Ornamental Prints online

From the mid-15th century onward, reproduction techniques such as woodcut and wood engraving as well as later innovations in print-making, such as copper engraving and etching, formed the basis of one of the first large-scale cultural transfers to take place within Europe: the dissemination of ornamental prints. The production of large runs of ornamental prints by publishers and printers made it possible for local, regional and national forms of artistic visualization in painting and ornamentation to be circulated throughout Europe. The transfer of ornamental prints as a medium of cultural exchange resulted in a constantly accelerating fluctuation of ornamental styles and trends. Designs from ornamental prints soon served as inspiration for craftsmen, architects, master builders and applied artists of all kinds on a broad basis. As in painting, characteristic schools of ornament developed, which were named after their countries and cities of origin and which, over the centuries, gradually incorporated influences from India, the Islamic world and other parts of Asia into the ornamental canon. Today the term “ornament” is often incorrectly associated exclusively with art jewelry or decoration, as a kind of accessory to applied art, as it were. It is often wrongly claimed that ornament has no narrative character; sociocultural backgrounds and influences are disputed. Design models subsumed under the term “ornamental print” include architectural treatises, interior decorations, emblem books, signs and marks of publishers and printers, type specimens and free ornaments. But ornamental print collections also include battle alignments and portraits. The designation “ornamental print” became established as a genre term as a result of research and cataloguing done on the various collections towards the end of the 19th century. It is also important to note that this genre includes not only engravings, but also prints made by means of a wide variety of techniques. Ornamental prints acquired particular importance at the end of the 19th century in the course of the “scientification” of art history. The various theoretical approaches taken by researchers of the time to the study of the development of styles and forms significantly influenced the field of art history and helped it to develop. It is therefore not surprising that the first museums of applied arts, such as the South Kensington Museum (now called the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, founded in 1852), the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum for Art and Industry (today’s MAK, Vienna, founded in 1863), the UPM – Uměleckoprůmyslové museum (Prague, founded in 1885) and the Art Library in Berlin incorporated into the German Museum of Decorative Arts in 1867 very soon acquired large numbers of ornamental prints in order to provide models for their students. Today, ornamental prints are considered to be significant historical source material and are being studied anew from a variety of aspects, not only by art historians but also as part of the discipline of Cultural Studies. It is therefore high time to provide researchers with a practicable tool in the form of an online study of sources, especially since contemporary design and architecture have rediscovered ornamental prints as a medium of teaching and inspiration. “Star” architects today, for instance, are fond of elevating their work, in their ratiocinatio, with architecture treatises whose philosophical and aesthetic roots can be traced back to Vitruvius’ “De architectura libri decem”. The present project focuses on ornamental prints from the 15th to the early 19th centuries. In 2006/2007, with financial support from the EU within the framework of the Culture 2000 program, three renowned institutions of applied arts, the Art Library of the National Museums in Berlin, the UPM – Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague and the MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art in Vienna, all of which possess important collections of historical ornamental prints, collaborated on this project to make some 32,000 ornamental prints accessible online (www.ornamentalprints.eu). The prints were scanned and their data formally collected and entered. At working meetings in Berlin, Prague and Vienna, the guiding principles of the project, as well as methodological and technical aspects, were laid down – and as of the end of September 2007, the project is accessible online. An introduction into the history of ornamental prints will assist the user by providing a virtual overview of the subject matter as well as more detailed information and instruction. The partner institutions which participated in the EU project “Ornamental prints. Dissemination of Design from the Renaissance to the Biedermeier Period” conceive of this project as a first step in the dissemination of information about the field of ornament. The long-term perspective of this project envisions the development of a global, easily accessible online medium offering information about this many-faceted artistic field and providing virtual access to the three ornamental print collections. In addition, three exhibitions on ornamentation (“Ornament and Architecture. The Beauty of Utiliy” at the Art Library in Berlin, “Pattern Collections of Mannerism and Baroque” at the UPM in Prague, and “From Grotesquerie to the Grotesque. On the Topicality of Ornaments” at the MAK in Vienna) will provide insights into specific aspects of the individual collections. A central element of all three exhibitions will be a historical outline of the development of ornamental prints as illustrated by significant examples, copies of which are included in all three collections.

Peter Klinger