ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter I described two ways in which proponents of the biological analogy dealt with the question of ornament on buildings or on useful objects: either by ignoring or denying its existence, or else by separating two spheres of interest in design, the ‘utilitarian’ and the ‘plastic’ in Purist terms. Our review of the work of the evolutionary ethnologists has illustrated a third possibility: that decoration on utilitarian artefacts might be interpreted as a vestigial survival of some previously functional feature, and could thus be accounted for in wholly historical and ‘genetic’ terms. If the view is taken that functional constraints control the shapes of artefacts in part but not in whole, and that decoration is to be found in those parts where the constraints allow a measure of free play to the design, then the tendency is to treat ornament as the mere complement or antithesis of function, a kind of fortuitous and purposeless elaboration of form on which the pressures of selection fail to act. Objects on which the functional demands have become less rigorous – like Balfour’s ceremonial axe – will show a compensating increase in the extent and complication of their decoration. The idea is encouraged that the forms of artefacts consist of an irreducible functional body or kernel, with a shell or loose-fitting decorative garment around it – what Leroi-Gourhan called the ‘non-functional envelope . . . made up of survivals’.
