VICTORIAN THEORY OF ORNAMENT

Alf Boe

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As THE nineteenth century advanced, with its social upheavals and in-
creasing industrialization, it became clear that Britain was no longer
capable of maintaining her pre-Napoleonic position as leader of fashion
and quality in the crafts and the industrial arts. Whatever its reasons this
state of affairs was watched with concern by economists and traders, who
saw exports dwindle under fierce competition from the French, and by
men of taste who regretted such a development even from non-com-
mercial reasons. A Parliamentary Committee was set up in 1835 'to
inquire into the best means of extending a knowledge of the arts and of
the principles of design among the people (especially the manufacturing
population) of the country',1 and as a result a 'Normal School of Design'
was established at Somerset House in 1837 with branches in various parts
of the country. Although new Parliamentary Committees, in 1847 and
1849, pronounced the whole thing to have been a failure, this School
was important in providing conditions for experiment and turning the
thoughts of teachers and others towards the principles of good design.
Other events of perhaps even greater importance come from the same
period. The writings of N. W. Pugin were published, with the early
works of John Ruskin. The Society of Arts, with the Prince Consort
at its head, took an active interest in design and awarded annual prizes.
On the initiative of Henry Cole, a civil servant, a number of artists were
brought together in support of a venture for the application of design
to mass production in industry. The men behind Summerly's Art Manu-
factures, the name given to this enterprise, were also responsible for the
publication of a Journal of Design and Manufacture which ran from 1849
to 1852. They were also largely instrumental in bringing about the Great
Exhibition of 1851, from which in course of time grew the Department
of Practical Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Among the members of this group we meet the authors of books,
 VICTORIAN THEORY OF ORNAMENT

articles, addresses and lectures in which a contemporary theory of design

was expounded. They were men like the painters William Dyce, R.A.
and Richard Redgrave, A.R.A., the compiler of the 1846 official cata-
logue of the National Gallery, Ralph Nicholson Wornum and George
Wallis, headmaster of the Manchester School of Design from 1844 to
1846, and were all in one capacity or another concerned in the Govern-
ment School of Design. Then there were architects like Matthew Digby
Wyatt, later the first Slade Professor at Cambridge; Owen Jones, author
of a magnificent tome of drawings from the Alhambra and later Art
Superintendent at the Department of Practical Art; and Gottfried Sem-
per, already famous in Germany and a refugee since 1849 because of his
activities during the revolutionary movements of the previous year.

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David Ramsay Hay, an Edinburgh interior decorator, completes the
list of early authors. To a later wave of writers belong the designer
Christopher Dresser, the architect C. L. Eastlake, the designers L. F.
Day and Walter Crane and, of course, William Morris.
Despite their common interest some of these men were bitterly at
loggerheads with one another. To most of them contemporary design
meant adjustment to the fairly recent industrial situation where mass pro-
duction by machines was rapidly supplanting the older craftsmanship.
The School of Design and the subsequently organized Department of
Practical Art were established to solve problems arising from the new
and somewhat perplexing state of affairs. On the other hand to John
Ruskin, who loathed the development going on around him, the work
of Cole, Wyatt, Jones, Redgrave and others was based on an utterly
false set of values—an outlook reflected in his words: 'the Professorship
of Sir Henry Cole at Kensington has corrupted the system of art-teach-
ing all over England into a state of abortion and falsehood from which
it will take twenty years to recover'.2
Whatever the difference in their approach to the ethics of design,
however, all were agreed in attaching high aesthetic importance to
ornament. 'The love of ornament is a tendency of our being . . . orna-
mental design has had its birth long before the very conception of the
fine arts,' said Dyce. It is called 'a necessity of the mind' and, according
to Dresser, we 'act in accordance with an inward instinct or passion'
when applying colour or ornament to the objects by which we are sur-
rounded. Owen Jones laid it down as a general rule that 'construction
should be decorated' and Ruskin held sculpture and painting to be the
chief features of architecture, regretting the increasing 'prevalence of the
lower part over the higher, to the interference of the constructive with
the purity and simplicity of the reflective element'. Pugin, William
Morris and others might be quoted to the same effect.
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They were, therefore, no 'pioneers of the modern movement' at any

