Jones, Owen

About the artist

Name

Jones, Owen

Biography

Jones was born in 1809 in London. His father was a Welsh antiquary and so he grew up in a Welsh cultural environment in London. In 1832, after he completed his training to become an architect with Lewis Vulliamy, he started his own Grand Tour visiting Italy, Greece, Egypt, Turkey and Spain. All these countries and especially Spain influenced his thoughts on design. Back in England he became an acclaimed designer who gave lectures, designed patterns for wallpapers or tiles, experimented in colour printing and was one of the main people responsible for the designs of the London Great Exhibition of 1851. Besides his participation at the foundation of the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) his legacy to the history of design is immense, as he established a series of 'universal principles' that design should follow. Those principles are included in his book The Grammar of Ornament, a key book for every design student since then.

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