An excerpt from the INTRODUCTORY:
WE desire to offer to the public a few introductory remarks on Ornamental Art, a subject which we have endeavored to illustrate, in a very elementary manner, in the first book of our Industrial Drawing Series. We are aware that those who have given the subject but little attention entertain very erroneous ideas of the importance and value of a knowledge of the principles and practice of decoration, as applied to the products of human industry. A very little reflection, however, must convince the most utilitarian, that, in an advanced stage of society, decoration enters so fully into all works of art as to constitute, in perhaps a majority of cases, the greater part of their market value. We see the principle illustrated in the importance that is attached to surface ornamentation in the manufacture of carpets, and oil-cloths, and matting, and wall-paper, and curtains; in printed cloths, and other articles designed for dress; in crochet and tapestry work; in the elegant forms required for vases, and all crockery and earthenware; alike in the fine sculpture of the most delicate ornaments and the chiseling of stone for public and private dwellings; in all mouldings of wood, and iron, and other ornamental work in architecture; and it is found to enter into all plans and patterns of utensils and tools, and into all objects of art which may be deemed capable of improvement by giving to them increased beauty of form and proportion. Indeed, all the vast variety of form and color which we observe in the works of man, beyond the requirements of the most barren utility, is, simply, ornamentation. Beginning with the savage, with whom ornament precedes dress, it has been the study of man in all ages not only to make art beautiful, but to improve upon nature also. The subject is thus seen to embrace all that, in industrial art, marks the advance of civilization; and decoration may be taken as a true exponent, in every stage of its development, of the progress of society; for the comforts and the elegancies of life are ever found to grow together.
Inasmuch, therefore, as ornamentation enters so largely into the daily life of civilized society as to be everywhere recognized, studied, admired, and practiced, it would seem not only appropriate, but very desirable, that its elementary principles, at least, should find a place at the beginning of every system of public instruction-and, where they properly belong, in the study and practice of Industrial Drawing.
England is so decidedly a manufacturing country, that art education has there long been deemed a national necessity: and it is not only thought important that the manufacturer should understand the laws of beauty, and the principles of design, in order that his products may command a ready market, but that the artisan also-the mere workman in art-shall possess something of the skill which comes from educated taste. More than thirty years ago a British Association for the Advancement of Art, composed of the chief nobility, capitalists, bankers, merchants, and manufacturers of the kingdom, sent out the declaration and appeal, that, without a pre-eminence in the arts of design, British manufacturers could not retain, and must eventually lose, their superiority in foreign markets. But the English government remained, for years, deaf to the warning; and at the great Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations, held in London in 1851, England found herself almost at the bottom of the list in respect to excellence of design in her art manufactures-only the United States, among the great nations, being below her. This discovery aroused the English government to a realizing sense of the vast importance of the highest and most widely diffused art education for a manufacturing people; and the result was the speedy establishment of an Educational Department of Science and Art, from which Schools of Design have radiated all over the country....