Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book integrates a genealogy of previous publications going back to Herbert Read, Nikolaus Pevsner, and Alf Boe and develops theories and practices of mid-nineteenth-century England (the Reformers of Design and Owen Jones) towards the Werkbund and the Bauhaus. The book discusses the formation of historical theories on ornament from Semper to Worringer and Loos through Riegl as a development that brought about imaginative possibilities both for painting as well as architecture. It focuses on the disagreement over ornament that stood out at the beginning of the twentieth century among architects, such as Adolf Loos and Hermann Muthesius, on the one hand, and Henry van de Velde, on the other. The book highlights Jones's influence outside the debate on the reform of applied arts in which he played such a distinguished part, maintaining that principles of ornament were necessary if morals were to be improved.