Owen Jones, Bourgoin, and the Western rediscovery of Islamic art

The Western rediscovery of Islamic geometric art is a strange and consequential story. For roughly six hundred years, from the Christian Reconquest of Spain in 1492 through the early 19th century, the great Islamic decorative tradition was almost invisible to Europe. Then, in a span of forty-some years, three figures and a handful of major publications brought it back into Western consciousness and changed the course of modern design. Owen Jones, Jules Bourgoin, and Prisse d'Avennes are the names that matter; their books are why the Arts and Crafts movement, the Vienna Secession, and the early modernists had Islamic geometric design to work with at all.

This post tells that story, names the publications, and explains why they still matter for anyone working in or with this tradition today.

The forgotten centuries

After 1492, Western Europe's relationship to Islamic civilization went through several centuries of mutual estrangement. The Reformation, the rise of the nation-states, the European voyages of exploration, the Industrial Revolution — these all happened with Europe looking outward and Islamic civilization either being studied as an antagonist (the Ottoman Empire) or being colonized (gradually, from the 17th century onward). The artistic and intellectual heritage of medieval Islamic civilization was not, on the whole, an object of European admiration during this period.

Islamic geometric art continued to be produced, of course. Working artisans in Fez, Cairo, Isfahan, Istanbul, and other cities maintained the craft traditions. But Europe didn't really see this work. The Alhambra was visited by occasional travelers; a handful of antiquarian publications mentioned it; nothing approached systematic study.

This changed in the 1820s and 1830s.

Owen Jones at the Alhambra

Owen Jones (1809–1874) was a young English architect and ornamental designer. In 1832 he traveled to Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean; in 1834 he arrived at the Alhambra in Granada. He spent six months there with his colleague Jules Goury, producing detailed measured drawings of the patterns, taking impressions and rubbings of the carved stucco, and developing chromolithographic techniques to reproduce the colors of the tile and paint accurately.

Goury died of cholera during the trip. Jones returned to England and spent the next several years preparing the publication that would change everything.

Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra, published in two volumes in 1837 and 1845, was the first detailed Western survey of an Islamic monument. The book reproduced the patterns in full color using chromolithography, which Jones effectively pioneered for this project. It cost a fortune to produce and very nearly bankrupted him.

The Alhambra book established Jones as the leading European authority on Islamic decorative art. It also gave him the platform for his much more influential second project.

The Grammar of Ornament

In 1856 Jones published The Grammar of Ornament, the book that did more than any other single publication to bring Islamic geometric design into the Western design canon. The book is a survey of decorative traditions from around the world — Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Celtic, Chinese, Indian, and many others — with the largest section devoted to "Moresque ornament" (his term for Islamic geometric and arabesque design). The plates are reproductions of patterns from the Alhambra, from Egyptian Cairene work, from Persian sources.

The book argued for general principles of ornament that Jones distilled from his survey: that ornament should be subordinate to structure, that patterns should arise from natural forms, that color should be used to enhance and clarify form rather than for its own sake. The "37 propositions" at the beginning of the book influenced design education for the next century.

But the practical effect of The Grammar of Ornament was simpler: it gave European designers a vocabulary of Islamic patterns to draw on, and they did, immediately. William Morris's wallpapers, Christopher Dresser's industrial design, the early furniture of the Arts and Crafts movement — all show direct influence from Jones's plates.

The book is now in the public domain and is freely available at archive.org. The full plates are still in print in various editions; the original first edition is a major collector's item.

Jules Bourgoin and the geometric analysis

In 1879, the French architect and ornamentalist Jules Bourgoin (1838–1908) published Les Eléments de l'art arabe: le trait des entrelacs in Paris. The book contained 190 plates of Islamic geometric patterns, analyzed and reproduced with construction lines visible.

Bourgoin's contribution was different from Jones's. Where Jones had focused on the visual beauty and the principles of ornament, Bourgoin focused on the geometry. His plates showed how each pattern was constructed — the underlying lattice, the construction lines, the relationships between angles and proportions. The book was effectively the first systematic geometric analysis of Islamic decorative design.

The Bourgoin plates have been continuously reprinted since their publication. Dover's reprint edition (titled Arabic Geometrical Pattern and Design) remains in print today and is the most accessible source for anyone wanting to study the patterns at the level Bourgoin documented.

For modern practitioners of Islamic geometric design, including myself, the Bourgoin plates are a working reference. The Wichmann and Wade book cites them extensively as Plate 32, Plate 75, Plate 77, Plate 165, and others.