rate as regards functionalist doctrines. True, Pugin wrote that 'there
should be no features about a building which are not necessary for con-
venience, construction, or propriety'. But here 'propriety' relates prim-
arily to ornament, which should 'consist of enrichment of the essential
construction of the building'. It should serve as an 'embellishment of
that which is in itself useful, in an appropriate manner'. In a similar
vein William Morris wrote his famous sentence, which has frequently
been given a functionalist interpretation: 'Have nothing in your houses
which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.' It is
quite clear that he himself considered the 'beautiful' to be of equal sig-
nificance with the 'useful'. He defined architecture as 'the art of orna-

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mental building', and wrote that we should 'clothe our daily and domes-
tic walls with ornament that reminds us of the outward face of the
earth.. .'.
Indeed we should not be surprised to learn that a considerable part of
mid nineteenth-century writings on the reformation of design did not
aim at bringing about a major change in its social or technical basis or
even a change of purpose, but rather a purification and systematization
of existing trends and chiefly of the subject-matter of ornament. The
progressives found contemporary design marred by vulgar naturalism
and an unenlightened use of period styles, by logical inconsistencies in
the expressive content of ornament, and by coarseness resulting from
shoddy workmanship or unrefined machine production. Their attempts
at a clarification of principles were first and foremost directed against
shortcomings such as these, certainly not towards the abolition of orna-
mental art.
Ornament, then, was a serious matter, not to be applied capriciously
or purely for its own sake. It even had a purpose to fulfil which in this
literary age was considered as important as its power to adorn: it was
meant to tell a story, to canalize reflection, to provoke thought. It had
to be reasonable and consistent in a purely literary sense as well as
plastically. 'What madness, then,' Pugin wrote, '. . . to worship at the
revived shrines of ancient corruption, and profane the temple of a cruci-
fied Redeemer by the architecture and emblems of heathen gods. . . . Is
our wisdom set forth by the owl of Minerva, or our strength by the
club of Hercules?'John Ruskin saw ornament as an aid to contemplation
of the wonders of divinely inspired Nature and praised the Gothic style
for its noble 'hold of nature', for its 'careful distinction of species, and
richness of delicate and undisturbed organization, which characterize the
Gothic design'. In it he found expressed 'the history of rural and thought-
ful life, influenced by habitual tenderness, and devoted to subtle inquiry'.
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 VICTORIAN THEORY OF ORNAMENT

Neither was his pupil William Morris an advocate of art for the sake
of pure colour, line and'form or of pattern as an end in itself. ' I . . . must
still insist on plenty of meaning in your patterns; I must have unmistak-
able suggestions of gardens and fields, and strange trees, boughs and
tendrils, or I can't do with your pattern.'... 'To have a meaning and to
make others feel and understand it, must ever be the aim and end of our
Western art.' Pure pattern-making, or 'colour for colour's sake only'
he held to be 'uncivilized'. The narrative element counted for much
even with men like Dyce, Redgrave, Cole, Gottfried Semper and others
who worked in the Governmental Schools from the eighteen-thirties to
the eighteen-fifties. Through Cole's interesting venture, the Summerly s
Art Manufactures, some among them became authors of works like 'A

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Bride's Inkstand' adorned with a little Cupid in cast metal or a glass
vase called 'The Well Spring', with ornaments 'of.waterplants coloured
and enamelled on the glass'. Objects like these illustrate the real sense
in which the Victorians understood the thesis that 'form follows func-
tion', form must be read as ornamental form, which by means of easily
grasped symbols or pictures should suggest the function of the object
adorned. As Gottfried Semper was to point out: 'Tritons, Nereids, and
Nymphs will always be meaningful by a well, Venus and the Graces by
a mirror, trophies and combats with arms'. This is what, in another
context, was described as 'appropriate detail relating to its (the object's)
use'. In his Official Report of the fury for the 1851 Exhibition, Redgrave
gave ample proof that the term 'appropriate form' was by no means
understood to mean anything like the modern 'functional form' and
that many a modern-sounding, seemingly functionalist sentence must be
read in a symbolistic sense. It seems necessary to stress this point because
we are so frequently apt to judge Victorian design on our own premises,
giving a twentieth-century interpretation to their theoretical statements.
It may even be that our research into the architecture and design of the
last century has to a considerable degree been programmatic, in the sense
that too often stones have been turned in order to find forerunners and
create a history for modern functionalism, while interesting parallels of
a contrary nature have been ignored.
Without enlarging further on this, we revert to our main theme. From
the mass of theoretical speculation some particular points will here be
singled out for discussion—such as, to start with, the attitude of various
writers to the ornament and period styles of the past.
The age which witnessed the earliest publications of writers mentioned
above had already hved through the first phases of stylistic copyism
which was initiated by mid eighteenth-century Gothicists and became
an outstanding characteristic of nineteenth-century decorative art. By
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1850 the whole gamut had been exploited, from various phases of
Classicism through Gothic, Elizabethan, Louis XIV and XV, with
Persian, Turkish or Moorish as the most cherished exotic adjuncts.
Employed very often with scant knowledge of correct detail and with
little sense of appropriate composition, early nineteenth-century pseudo-
styles present themselves with a peculiar flavour which makes them easily
discernible.
Today it may be noted with surprise that few if any among our re-
formers rejected period styles out of hand. Despite many apparently
radical-sounding statements, Pugin practised throughout his career, and
on principle, in Gothic. To him as a Catholic this remained the sole
manner of building expressive of true religious principles: 'in it alone

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we find the faith of Christianity embodied, and its practice illustrated'. His
love of Gothic or 'Christian' architecture was complemented by his
contempt for classical tradition, as quotations given above clearly
demonstrate. Pugin even preferred Gothic on structural and other tech-
nical grounds—a fact hardly to be marvelled at in an age which had yet
to learn of the Crystal Palace and of reinforced concrete building. But
he was by no means averse to improvements. 'The Christian architect',
he says, 'should gladly avail himself of those improvements and in-
creased facilities that are suggested from time to time,' such as for
instance, 'the great improvements in the working of metals for construc-
tive purposes'. Again: 'It is the devotion, majesty and repose of Christian
art, for which we are contending—it is not a style, but a principle.'
If Pugin's preference for Gothic was founded largely on its narrative
and expressive properties, so was that ofJohn Ruskin. But while Pugin
stressed the Catholic character of the style and insisted on a scheme of
ornament in the Catholic tradition of Gothic building, Ruskin was a
Protestant Pantheist. Praising, like Pugin, the style for its practical and
constructive advantages, in its ornament he sought an expression ot
Man's joy in the Creation of God. His philosophy concerning these
matters was adumbrated in the first volumes of Modem Painters, and
subsequently elaborated in Seven Lamps of Architecture and Stones oj
Venice. Ruskin's rejection of the Classical tradition was consequent on
the assumption that art and architecture should mirror man's wonder
and delight before the visual creation of God, since this demanded a
freely inspired and naturalistic style to which he felt that Gothic, and
Gothic only, was really suited. The creation of ornament, then, was an
act of faith. To Ruskin, as to Pugin and indeed to numerous contem-
poraries, this was no trivial matter.
Unlike Pugin and Ruskin the men connected with the Governmental
Drawing-Schools and related enterprises did not single out any one
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 VICTORIAN THEORY OF ORNAMENT
among the period styles as the only safe basis for contemporary ex-
ploitation and possible development. Their attitude, clarified in numer-
ous written passages, may be summarized as follows: Styles from the
past, and from foreign cultures, should be subjected to the closest study,
but not in order to imitate them. Rather they should be considered to
embody 'facts and conclusions already arrived at' concerning proportion,
the use of colour, the form or disposition of ornament, etc., etc.—in
short, the well-established authority of ancient art 'may be proved to
be founded on the most accurate perception of the objective causes of
natural beauty' (Dyce). This attitude was later reflected in the custom
of setting museums and schools of design in close proximity. In the
words of Christopher Dresser, modern work might employ 'the vigour

