The influence of Louis Sullivan’s architectural ornamentation work is readily apparent in the book design of Chris Ware. The covers of Quimby the Mouse and Acme Novelty Library Annual Report to Shareholders exemplify Ware’s interest in utilizing architectural ornament and patterning. Ware says this of Sullivan’s work:

His “ornament,” sometimes wrongly dismissed as secondary to the structure, was always inextricably important to every building he designed, growing out of the fundamental idea and shape of each commission, and, in his own words, ideally admitting to the “reality and pathos of man’s follies.” Goethe once described architecture as “frozen music,” and Sullivan’s buildings went one step farther than that; they seemed to be frozen life, the very shape of ideas, will, and love itself.

1. Quimby the Mouse by Chris Ware. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2003.
2. Reproduction of Louis Sullivan stencil design from the Schiller Building. Crombie Taylor Papers, 1914-1999.
3. Reproduction of Louis Sullivan stencil design from the Schiller Building. Crombie Taylor Papers, 1914-1999.
4. Reproduction of Louis Sullivan stencil design from the Schiller Building. Crombie Taylor Papers, 1914-1999.
5. Reproduction of Louis Sullivan stencil design from the Schiller Building. Crombie Taylor Papers, 1914-1999.
6. Door Escutcheon designed by Louis Sullivan. Guaranty Building Collection.
7. Acme Novelty Library Annual Report to Shareholders by Chris Ware. New York: Pantheon, 2005.
8. Draft sketch from A System of Architectural Ornament by Louis Sullivan, 1922. Sullivaniana Collection, 1780-2008.
9. Draft sketch from A System of Architectural Ornament by Louis Sullivan, 1922. Sullivaniana Collection, 1780-2008.
10. Draft sketch from A System of Architectural Ornament by Louis Sullivan, 1922. Sullivaniana Collection, 1780-2008.