Our need for rhythm – known since time immemorial of ebb and flood, the changes of the seasons, day and night and the singing of the birds – translated into patterns and repetitions in music, a poem, handclaps or clog dance – is also visible in the patterns on our tattoos, curtains, the balcony construction at apartment blocks, in fashion, on artefacts and daily products. The human need for art, decoration and identification shows itself on our skin and body, with the attributes with which we surrounded us and in our third skin, the architecture. The need for creativity, to shape and to express ourselves is as old as humanity: of the first cave drawings to our current 3D-copiers and life-stream videos.
Man collected like the bowerbird and adorned, gathered materials and formed groups and had to conform, differentiate or confront himself with others. The designing and manufacturing of wallpaper, curtain, shoe, hat, garment and make-up changed the techniques, tools; the artistic, functional and religious objects, thinking and society. And society in transition in turn changed his design and ornament.

For me there is no fixed border before and after Adolf Loos as to adorn, decorate or ornament belongs to the core faculty of humankind; layman or professional.
It would be easier to understand the book when the author would have explained what an ornament, embellishment, adornment, motif or pattern is.

The book is very interesting to understand the changing of form and content in the fashion industry and the role the ornament played and is playing with its dominant position in today’s consumer society.
The different chapters follow the diagram on the cover flap illustrating the shifting definitions and characters of ornament in relation to the product, maker and user. Following the theory of De Vries, it would be good when young designers would know more on the making and terminologies within the trade to be able to leave the pathway of empty decorating.
Angela van der Burght