ABSTRACT
The efforts of design reformers to improve the public taste were aided by the establishment of a Museum of Ornamental Art (now the Victoria and Albert Museum). One particular, but short-lived, feature of the museum was a gallery that displayed ‘Examples of False Principles in Decoration’. The ‘False Principles’ were ridiculed for their pretension and detachment from the reality of middle-class consumption in Henry Morley’s essay. Its amusing tone is a critique of middle-class tastes and consumerism and reflects the dividing line between apparent respectability and vulgarity. The forms employed are natural and beautiful forms; the colours are arranged, and contrasted, and modified as the peoples find them in nature. The lines are such as they find in almost every other flower or object that meet us, and therefore always pleasing. The object of the ornamentist is not to make mere copies of natural objects, and to paint pictures, or carve images of them on furniture and appliances of life.
