti in Florence. She is the author of The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance and From Ornament to Object: Genealogies of Architectural Modernism.

"After its famous denunciation by Adolf Loos, ornament seemed a wasteful frivolity to most architects and designers. But that attitude has lost steam in recent years, as firms derive much of their revenue by building in places with a healthier regard for pattern and decoration. Right at the outset, this scholarly tome firmly establishes the vitality of architectural ornament today, leaving readers to peruse premodern histories after having shed their Loosian prejudice."--Metropolis "[A] handsome book."--Peter Parker, A Magazine for RIBA Friends of Architecture "[An] important volume ... seamlessly edited by Necipo?lu and Payne, [the book] covers an unprecedented and stringent collection of scholarly research and reflection. It is not a history of ornament per se, but rather a rigorous and sometimes cautionary record of the history of ornament's shifting meaning and theoretical basis. This volume assesses ornament as a legitimate aspect of designing the future built environment. It is neither elegy nor encyclopedia; the purpose instead is summed up simply in the editors' introduction as 'to address what ornament does .' The result is a summons to surrender preconceived notions about ornament as somehow apart from or inferior to architecture in its full range of possible expression."--Paul Gunther, Architect's Newspaper "An exceptionally stimulating ... collection of essays on a topic that is certain to be of increasing importance to our discipline."--Kathleen James-Chakraborty, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians