Including previously unpublished and recently re-discovered designs for the interior of the Museum, Olivia Horsfall Turner's fascinating new book, the latest in the V&A 19th-Century Series, looks at the relationship between architect and designer Owen Jones and the South Kensington Museum (later the V&A) in the period from the Museum's establishment in the 1850s to Jones's death in 1874. It focuses on key moments in Jones's relationship with the Museum: the creation of his well-known publication The Grammar of Ornament (1856) and his less widely known Examples of Chinese Ornament (1867), and the decoration of the Museum's so-called Oriental Court between 1863 and 1865. Jones's collaboration with the Museum over a period of almost 20 years is of special interest not only thanks to his status as one of the most influential design theorists of the 19th century, but also for the light that it sheds on the identity of the early Museum and its imperial context.
