Christopher Dresser életművének első két szakasza (1857-1873), avagy vitalizmus, botanika és művészet kapcsolódási pontjai

The conclusions of my dissertation demonstrate that the concept of force in Christopher Dresser's (1834-1904) oeuvre’s ornamental theory has a vitalist background, with components related to the period around 1800 – namely the Romantic sciences of the search for unity, moreover to the Goethean idealistic botanical morphology of Naturphilosophie, id est the search for an archetype, as a side-branch of the Jenaean constellation. According to my thesis an important component of Dresser's artistic botany is his knowledge of Goethean metamorphosis theory, which also represents a transmission of the influences of the years around the 1800s to the ornamentation, or art of the mid-19th century. The consequence of all this, in Dresser's case, is a unique, purely ideal that is to say an abstract ornamentation, which in this sense is an important pre-modern predecessor of the turn-of-the-century art. Therefore, as a result of the above, the implications of the links to the period around 1800 are thus reflected in Dresser's artistic botanical writings and ornamental theory.