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of the best Gothic ornament, the severity of Egyptian, the intricacy of
the Persian, the gorgeousness of the Alhambra, and so on, only it must
not imitate in detail the various styles of the past'.
The practice of Owen Jones, M. D. Wyatt and others shows, how-
ever, that it was by no means easy to win free at a stroke from the
dominance of electicism; so we frequently find an insistence that, when
employed, borrowed features should at least be correctly used. The feel-
ing, however, was widespread that a new ornamental art should be
founded on the judicious study of forms in nature.
John Ruskin's preference for naturalistic ornament has already been
mentioned. He is interesting for his introduction of a strange and highly
personal scale of expressive value in ornament based on natural form.
This gradation he justified by his belief that those forms are 'most
natural which are most frequent; or, rather, that on the shapes which in
the everyday world are familiar to the eyes of men, God has stamped
those characters of beauty which He has made it man's nature to love'.
Thus 'the noblest ornament' is that which represents 'the highest orders
of existence. Imitated flowers are nobler than imitated stones; imitated
animals, than flowers; imitated human forms, of all animal forms the
noblest'. In Stones of Venice a more elaborate list of precedence was given,
starting with the forms least frought with divine association: 'Abstract
Lines; Forms of Earth (Crystals); Forms of Water (Waves); Forms of Fire
(Flames and Rays); Forms of Air (Clouds); Organic Forms (Shells); Fish;
Reptiles and Insects; Vegetation (a) Stems and Trunks; Vegetation {b)
Foliage; Birds; Mammalian Animals and Man.' We shall see later how
its placing on this list came to influence the position and employment of
any single motif when used for decorative purposes.
The contemporaries of Ruskin expressed themselves in far less philo-
sophical terms. An early writer, the Edinburgh designer David Ramsay
Hay, in a Report on Design before a Royal Commission in 1836, had
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recommended that inspiration for ornament and design be found in
nature, thereby forming 'a school peculiar to this country'. William
Dyce expressed it as his opinion that 'nature must be held up as a source
from whence . . . all the forms of beauty applicable to the uses of the
ornamentist must be derived'. Similar views were held by Richard
Redgrave and Owen Jones, and were voiced in The Journal oj Design
as well as in Henry Cole's pamphlet for Summerley's Art Manujactures.
Almost a generation later than this William Morris held that the de-
signer's teacher 'must be Nature and History'. His own design is full of
fanciful renderings of flowers and greenery with nothing much besides,
while the influence on his composition of specimens of old Sicilian and
Near East textiles in the Victoria and Albert Museum is evident. His

