The Nineteenth Century: An Expanding Field
14th Century - Alhambra palace complex in Granada, Spain is built by the Muslim rulers of Andalusia (means "red one" in Arabic). After traveling here, Owen Jones is motivated to creative innovations in chromolithography so he could make prints that did justice to its beauty15th Century - Movable type invented; had a liberating effect on the urban population and allowed mass literacy and communication
18th Century - Industrial Revolution begins. Lithography is invented in the late 18th century. The first British stamp duty is imposed on newspapers which was meant to stifle political opposition
19th Century - In the 1st half of the 19th century, there were many revivals of historic styles which was an embodiment of the spirit of empirical inquiry pioneered during the Enlightenment and design from this period has often been dismissed as being lackluster, chaotic, and undisciplined. Continuing Industrial Revolution creates a demand for mass media and advertising on a new scale (aided by the invention of steam-powered press, mechanized letterpress, lithography, and chromolithography. Photography is invented and gradually makes its way into graphic design). Late 19th Century, chromolithography becomes a commercial mainstay. Winslow Homer is one of the most famous 19th century American painters. Photography is an important technological advancement of this time period
Critiques said that 19th century design was nothing more than a chaotic chaos of morass and vulgar and tawdry ornamentation.
in the early 19th century French publishers could be imprisoned or become bankrupt if they broke any censorship laws
20th Century - Graphic Designers start to take photography seriously. Design theorists from this era develop a more theoretical design style than of the 19th century designers (Especially in England). Most of the fundamental theories of design are developed during this era
1814 - Steam-engine-driven press developed, expansion of the printing industry
1837 - 1901 Victorian Era (Art Nouveau movement)
1835 - French government cracks down on caricature publications
1836- 18?? Daumier and Philpon collaborated on over 100 satirical cartoons in Le Charivari
18?? Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels product Manifesto of the Communist Party
1814 Friedrich Koenig and An???? Bauer sell their power press to the London Times Newspaper (could produce over 1,000 prints per hour)
1851 - Frederick Bleason and Maturin Ballou establish Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-room Companion in Boston (Gleason later sells it to Ballou and it becomes Ballou's Pictorial Drawing-room Companion)
1880s - perfection of the halftone screen process. Mathew Brady reproduces photos of prominent citizens called "cartes de viste"
1814-1879 Eugene Viollet-le-Duc Promotes the Gothic revial in France at the same time that Pugin was doing so in England. He restored many French monuments including the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. He favored his romantic view of what a medieval monument should be over an accurate reconstruction and has be distained for working in an "ahistorical" manner- universal design princliples relevant to modern society, structurally honest and expressive of their load-bearing forms (buttresses). His process of seeking inspiration from organic forms had a great effect on the Art Nouveau style
1815 - stamp duty more than doubles the final price of the newspapers which makes it nearly impossible for working class people to afford to read the newspaper and only the wealthy members of society had access to the supply of information provided by the ability to mass produce newspapers
1830 - Louis-Philippe becomes the king of France
1830s - stable ways discovered for creating color images. Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot
1832 - stamp duty on newspapers relaxed. Daumier is imprisoned for exercising his right to publish his opinions
1835 - Owen Jones returns to London after completed the Grand Tour. He was influenced most by the Alhambra palace complex in Granada, Spain. Owen Jones makes great advancements in chromolithograpy and shows off his color printing skills in the work, Plans, Sections, Elevations and Detiaols of the Alhambra where he used very intricit techniques to register differnt colored stones to create stunning images such as La Ventana Sala de las dos Hermanas (Window from the Hall of the Two Sisters). He only produced 400 copies of this book but it started to change people's minds about chromolithography being an inexpensive low-quality commercial technique but rather a way to create beautifal artistic images
1837 - School of Design is founded at Somerset House. Their collection (as well as many exhibits from the Great Exhibition) will absorbed into the Victoria and Albert Museum when it opens in 1857
1840s - Augustus W.N. Pugin rebuilds the Palace of Westminster in London (he designed the overall ornamental system of the British Parliament in the style of Gothic revialism)
1841 - The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture summarizes that Gothic is "not a style, but a principle" Pugin uses this idea to signify that design should be a tool of social reform
1844 - Owen Jones begins doing design work for the London stationary and playing card company founded by Thomas De La Rue. He created over 100 designs of playing card sets for De La Rue over the next 2 decades
1847 - establishment of Imprimerie Chaix. (4 letterpress machine, 12 hand-presses, 2 litho presses, and 2 paper cutter. They had 80 employees)
1851 - Great Exhibition of 1851 is held in Hyde Park London between May 1 and October 15. Henry Cole has a central role in designing and planning this and becomes the most influencial figure in the Victorian age. It is here that some photographs appeared in a commercial context and other were given the status of being included in the Fine Arts Courts.
1851- Owen Jones promotes color in his work and creates a polychromatic interior scheme for Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace which was a an enormous temporary building made of iron and glass that housed over 100,000 exhibits and took up about one million square feet.
1851 -1853 - Matthew Digby Wyatt prints The Industrial Arts of the 19th Century in 2 volumes that featured 160 chromolithographic plates. Wyatt was the secretary to the executive committee for the Great Exhibition and he helped supervise the construction of the Crystal Palace
1851 - George Routledge establishes a firm that is one of the most successful publishers of yellow-backs (a forerunner to "airport fiction" and was one of the first consumable publications rather than a collectable)
1855 - stamp duty on newspapers abolished
1855 - Matthew Wyatt had previously embraced Indian art and then becomes a surveyor of Britain's East India Company
1856 - Ralph Wornum critizics the Great Exhibition of 1851 in his book Analysis of Ornimination which asked: how much should British design rely on natural forms? The beauty of natural forms should only serve as a model of inspiration for designers
1856 - Owen Jones produces The Grammar of Ornament. It was an illustrated style manual that called for designers to combine function and ornamentation harmoniously. It also showed off his critical inquiry into a multitude of historical styles (many from non-European sources) that were the basis of developing design principles that could be utilized by his contemporaries. Also included was a list of 37 axioms that he had been developing for years, here is the first one:
"The decorative arts arise from, and should be properly attendant upon, architecture."He concluded with this:
"No improvement can take place in the Art of the present generation until all classes, Artists, Manufacturers, and the Public, are better educated in Art, and the existence of general principles is more fully recognized."1857- The Indian Rebellion of 1857 results in the British government taking direct control over the subcontinent
1857 - the Victoria and Albert Museam offically opens in South Kensington and Henry Cole becomes the director
1857 - Currier & Ives is founded in New York City by Nathan Currier and James Merritt Ives. They produced "cheap and popular prints" - over 7,000 unique designs in a period of just a few decades. black and white lithography that were hand-colored
1860 - Lincoln is photographed by Mathew Brady which is thought to be one of the main reasons for him winning the presidency
1890 - subdued and harmonious design becomes known as the Arts and Crafts style (unadorned decorative art objects and architecture, geometrically structured and from the late 19th Century)
1892 - Imprimerie Chaix now has 92 letterpress and litho machines, 122 machines that could typecast, do various lithographic processes, engraving, rolling, numbering, binding, etc., and have over 1,200 persons)
1894 - The Illustrated London News??? starts featuring stand-alone photographs
1920s - photography becomes a core element of graphic design despite being available for decades
