The past few months saw me paying lots of attention to the ornamental print over at my Tumblr blog.

There is Balançoire chinoise[1] by French artist Jean-Baptiste Pillement., which is more of a decorative print than an ornamental print.  It is similar in style to Raccolta delle cose più notabili veduta dal cavaliere Wilde Scull [2].

The plate comes from the wonderful book Les Maîtres ornemanistes.

By the way, it would seem that the 1870s is the first period when serious attention was given to the ornamental print, judging from a tentative bibliography I’ve made:

• Ornements des anciens maîtres du XVe au XVIIIe siècle (1873) by Ovide Reynard
• Les Maîtres ornemanistes (1880-81) by Désiré Guilmard
• Illustrierter Katalog der Ornamentstichsammlung des Österreichischen Museums für Kunst und Industrie (1871) by Franz Ritter

The last two books in the list can be seen in full at Archive.org. Follow the links.