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contemporary, Christopher Dresser, being educated as a botanist, em-
ployed natural form for his ornamental design throughout his career
almost to the exclusion of other elements; while throughout the latter
half of the century series of books and articles published in England and
abroad on the subject of natural forms as a model for ornament testify
to the importance of the principle.
It was a principle which, as we have already pointed out, was not by
any means new or at that time held only by the thoughtful few. What
makes the naturalism of our reformers stand out as something apart is
their insistence on some sort of stylization as opposed to realistic repro-
duction of natural form and their belief that certain principles could be
found to guide them in the process. We find this point elaborated fairly
early. Pugin, for example, in a publication of 1849 relates that at some
time in the course of his studies he had noticed how the foliage work in
Gothic architecture had obtained its peculiar character 'chiefly owing to
the manner of their arrangement and disposition' . . . 'it is the adaptation
and disposition of it which stamps the style'. The observation was further
reflected upon. Whereas 'a modern painter would endeavour to give a
fictitious idea of relief, as if hunches of flowers were laid on', thereby
producing 'an appearance of cavity or projection . . . on a feature which
architectural consistency would require to be treated as a plane', the
ancient Gothic artists 'disposed the leaves and flowers... into geometri-
cal forms and figures, carefully arranging the stems and component
parts so as toJill up the space they were intended to enrich; and they were
represented in such a manner as not to destroy the consistency of the
peculiar feature or object they were employed to decorate . . . for
instance, a panel, which by its very construction is flat, would be orna-
mented by leaves orflowersdrawn out or extended, so as to display their
geometrical forms on aflatsurface'. Ornament, in fact, should be treated
and employed in a reasonable manner, and should affront neither feeling
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 VICTORIAN THEORY OF ORNAMENT

nor good common sense. 'Nothing', Pugin continues, 'can be more

ridiculous than an apparently reversed groining to walk upon, or highly
relieved foliage and perforated tracery for the decoration of a floor.'
With one notable exception similar considerations were voiced by all
those among Pugin's contemporaries with whom we are concerned.
William Dyce declares: 'Ornamental art is rather abstractive and repro-
ductive than imitative.' The designer must 'anatomize' the works of
nature, and 'the power of representing objects in the form of diagrams
is to him far more necessary and valuable than that of imitating them
with all their effects of light and shade, of surface or of material'. Hay,
in 1844, had written a book to elucidate 'the princples of combinations
which constitute beauty', insisting onflatnessof design and conventional

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treatment of ornament. Throughout the series of important theoretical
writings which followed during the latter half of the century, the theme
was elaborated and various manners and degrees of stylization recom-
mended to make ornament fit its material, the function of the object to
which it was applied and the technique by which this object was pro-
duced. And already during the period between the 1851 and 1862 World
Exhibitions a notable change took place in the look at least of British
design forflat-surfacepattern in wallpapers and textiles.
It would lead us too far afield to trace the multiple variations on the
theme of stylization, but it must be noted that the principle was not left
unquestioned by all. Dyce for one objected to what he called the 'crude
and hazy notion that, as a general rule,flowersand all other objects must
undergo a conventionalizing process before they can be employed as
matter of ornament. . . . There is no general rule. Each case must be
considered by itself.' Professor M. D. Wyatt gave his support, finding
that 'the tendency of the chief directors of taste has been . . . to tie the
decorative artist's hands somewhat too dogmatically. The result will be
that. . . our productions will grow dry and arid.'
The most direct opposition, however, was voiced by John Ruskin,
who was sceptical of the basically commercial aims of Cole's design
policy; this was a field where in Ruskin's view moral considerations
were the only ones to be taken into account. As we have already seen,
the act of reproducing in ornamental art the divine forms of nature was
to him an act of faith and piety, inconsistent not only with any mechani-
cal means of reproduction or multiplication but even with any not
strictly necessary simplification or transformation of form for orna-
mental purposes. To him conventionalization or stylization of ornament
represented 'not an improvement of natural form into something better
and purer than Nature herself... in all cases whatever, right conven-
tionalism is either a wise acceptation of an inferior place, or a noble
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display of power under accepted limitation'. Consequently, 'the only

essential distinction between Decorative and other art is the being fitted
for a fixed place; and in that place, related, either in subordination or in
command, to the effect of other pieces of art'. Stylization was permissible
where decoration was placed too far out of sight for details to show or
when so placed as to be subject to wear and tear; or when ornament was
used to decorate for instance dress materials, which would fall into folds
so that the decoration would not show properly anyway except as
masses and pure pattern of form and colour. His rule for conventional-
ization, when of necessity this expedient had to be resorted to, was,
however, 'perfectly simple': 'If the designer of furniture, of cups and
vases, of dress patterns, and the like, exercises himself continually in the

