William Morris (1834–1896) assisted by Philip Webb (1831–1915) and Henry Dearle (1860–1932), The Forest, made by Merton Abbey Workshop, London, by William Knight, John Martin and William Sleath, 1887.
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

At the end of this dispute over taste is Adolf Loos’s (1870–1933) provocative slogan about the ornament as a crime: “The evolution of culture matches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects”. The avant-gardes of Bauhaus hoped to leave all historicism behind and finally become modern and masculine Republicans without any frills, overcoming all effeminate, oriental, idolatrous reifications. The idea was to develop a means of production suitable for the industrialist that achieved more and was aesthetically more interesting than traditional craftsmanship. This heralded the new, modern aesthetics in which the form simply had to restrict itself to following the function. The opulence of an ornamental flourish was met with the minimalistic “less is more” attitude.

However, the desire for ornaments could not quite be fully eradicated. It returned in all manner of forms and not just in a neo-Baroque opulence which could still be attributed to the new moneyed elites who, still lacking in good breeding, felt the need to stand out. With the return of the ornamental, function itself has often become an ornament, in a dialectic ploy. In many cases, the ornament has returned with a self-deprecating affirmation, as rubbish, for example. Or as logomania – ornamentalisation of a brand’s convoluted lettering, which takes that which should guarantee the trademark, that which should be guaranteed, and ironically subverts it: poor taste is good taste.

But in the long run, we are facing a renaissance of the “favourite piece”. And favourite pieces are, perhaps by their very nature, decorated, an adornment, in short, the ornament cannot be mastered. Our interior design, our clothes, our food – industrially produced under the most dreadful conditions for humans and nature: perhaps we should not constantly get rid of them, throwing them away every season. Instead slow fashion, slow food and slow design. This is exactly what requires a savoir faire between craftsmanship and technology, as people in Eastern Switzerland are still managing to demonstrate with textiles, for example. The flowers, the peaks that blossom there ornamentally, do not have to promote an aesthetic of the good, the true and the beautiful, as was the intention of the Arts and Crafts movement, but may even adorn the hills as sultry flowers of evil.

Barbara Vinken

Ornaments divided opinion