simplicity and function���the Arts and Crafts movement,
Art Deco, and the Bauhaus���left a margin for patterned
textiles. Christopher Dresser, the late 19th century botanist
designer whose radical geometric teapots anticipate
Constructivism by some fifty years, created wallpapers
and fabrics whose spiky repeat patterns were based on the
severely stylized anatomy of plants rather than historicist
motifs. Even the Viennese architect Adolf Loos���whose
essay entitled ���Ornament and Crime��� is possibly more
influential than his buildings���foresaw gleaming white
cities, but left room in his own lavish interiors for gemutlich
traditional forms; the Windsor chair, for example. He also
affixed decorative bronze bosses to his building facades,
which were often of richly veined and colored marble.
O
rnament survives architectural purges because it
gives pleasure to both maker and consumer. Fortunately
the world of the 21st century is no white city but a polychrome, polymorphous, polycultural thicket. Still, architects, particularly, seem to believe the beautiful room is
empty. It is useful here to make a distinction between the
mass-produced ornament abhorred by Loos and the rich
yet disciplined ornament of pre-industrial ages. The ideal
ornament, far from detracting from the purity of architecture or objects, serves to express the inherent meaning
of an object or space.
T
wo seminal examples come to mind. The first
HYLAND
