This rare collection, originally published in Germany during the 1860s, presents a wealth of designs from temples and other buildings of ancient Greece and Rome. The seventy-one black-and-white plates include mythological creatures, floral borders, engraved columns and capitals, and many other decorative motifs, all rendered with the delicacy and precision characteristic of classical ornament. A valuable source of royalty-free illustrations, this compilation abounds in images that will provide a touch of authenticity to any graphic project related to ancient Greece or Rome. Fine art aficionados, crafters and designers, and collectors of classical art will rejoice in this inexpensive volume and its hard-to-find artwork.

By analyzing this poetry - the tropes founded on the Greek terms for ornamental detail - he reconstructs a classical theory about the origin and meaning of the orders, one that links them to ancient sacrificial ritual and myth.

This text is a wide-ranging consideration of the cultural and symbolic significance of ornament, its rejection by modernism and its subsequent reinvention. Trilling explains how ornament works, why it has to be explained and why it matters.

In a wide-ranging and richly illustrated book, the authors begin by tracing the ways ornament has been used over the last five centuries, the rules of decorum and etiquette associated with it, and the social, moral and spiritual values it has represented. They examine how architecture set the agenda for ornament in the Renaissance, and how printed images carried a common vocabulary of ornament throughout the Western world. They survey the personal side of ornament, both in dress and in the domestic interior - a private expression of the self and a public statement of social and cultural status. They look at ornament in the public domain - from the lavish decoration and symbolism of a town pageant to the logos of today's corporate industry - and show how the ever-evolving role of ornament is to invent and embody the collective spirit of communities at work and at leisure. They conclude by discussing how the Western tradition of ornament has responded to and absorbed 'exotic' African and Asian motifs: Moresque motifs of the Near East and such familiar designs as the 'Paisley' and Willow" patterns.

Powers thereby posits a relationship between art and society that operates at a level deeper than iconography, attributes, or social institutions."--BOOK JACKET.

Perhaps the finest record of classical architecture ever made. Detailed illustrations offer unparalleled three-dimensionality and effects of scale. Parthenon, Roman temples, Pantheon, Colosseum, many others. Introductory notes. Preface. 127 plates.