Pugin's Gothic Ornament

The Classic Sourcebook of Decorative Motifs with 100 Plates

Augustus C. Pugin

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780486255002
• eBook ISBN: 9780486155425
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

An architect and archaeologist born in France, Augustus Charles Pugin (1762–1832) fled to England during the Revolution and worked there for 17 years in the London office of the noted architect John Nash. Pugin's interest in the Gothic style — coming early during the Gothic Revival — resulted in this influential and exquisitely drawn book of architectural ornaments, each item copied with rare precision and flair from the original decoration.
The 100 superb royalty-free plates in the present volume have been meticulously reproduced from a very rare early edition of plates dating from 1828–31. Here is a wealth of floral, foliate, and other designs rendered from panels, capitals, borders, brackets, friezes, and other decorative elements adorning (primarily) ecclesiastical architecture. Included are finely detailed drawings of grotesques from the New College Chapel at Oxford, wooden choir-stall finials and elbow rests, wooden door ornaments and stone stringcourses from Rouen Cathedral, stone spandrels, and ornamental wooden and stone cusps from a number of English churches and chapels, stone paterae from Winchester Cathedral, and much more. Decorative samples from secular buildings include renderings of stone capitals from Kenilworth Castle, stone bosses from Eltham Palace in Kent, and brass figures from the tomb of Earl of Warwick.
Now regarded as one of the major sourcebooks of Gothic ornamentation, Pugin's illustrations will be welcomed by students of architectural history and design as an invaluable reference tool. Artists, illustrators, designers, and craftspeople will find these ready-to-use motifs an inspiring source of excellent designs for fabrics, wallpaper, tiles, and many other projects.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

The life of Augustus Charles Pugin is framed by two literary events of major importance to Romanticism and the Gothic Revival. He was born in Normandy in 1762, the year in which the appearance of Macpherson’s “Ossian” poems gave tremendous impetus to the Romantic Movement; he died in London in 1832, a year after the publication of Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris, possibly the greatest popular work sanctioning the Gothic Revival.

Pugin came to England before May 1792, when he registered as a student of painting at the Royal Academy. Some sources hold that he had left France to escape the consequences of a duel in which he had been involved; others that he feared the violence of the Revolution. Pugin soon found employment in the architectural office of John Nash (1752–1835), who had recently resumed his career in London. The association lasted 17 years and provided Pugin with some stability in a life that was a difficult one financially, attributable, in part, to prejudice against émigrés. Few of his architectural commissions are known; it was as an artist and draftsman that he made his career.

Early attempts at independent publishing failed, as did the issue of individual prints. A turn in fortune began with Pugin’s work for Rudolph Ackermann (1764–1834), publisher of the monthly Repository of Arts, which was noted for the quality of its lithographs. Pugin was swift to demonst...

Table of contents

• DOVER PICTORIAL ARCHIVE SERIES
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• PUBLISHER’S NOTE