My father, Stuart Durant, who has died aged 88, was an author and lecturer in design and architectural history. He wrote the key reference book Ornament: A Survey of Decoration Since 1830 (1986), which was translated into several languages; published extensively on the Arts and Crafts movement; and was an authority on the 19th-century designer Christopher Dresser. In 2011 he co-authored a book on the regeneration of St Pancras International with its lead architect, Alastair Lansley.
Through a passion for antiquarian books, Stuart was able to reunite and revive the Colour Reference Library at the Royal College of Art, London, which exists to this day. He was also the originator and first editor of the International Design Yearbook series, published annually from 1985 until 2007.
Born in Stepney, east London, Stuart was the son of Welsh parents, Cyril Durant, a marine engineer, and Mary (nee Lewis), a schoolteacher. After Surbiton county grammar school Stuart undertook national service with the Royal Fusiliers Regiment, then was accepted into the Architectural Association.
He left the AA before qualifying, having had some success with painting. He was selected for the Young Contemporaries exhibition (1959), followed by an Arts Council travelling exhibition. He joined the Old Vic as a trainee scene painter, then worked for the BBC as a set designer (1962-64). In 1963 he spent a year studying scenography in Milan, before going freelance as a television set designer. During this time he also began designing textiles, some of which were produced by the Edinburgh Weavers (1964).
In 1970 he went to the Royal College of Art to study for a master’s in history of design. His thesis was on Dresser and he was invited to write the introductory essay to a Fine Art Society exhibition on the designer (1972). The same year he co-curated the Fine Art Society exhibition Aesthetic Movement and the Cult of Japan. Stuart later contributed an essay for the exhibition catalogue of Shock of the Old: Christopher Dresser’s Design Revolution, which toured from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (2004).
In 1975 Stuart took up a teaching position at Farnham School of Art (now part of Surrey Institute of Art & Design). From 1980 to 1990 he ran the art history component for the School of Three Dimensional Design at Kingston University, where he became reader.
He spent a semester lecturing at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, in western India (1989) and curated further exhibitions, including Architecture & Childhood (with Elizabeth Darling, 1993), at the RIBA, and The English Garden, with Michael Whiteway, a travelling exhibition to Japan in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (2014-15). Stuart was also a talented musician, poet and satirist.
In 1970 he married Ruth Doniach. They separated in 1995. Stuart is survived by his partner, the botanical artist Joanna Langhorne, his children from his marriage, Miriam, Galia and me, and three grandchildren, Jeanie, Cosmo and Wren.
