The Acanthus
The Acanthus Leaf used as the symbol of NADFAS
The founders of NADFAS chose the acanthus as a symbol (or more vulgarly now a logo) for its activities. This was a very clever choice. The acanthus leaf is one of the most widely used decorative motifs found in art extending from antiquity right up to the late nineteenth century and arguably even beyond. Although botanical in origin, its application was purely imaginary and its use can be traced in architecture, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, furniture, metalwork, woodwork, silverware, ceramics, stucco and wallpaper (a considerable list). According to the Roman writer Vitruvius who compiled his important treatise, De Architectura, in the first century BC, the decorative possibilities of the acanthus were first realised in the origination of the Corinthian capital and this architectural usage was diversified in early Christian and Byzantine art. It is omnipresent in Italian Renaissance art, particularly in the work of Filippo Brunelleschi who used so skillfully in the naves of his churches S. Lorenzo and S. Spirito in Florence. One of the finest examples in the early Italian Renaissance is the double tomb of Piero and Giovanni de’ Medici by Andrea Verrocchio commissioned by Lorenzo il Magnifico for the Old Sacristy of S. Lorenzo: this combines bronze with porphyry and marble in a compelling abstract idiom. The widespread dominance of the acanthus motif in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was due to pattern books used by craftsmen throughout Europe. Apprentices were trained by copying acanthus motifs from such pattern books to the extent that it became totally absorbed into the universal language of interior design as well as architecture. William Morris used it for one of his famous wallpapers and Christopher Dresser incorporated it into his various wares, both during the late nineteenth century.
A counterblast came from A.W.N. Pugin who objected to the use of what he regarded as essentially a pagan motif in a Christian context. This led to his fulminations in his book entitled True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841) and his more famous Contrasts of the same year. Owen Jones, too, in his Grammar of Ornament (1856) complained about the overuse of the acanthus. Even so it could not be so easily expunged by mere polemics or by the outcries of purists. And so it is possible to see the acanthus as a formative influence on much wider movements such as Art Nouveau and Art Deco in which guise it pops up again in the work of Rene Lalique.
Scholars have also been infatuated by the acanthus. They have occupied themselves by tracing its stylistic development and arguing about its formal significance. The Viennese curator Alois Riegl began the discussion as early as 1893 in a classic book (entitled Stilfragen) that is the starting point for the modern study of the history of ornament. The greatly respected medievalist Joan Evans ( the much younger half-sister of Arthur Evans who excavated Knossos) devoted space to the acanthus in her book Pattern, a Study of Ornament in Western Europe from 1180-1900 (1931); and Sir Ernst Gombrich in the Sense of Order (1979) introduced the subject to an unsuspecting younger audience. What might appear at first sight, therefore, to be an abstruse byway in the history of art really belongs to the mainstream.
You will appreciate now, why the choice of the acanthus symbol for NADFAS was both appropriate and inspired. Like the acanthus you have a practical application; like the acanthus you have survived the test of time and go from strength to strength; like the acanthus you are ubiquitous not just in the United Kingdom but on mainland Europe and even much further a field in such places as Australia; and like the acanthus you are versatile in what you do. Practicality and durability, together with ubiquity and versatility defines NADFAS very neatly: it is a formidable combination. The acanthus serves our purposes brilliantly.
Taken from the address of NADFAS President Christopher Lloyd at the AGM held on 9th May 2007 at Kensington Town Hall, London