The World of Ornament (Bibliotheca Universalis) Hardcover – Illustrated, 10 Mar. 2015

A brilliant compendium and a fantastic resource. Yes, the book is small but it is beautifully made and if you need a larger version of an element in the book just take a photo and enlarge it on your screen. A larger book would be amazing but it would also be expensive and out of my reach. This is affordable, comprehensive and a wonderful source of inspiration.

Thick heavy book with huge amounts of text and color graphics . The drawings are simple to quite complex and easy to understand how they are put together but resonable small in size which means their size it's not ideal for auto tracing a vector format . Many types of arts, many types of subject .So far because of the volume of design that it has It's the best book I've ever purchased . I also purchased smaller books that I wouldn't go without when need for artwork but so far this is the best purchase that I could find. It's like a small encyclopedia . If you work with art you should have it as soon as you afford it.

Inspiring

This is a very consise book on ornament, with beautiful plates of patterns from different civilizations at the peak od their artistic development. However each colour plate is a combination of different patterns and the printed area of acch page is about A5 size so the dtail of the pattersna are so small you need a magnifier to really apreciate them.The patterns are in full beutiful colours and each example of ornament is a small strip that sits right next to so many aothers that they seem to dance, when trying to analize them with the nnaked aye. I bought it to understand and draw inspiration from artistic the sensibilities of each culture but the format needs to be at least twice the size of this book to really see them clearly.

Astonishingly good examples of the pattern book’ genre spliced together. I know some have said that Owen Jones’s ‘Grammar of Ornament’ has never been surpassed but this is a contender. Whereas the BU edition is teeny weeny, this one is the other extreme, measuring a few inches more than the Studio Editions printings (which you should get rather than the tiny Taschen one if you can’t stretch to paying for this edition).

Excellent delivery and beautiful book.Inspirational for lettering,calligraphy and art work.I was disappointed about the size of the book.... I’d previously seen a much larger publication....being so small will necessitate a magnifying glass for my art work .Maybe I should have checked beforehand!

The book is gorgeous with many plates featuring many ornamental patterns throughout history. The book itself is rather small though but it was understandable because the price of it needs to be kept accessible.

The book is already a little dog-eared I like using it so much. Great for reference and inspiration