More than 160 exquisitely rendered color illustrations offer a fabulous array of decorative borders and panels in a tremendous variety of styles: Byzantine, Roman, Gothic, Renaissance, Louis XIV, and other historical fashions.
Many of these enchanting images are drawn from Christopher Dresser's Studies in Design, a landmark in home-decorating stylebooks. Dresser's compilations of unusual designs from far-flung sources — including Egypt, Morocco, and the Far East — exercised an enormous influence upon his Victorian contemporaries and subsequent generations. Images from his book, together with selections from a nineteenth-century French album and other pictorial collections of the era, afford a wealth of delights for art enthusiasts as well as inspiration for designers and crafters.