Mackelvie’s pattern books – a design story on display

The Atrium display in the Central Library Tāmaki Pātaka Kōrero (6 November 2024 to 13 January 2025) features six exceptional works ranging from outsize folios to a modest volume, similar that seen in the portrait of James Tannock Mackelvie painted at his home in Hyeres, France in 1884, a year before his death.

Image: James Tannock Mackelvie by George Halkett, 1884. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Mackelvie Collction M1885/1/32.

Following a 2024 stocktake and Heritage Cataloguer Ian Snowdon’s cataloguing enhancements for the Mackelvie Collection there are new opportunities to showcase aspects of the extraordinary Victorian library the philanthropist and collector James Mackelvie built for us. The recent talk ‘Ex Libris JT Mackelvie’ was an opportunity to showcase books from the Mackelvie Collection. The visually arresting pattern books are a good way to sample the collection.

In the mid-19th century colour lithography was being developed and there was a growing an awareness of art practice from all over the world, with initiatives such as the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. The pattern books featured in the Atrium display were published from 1664 through to 1882, just three years before James Mackelvie’s death. He would have been aware of the significance in New Zealand of Alexander Shaw’s Catalogue – a sample book with original tapa cloth published in 1787, sourced in the Pacific between 1768 and 1779. The original volume of David Ramsay Hay’s Original geometrical diaper designs (1844) featured in the display case includes an essay on ornamental design.

“…The Author trusts, they will be found useful in opening a new field of design not only to the decorative artist, but to damask and shawl-weavers, calico-printers, stained-glass manufacturers, cabinet-makers, and those engaged in other branches of the useful and ornamental arts”.

The Mackelvie Collection can continue to inspire contemporary makers and designers in the twenty-first century as James Mackelvie intended with his bequest to Auckland with his collections housed at the library, art gallery and museum. The Mackelvie Trust continues to support the collections.

The pattern books on show:

1. Georg Andreas Böckler - Architectura Curiosa Nova (1664). Mackelvie Collection 1664 BOCK, plate 33.

This is the oldest and possibly a favourite book in James Mackelvie’s library published in 1664. It is an association copy inscribed by Joseph Paxton of Crystal Palace fame. This association connects with the Owen Jones’ Grammar of Ornament on display too. Jones designed the interiors for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London also known as the Crystal Palace. The book features 100 full page plates of fountain designs as well as illustrations of grottoes and mazes.

Image: Plate 33 from: Architectura Curiosa Nova. 1664. Mackelvie Collection, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections. 1664 BOCK.

2. Alexander Shaw – A catalogue of the different specimens of cloth collected in the three voyages of Captain Cook. London: printed for Alexander Shaw, 1787. Mackelvie Collection 910.4 S53

This is a unique book given that every tapa sample is unique.  The volume is one of the treasures of the Mackelvie Collection. A recent census by Donald Kerr has found 46 surviving copies. There are copies at the Auckland War Memorial Museum Library, the Alexander Turnbull Library and Te Papa. The book continues to be a focus of research.

The library has digitised this in full

Image: Title page. Alexander Shaw Catalogue, 1787. Mackelvie Collection, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections.

Image: Page 8. Alexander Shaw Catalogue, 1787. Mackelvie Collection, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections. 

3. Owen Jones – The Grammar of Ornament, London: Day and Son, 1856. Mackelvie Collection, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, 745.44 J77

Image: Savage Tribes. No. 1. Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament. 1856. Retrieved from the Internet Archive, September 2024. 

This book is regarded as Jones’ masterwork. First published in 1856 soon after his work as Superintendent of the Great Exhibition of 1851. The Grammar of Ornament features 100 full page folio plates featuring patterns from his international research. Designers have used the pattern books for inspiration for products including wallpaper, carpets and furniture. The book remains in print as a design resource. There are several digitised copies available to view online. NYPL copy

4. Owen Jones – The Grammar of Ornament, London: Day and Son, 1856.

In addition to the full colour chromo lithographs the Preface includes his design propositions. E.g. # 21 Use blue for concave surfaces #31 Gold ornaments must be outlined in black.

Image: Plate XXV Pompeian No 3. Owen Jones - The Grammar of Ornament, London: Day and Son, 1856. Mackelvie Collection, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, 745.44 J77.

5. Auguste Racinet. Polychromatic Ornament, London: Henry Sotheran, 1873. Mackelvie Collection 747 R11

Albert Charles Auguste Racinet compiled many works on the decorative arts including a massive ten volume work on the history of clothing. The Library’s copy of the English translation (1873) includes 100 colour plates which show “upwards of two thousand specimens of the various styles of ancient, oriental and medieval art, and including the Renaissance and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” (statement from the title page). Many plates include highlights in gold and silver. These images feature ‘Renaissance’ and ‘Persian’ patterns. Polychromatic ornament was featured in an earlier library display. You can hear the former Rare Book curator Georgia Prince talk about the pattern book here:

Image: Persian plate from : A Racinet. Polychromatic ornament. 1873. Mackelvie Collection, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections. 743 R11.

There are also digitised copies of the complete work available online:

Image: Renaissance plate from : A Racinet. Polychromatic ornament. 1873. Mackelvie Collection, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections. 743 R11.

 

This concludes the display panels in the Atrium but we have included two rare books to support the display. These volumes are housed in the temperature controlled and secure storage cabinet purchased by the Auckland Library Heritage Trust.

The books featured here are David Ramsay Hay’s ‘Original geometrical diaper designs, accompanied by an attempt to develop and elucidate the true principles of ornamental design, as applied to the decorative arts’ (1844). 

This lengthy title about repeat patterns (diaper designs) includes an essay by Hay which refers to the challenges of designing wallpapers, footpaths and carpets where the viewer perceives the pattern from an angle. His description is typically Victorian on the topic:

“ … For as the carpets of rooms, geometrical pavements, and paper hangings, are all viewed by the spectator with various degrees of obliquity, it would be desirable to invent patterns which though they might not be the most beautiful when seen directly, have the power of developing in succession a series of beautiful combinations, when they are viewed, as they must always be, at different obliquities”.

The other book featured in the case is a modest volume with a playful design. Thomasina Campbell’s ‘Notes on the island of Corsica: dedicated to those in search of health and enjoyment ’ (1868).

This small volume features a colourful binding with blue, white and red stripes continuing across the text block. It is a book which invites inspection.

A page-turning video featuring two of the pattern books on display will be playing during the Pattern Book display.

Visit the Central City Library Tāmaki Pātaka Kōrero - Monday to Friday 10am - 6pm, 10am - 5pm Saturday.

Image: Thomasina Campbell. Notes on the island of Corsica: dedicated to those in search of health and enjoyment, 1868. Mackelvie Collection, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections. 914.59 C19, resting on the library chess table above the library carpet in the Reading Room. The chess table featuring inlaid timber was presented to the library by New Zealand Insurance Co to mark the library building opening in 1887 and the library carpet based on a Pacific navigation design was commissioned for the current library refurbishment in 1997.

Author: Jane Wild, Curator of Rare Books