500 STYLES OF ORNAMENT EXHIBITED IN DESIGNS AND ARRANGED IN A HANDBOOK FOR ARCHITECTS, DESIGNERS, PAINTERS, SCULPTORS, BY ALEXANDER SPELTZ ARCHITECT TRANSLATED FROM THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION BY DAVID O'CONOR 400 FULL-PAGES ILLUSTRATIONS TEXT REGAN PUBLISHING CORPORATION, CHICAGO, ILL. 1923 EDITOR'S PREFACE. The first German edition of this work was published in 1904 and met with such signal success that its author Herr Alexander Speltz was called upon to bring out a second edition two years later. In this edition the number of plates was increased from three to four hundred which enabled the author to give a more complete representation of ornament as developed in England and America than had been at first contemplated. The original work was undertaken with the object of representing the entire range of ornament in all its different styles from pre-historic times till the middle of the 19th century and to illustrate the different uses to which it had been applied. The whole of the illustrations which were taken from the best authorities on each subject and period were drawn specially for the work and evince the remarkable industry and knowledge of the author and his artistic power in representing ornament. In fact it is only necessary to glance through the several plates to see how closely the author has caught the style and character of each period. Acknowledgments of the sources are made throughout the work and in addition a special list of books of reference, including those which have been drawn upon for illustrations, has been inserted at the end of the volume. An English edition was published in America in 1906 for sale in that country only, but the historical accounts were not in accordance with the latest research and many of the descriptions to the plates had suffered so much in translation that very considerable revision was necessary in preparing the present issue. Three new plates of English Ornament have been added to this edition taking the place of others which it was found necessary to delete, various changes have also been made in the headings to some of the chapters and in the terms employed, more particularly in the section devoted to the Renaissance period; for instance the term "Barocco", which although well-known and recognised throughout Germany is but seldom used here, has been replaced by "Later Renaissance" which is more familiar to the English student and includes that which used to be known as the pure Italian style introduced by Inigo Jones. 124115 |