Prisse d'Avennes and Egypt

The third major figure of this rediscovery is Achille Constant Théodore Émile Prisse d'Avennes (1807–1879), a French Egyptologist and architect who spent decades documenting Egyptian monuments. His massive folio publications — L'Art Arabe d'après les Monuments du Kaire (1869–1877) and Histoire de l'art égyptien d'après les monuments (1858–1877) — documented Islamic Cairo with the same care Jones brought to the Alhambra and Bourgoin brought to pattern analysis.

Prisse d'Avennes's work was less influential than Jones's during his lifetime but provided one of the great surviving records of Mamluk and Ottoman Cairo before extensive 19th and 20th century renovations and demolitions. Many patterns documented in his folios survive only there.

What these publications produced

The cumulative effect of Jones, Bourgoin, Prisse d'Avennes, and their less famous contemporaries was the integration of Islamic geometric design into the Western design canon. By the 1880s and 1890s, Islamic patterns appeared in:

• The Arts and Crafts movement. William Morris explicitly drew on Jones for his early wallpaper and textile designs. Walter Crane and the broader movement absorbed Islamic geometric principles.
• The Vienna Secession. Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffmann, and the Vienna design school engaged with Islamic patterns directly.
• Early modernism. Frank Lloyd Wright's "textile block" Mayan-inflected geometric work has Islamic precedents Wright never directly acknowledged. The pattern-based abstraction of early modernist designers draws on Jones's plates.
• 20th century mathematics. The discovery that craftsmen had produced patterns in all 17 wallpaper symmetry groups (Edith Müller's 1944 doctoral thesis on the Alhambra) followed naturally from Bourgoin's geometric analysis.
• M.C. Escher. Escher's 1922 and 1936 visits to the Alhambra were enabled by the Jones publications that established the Alhambra as a destination for serious design study. Schattschneider's Visions of Symmetry documents the Escher-Alhambra connection in detail.

Why these names matter today

Three reasons.

Primary sources. Jones, Bourgoin, and Prisse d'Avennes documented monuments and patterns that have since been damaged, modified, or destroyed. Their books are not just historical artifacts; they're primary documentation of works of art that would otherwise be lost.

Methodological precedent. Bourgoin's geometric analysis established the method that Wichmann, Necipoğlu, Lu and Steinhardt, and others continue to refine. Any modern technical analysis of Islamic geometric design builds on Bourgoin.

Cultural transmission. The Islamic geometric vocabulary that contemporary designers and artists work in — including myself, working in layered paper — exists in part because Jones brought it back into Western view. The line from the Alhambra in 1834 to the laser cutter in 2026 runs through these publications.

For the broader history of Islamic geometric art, see a short history of Islamic geometric art. For the canonical site Jones studied, see the Alhambra — a guide to its geometric patterns.

FAQ

Who was Owen Jones?

Owen Jones (1809–1874) was a British architect and ornamental designer who studied the Alhambra in detail in the 1830s and 1840s. His two major publications, Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra (1837–1845) and The Grammar of Ornament (1856), brought Islamic geometric design into the Western design canon and influenced the Arts and Crafts movement, the Vienna Secession, and early modernism.

Is The Grammar of Ornament still in print?

Yes, in multiple editions. The original first edition is a collector's item; modern facsimile editions are widely available; the full text and plates are in the public domain and freely available at archive.org.

What is the difference between Owen Jones and Jules Bourgoin?

Owen Jones focused on the visual beauty and ornamental principles of Islamic art, producing influential surveys aimed at designers. Jules Bourgoin focused on the underlying geometry, producing analytical plates that showed how each pattern was constructed. Jones was more influential culturally; Bourgoin remains more useful technically. Both their books are still in print and still consulted.

How did Islamic geometric design influence European modern art?

Significantly. The Arts and Crafts movement (William Morris and others) drew directly on Jones for early designs. The Vienna Secession engaged with Islamic patterns. M.C. Escher's tessellation work was transformed by his visits to the Alhambra in 1922 and 1936. Frank Lloyd Wright's "textile block" geometric work shows Islamic influence. The integration was deep enough that "Islamic" became invisible — patterns originally Maghrebi or Persian became read as generally "modern" by the early 20th century.

Sources

• Jones, Owen. Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra. 1837–1845.
• Jones, Owen. The Grammar of Ornament. 1856 (public domain).
• Bourgoin, Jules. Les Eléments de l'art arabe: le trait des entrelacs. Paris, 1879 (Dover reprint: Arabic Geometrical Pattern and Design).
• Prisse d'Avennes, A.C.T.E. L'Art Arabe d'après les Monuments du Kaire. 1869–1877.
• Schattschneider, D. M.C. Escher — Visions of Symmetry. W.H. Freeman, 1990.
• Wichmann, Brian, and David Wade. Islamic Design: A Mathematical Approach. Springer, 2017. References Bourgoin throughout.