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imitation of natural form in some leading division of his work; then,
holding by this stem of life, he may pass down into all kinds of merely
geometrical or formal design with perfect safety, and with noble re-
sults.' It follows without further documentation that his scale of prefer-
ence as regards ornamental subject-matter, quoted above, was worked
into this scheme, less noble motifs being preferred for materials, uses,
or place of least distinction.
It is interesting, although not surprising, to find in the theory and
practice of William Morris an echo of the more technical aspect of
Ruskin's views. Having obviously profited as an artist from the activities
both of the Governmental Schools and of the collections at South Ken-
sington, he believed the Schools of Design to be necessary but felt at the
same time that 'when people talk most about Works of Art, generally
speaking at that period they do least in art'. He was concerned more
with creating a society in which art could grow than with expounding
theories for the fashioning of that art—this was to him a matter of feel-
ing rather than of theory. The 'scientific' approach of the Schools of
Design he deeply distrusted, talking of 'a sham science of design' and
holding that 'designing cannot be taught at all in a school'. His own com-
ments on various crafts were always given the form of technical, pro-
fessional advice, rarely narrowing into definite rules on matters of form.
Undiluted naturalism in ornament he rejected, but maintained at the
same time that 'your convention must be your own, and not borrowed
from other times and peoples'.
This insistence on 'conventionalization' in one form or another forms
perhaps the most outstanding achievement of Victorian theory of
ornament. Its impact was to be considerable, first on Art Nouveau at
the turn of the century and then on the activities of designers and studio
craftsmen to this day. It is particularly interesting that such principles
should have influenced the 'minor' art of design at a time when painting
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and sculpture were passing through a blatantly naturalistic phase, to be

superseded only towards the close of the century by tendencies com-
parable to early Victorian trends in design.
It may seem difficult to find two theoretical tendencies in sharper
opposition to each other than on the one hand the mid-Victorian atti-
tude as demonstrated here and on the other recent doctrines of formal
Puritanism which for convenience's sake may be given the label of
Functionalism. True, to a very limited degree parallels may be found in
Victorian times to the purist attitude of twentieth-century theorists.
Before a Parliamentary Committee of 1835 James Nasmyth, inventor of
the steam hammer, stressed the importance of'the entire reconcilability
of elegance of form with bare utility'; it may, however, be questioned

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whether, in an age when Gothic or Classical styling was commonly
applied even to machinery, this can be understood to imply a distaste for
ornamental design. But be that as it may among critics, for instance, of
the 1851 Exhibition praise is fairly generally given to the unadorned,
strictly functional appearance of horse carriages and even of kitchen
ranges or machinery and in this we may see a very early and very real,
if fairly insignificant, anticipation of twentieth-century Functionalisni.
Through what other links are our Victorian theorists related to their
colleagues of the early twentieth century? Most directly, I believe,
through Art Nouveau. In the early continental manifestations of the
style a debt to Britain has been universally recognized, and in a great
many instances personal contacts are known to have existed between
prominent followers of the advanced British line and Continental
avant-gardistes. It may be mentioned as a curiosity that in his youth even
Le Corbusier was educated on the principles of John Ruskin supple-
mented by Owen Jones's Grammar of Ornament. He later worked under
Peter Behrens, a founder member of the Darmstadt colony of artists,
inspired largely, and not only through its Viennese leader Olbrich, by
British trends.
Quite soon, however, the Puritan outlook made itself more strongly
felt until, under the slogan of 'Neue Sachlichkeit', important avant-
garde architects and designers came to regard ornament as incompatible
with contemporary trends in production and with what was loosely
termed 'the modern spirit' in general. In 1908 Adolf Loos, Viennese
architect and critic, wrote his essay on Ornament und Verbrechen, in which
he maintained that ornament belongs to less mature stages of cultural
development and that contemporary ingenuity should be reserved for
higher things—an anticipation, it seems, of Le Corbusier's conception
of modern man as a contemplative being whose intellect should be
captivated by more subtle devices than ornamental art in the traditional
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sense. Among the many radical trends towards a new conception of
form in the major and minor arts during the following decades few were
more insistent upon a new style based on pure line, surface and form
than the Dutch Stijl-Group. The Deutsche Werkbund committed itself
to a similar position by the publication in 1924 of its book, Form ohne
Ornament, and the Bauhaus, after some initial flirtation with less austere
projects, became a centre for the propagation of the modern Puritan
principles in design. The twenties and thirties saw the dramatization of
the sleek beauty of the automobile, the steamboat or modern men's
wear.
Although Puritanism has dominated twentieth-century avant-garde
thinking until now, it has not been alone in the field. From time to time

