> The Grammar’s purpose was thus not to encourage others to copy or revive these older decorative arts, but to help young designers make use of the rich underlying design principles – the grammar – in their own work.
So what was this grammar?
This article, and the V&A one someone posted in a comment, do this infuriating thing that seems to be standard practice for museum curators, where they tell you all about the biography of some figure, and show you their work (with titles, dates, materials, all the metadata), but make absolutely no attempt to actually explain it. As if you could somehow stare at a sequence of these drawings and exactly reproduce Jones's thinking yourself! Or stare at Kandinsky's shapes and colours and understand what he was trying to do, etc.
So what was this grammar?
This article, and the V&A one someone posted in a comment, do this infuriating thing that seems to be standard practice for museum curators, where they tell you all about the biography of some figure, and show you their work (with titles, dates, materials, all the metadata), but make absolutely no attempt to actually explain it. As if you could somehow stare at a sequence of these drawings and exactly reproduce Jones's thinking yourself! Or stare at Kandinsky's shapes and colours and understand what he was trying to do, etc.