ABSTRACT
The Journal of Design and Manufactures aimed to improve the standards of British industrial design, concentrating on the decorative and applied arts. The editors explained in the Preface to the first volume that they were attempting to offer ‘something like a systematic attempt to establish recognised principles’. Design has a twofold relation, having, in the first place, a strict reference to utility in the thing designed; and, secondarily, to the beautifying or ornamenting that utility. The word design, however, with the many has become identified rather with its secondary than with its whole signification—with ornament, as apart from, and often even as opposed to, utility. Ornament is applied to large surfaces in two modes: it is either gathered into groups with the light and dark, form and colour, contrasting strongly with the ground, on which the groups are sparingly distributed, and which may be called the individual or contrasted manner—or it is spread equally over the whole surface.