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revivals have produced work of high quality and interest—Neo-
Baroque superseding Art Nouveau, with Neo-Classicism reigning
throughout the twenties; while constantly attempts to create new forms
of ornament and to use contemporary materials and techniques for new
expressive effects have stimulated interest and enriched a number of
works and trends. The Wendingen group of Amsterdam, the German
expressionist architects, the later phase of Hoffmann's Wiener Werk-
stdtte with the works among others of Dagobert Pache may be cited as
interesting examples of tendencies which have been overlooked or
treated with less than justice by scholars imbued with the modern puristic
spirit.
Where do we stand today? Leaving aside the perpetual interest—and
money—which an undiscerning public squanders on bad or eclectic
ornament, it seems clear that contemporary taste is again swinging to-
wards the ornate, if not the ornamental. In shape and colour the less
technical and less austere branches of design are now often charged with
emotion in a manner that would have been unthinkable during the
thirties. Our studio craftsmen, direct descendents of nineteenth-century
forerunners like William Morris, William Morgan, Emile Galle or Jean
Carries, are still free to work along the most fanciful lines; and if their
output is restricted, their work is made influential through publication
in periodicals and books, which today are more numerous than ever
before. The studio craftsman may even be capable of influencing mass
production, using his understanding of material and artistic experience
for the benefit of mechanized industry as in the case of Bertel Gardberg,
the Finnish silversmith, Gertrud Vasegaard, Danish potter, or Tias
Eckhoff, Norwegian ceramics and general designer—to mention only
a few.
But what about ornament in the production of today? It seems ex-
tremely likely that ornament, in the sense of 'embellishment' or 'fea-
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 VICTORIAN THEORY OF ORNAMENT

tures or work added for decorative purposes' (The Concise Oxford Dic-
tionary) in one form or another will always force itself upon us, and that
we might as well meet the challenge and avail ourselves of it to give
added interest to material life. It is doubtful whether any consistent
schemes of ornamentation comparable to the period styles will ever be
resuscitated, and it is probably right that migrant modern man should
construct the interiors of his dwellings neutrally with regard to formal
expression. How resplendent, however, may be the furnishings which
he moves along with him from place to place! Carpets, intricately pat-
terned if he wishes them so, their material coloured in the pure and last-
ing tints procured by modern dyes; if furniture will probably never
again be the same by Baroque or Rococo standards, both the materials

