A New Book of Ornaments

Art Historical Context

Thomas Johnson’s *A New Book of Ornaments*, dated April 23, 1758, is a fine example of the illustrated pattern that flourished in eighteenth-century Britain. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Drawings and Prints, the volume belongs to the classification “Books | Ornament & Architecture,” indicating its purpose as a practical guide for craftsmen, cabinetmakers, and architects seeking elegant decorative motifs. Such publications played a vital role in disseminating design ideas across workshops and households during the Rococo period. By offering carefully engraved plates of scrolls, foliage, and architectural details, Johnson’s book helped standardize fashionable ornament while allowing individual makers to adapt the patterns to furniture, silver, plasterwork, and building interiors. Acquired through the Harris Brisbane Dick Fund in 1932, this work remains an important document of how printed design resources shaped taste and craftsmanship in Georgian England. Its presence in the museum’s collection invites visitors to consider the intersection of art, industry, and everyday beauty in the mid-eighteenth century.

About the Artist

Thomas Johnson · 1714–1778

**Thomas Johnson (1714–1778)** was an English wood carver and furniture maker renowned for his exuberant Rococo designs that blended rococo, Chinese, Gothic, and rustic motifs with remarkable vitality and flamboyance. Working primarily in London during the mid-eighteenth century, he became one of the most successful and distinctive exponents of the British Rococo style, often incorporating human f...