Valuing ornament: Jean-Baptiste Plantar (1790–1879) between art, craft and industry

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, as European countries reacted to industrialization, art and burgeoning industries intertwined in a myriad of new ways. From this union, several major changes occurred in building construction, decorative arts and sculpture. The career and oeuvre of Jean-Baptiste Plantar, French ornamentalist and sculptor des Bâtiments du Roi, illustrate the new relationships forged between traditional architectural patterns and industrial artistic production. Despite holding a central role in their establishment, Plantar has been largely unheeded both by his contemporaries and later writers. This article reasserts Plantar’s significance in the creation of a visual – essentially Parisian – landscape in the first half of the nineteenth century.