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and techniques of production could make possible far greater freedom of
expression than is the case today. Wherever material is being woven and
surfaces stencilled or printed, or form moulded, pressed or cast, there are
the possibilities of creation within the limits set by industrial mass pro-
duction; while for special commissions artists and craftsmen outside
industry will always be able to work for a price well below that of even
second-rate antiques.
Though it seems evident, however, that doctrinaire Functionalism
has by now 'fulfilled its historic mission', there is no telling where our
new sense of drama will lead us—and in no case should the useful lesson
of Neue Sachlichkeit be forgotten. Austerity of form and the elegance of
bare simplicity are fitting not only for our technical equipment like
refrigerators, heating installations and the rest, but indeed for our fur-
nishings and objects of ease and luxury. Nor should it be overlooked
that the last generation has learned consciously to exploit the aesthetic
properties of materials in a way unknown before; the register of ex-
pression has thus been widened without resort to ornament in the tra-
ditional sense of that word.
Things are doubtless happening in the 'useful arts' of today that would
have shocked a purist of the early thirties. In this situation our overriding
concern must be that ornament, whatever form it may take, should
really add something of value and not be introduced to spoil a good
design or to gloss over a bad one. The non-functional elements of design
should be welcomed only in so far as the designer knows their proper
place and restricted use. The strictest standards of quality-should be
applied—as a matter of course; the form should be suited to the material
and technique; if ornament is representational, its subject should be
reasonably well suited to the circumstances in which it is employed. In
short, it seems not unlikely that our old Victorian authors are due for a
revival—which, to be sure, would have pleased them vastly.
328
 ALF BOE

REFERENCES
1
Report of the Departmental Committee on
The Royal College ofArt (London, 1911),
pp. 27ff.The quotation has been taken
from Nikolaus Pevsner, Academies ofArt
i
Past and Present (1911), p. 247.1 take this
occasion to stress my indebtedness to the
pioneer works o f this author. Since the
period before World War I he has been
the first to take serious interest in this
aspect o f nineteenth-century aesthetics.
Books like Pioneers of the Modem Move-
ment, High Victorian Design, with
leadership o f Peter Floud and Hugh
Wakefield. Their exhibition in 1952 o f
Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts
must be singled out for especial praise.
Fors Clavigera, Letter 79, 8th July, 1877.
Collected Works (Cook and Wedder-
burn), vol. XXIX, p. 154. Quoted from
Alf Boe, From Gothic Revival to Func-
tional Form. A Study in Victorian Theories
of Design (Oslo, 1957) p. 93. My present
essay has been based on this book;
where no references are given in the

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numerous shorter treatises, have done
far more than sketching the outlines.
Of equal significance has been the work
done at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Department o f Circulation under the
present text, sources of quotations may
be found there by way of the index.
The book also contains a fairly adequate
bibliography.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
MONBOE c. BEARDSLEY is Professor of Philosophy at Swarthmore College and is a member
of the editorial board of The Monist. He has written Aesthetics. Problems in the Philosophy of
Criticism (1958) and is editor (widi Elizabeth Beardsley) of the series Foundations ofPhilosophy
(1963-5). He is writing A Short History of Western Aesthetics.
HANS EICHNEE is Professor and Chairman of the Department of German in Queen's
University, Canada. He has written Thomas Mann (1953 and 1962) and is co-editor of the
critical Friedrich Schlegel edition.
AlP BOE is Chief Curator at the Museum of Applied Art, Oslo. He has written From Gothic
Revival to Functional Form. A Study in Victorian Theories of Design (1957).
BAY FOHSYTH is Lecturer in English at the University of Western Australia.
HICHAHD KELL teaches English in a technical college. His first collection of poems. Control
Tower, was published by Chatto & Windus in 1962.
JOHN INGAMELLS is Assistant-Keeper in the Department of Art at the National Museum
of Wales.
HUTH SAW is Professor of Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London University and is
Chairman of the Advisory Council of The British Society of Aesthetics.
NiNiAN SMART is Professor of Theology at Birmingham University. He has written
Reasons and Faith: an Investigation of Religious Discourse, Christian and Non-Christian (1958)
in the International Library of Psychology.
DONAID BROOK is a professional sculptor, at present engaged on a doctoral thesis on aspects
of the appraisal of sculpture at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Australian National
University.
i_ B. ROGERS is a sculptor member of the Midland Group of Artists. He is Senior Lecturer
and Co-ordinator of Three-Dimensional Design Studies at Loughborough College of Art
and lectures to handicraft teachers at Loughborough Training College.

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