Conditions in the woodcarving and turning trades, the criminally low prices paid to embroiderers and lacemakers, are well known. The producers of ornament must work twenty hours to earn the wages a modern worker gets in eight.

As ornament is no longer a natural product of our civilization, it accordingly represents backwardness or degeneration, and the labour of the man who makes it is not adequately remunerated.

14. Theo Van Doesburg. Postcard. 1920

Even
 the damage

inflicts on

Decoration adds to the price of an object as a rule, and yet it can happen that a decorated object, with the same outlay in materials and demonstrably three times as much work, is offered for sale at half the price of a plain object. 

 

Ornament is wasted labour and hence wasted health. That's how it has always been. Today, however, it is also wasted material, and both together add up to wasted capital.

13. Gerrit Rietveld. Child's wheelbarrow. 1923

greater is ornament 
the workers.

15. Gerrit Rietveld. Rietveld Schröder House, Utrecht. 1924

The lack of ornament means shorter working hours and consequently higher wages. Chinese carvers work sixteen hours, American workers eight. If I pay as much for a smooth box as for a decorated one, the difference in labour time belongs to the worker. And if there were no ornament at all—a circumstance that will perhaps come true in a few millennia—a man would have to work only four hours instead of eight, for half the work done at present is still for ornamentation.

16. Gerrit Rietveld. The Red and Blue Chair. 1917

17. Theo van Doesburg and Cornelis van Eesteren.
Hotel Particulier1923

18. Tadao Ando. Church of the Light, Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture, Japan. 1999

A

F

B

C

D

E

19. Specimen of Futura, issued by the New York City sales office of the Bauer type foundry. 1928

20. Ivan Leonidov.

Drawing concept of a printing house. 1925

21. Audrey Hepburn poses for photo to promote the film Sabrina. 1954

 

22. George Carwardine. 
Anglepoise lamp. 1932

As ornament is no longer organically linked with our culture, it is also no longer an expression of our culture. Ornament as created today has no connection with us, has no human con­nections at all, no connection with the world as it is constituted. It cannot be developed. The artist always used to stand at the forefront of humanity, full of health and vigour. But the modem ornamentalist is a straggler, or a pathological case. He rejects even his own products within three years. To cultivated people they are unbearable immediately, others are aware of their unbearableness only after some years. Where are the works of Otto Eckmann today? Where will Olbrich's work be in ten years' time? Modern ornament has no forbears and no descendants, no past and no future. It is joyfully welcomed by uncultivated people, to whom the true greatness of our time is a closed book, and after a short period is rejected.

23. Ulm School of Design. Designed by Max Bill. Completed in 1955

Mankind today is healthier than ever, only a few people are sick. But these few tyrannize over the worker who is so healthy that he cannot invent ornament. They force him to make the ornaments they have invented in the greatest variety of materials.

This is well-known to the ornamentalists, and Austrian ornamentalists try to make the most of it. They say: “A consumer who has his furniture for ten years and then can't stand it anymore and has to re-furnish from scratch every ten years, is more popular with us than someone who only buys an item when the old one is worn out. Industry thrives on this. Millions are employed due to rapid changes.” This seems to be the secret of the Austrian national economy; how often when a fire breaks out one hears the words: ”Thank God, now there will be something for people to do.” I know a good remedy: burn down a town, burn down the country and everything will be swimming in wealth and well-being. Make furniture that you can use as firewood after three years and metal fittings that must be melted down after four years because even in the auction room you can't realize a tenth of the outlay in work and materials, and we shall become richer and richer.

 

Changes in decoration account for the quick devaluation of the product of labour. The worker's time and the material used are capital items that are being wasted. I have coined an aphorism: The form of an object should last (i.e., should be bearable) as long as the object lasts physically.

I shall try to clarify this: A suit will change in fashion more often than a valuable fur. A ball gown for a lady, only meant for one night, will change its form more speedily than a desk But woe to the desk that has to be changed as quickly as a ball gown because its shape has become unbearable, for than the money spent on the desk will have been wasted.

 

24. Hans (Nick) Roericht, TC100 tableware for Thomas Rosenthal, degree project, 1958—59

 

25. Shukhov Tower on the Oka River, Russia. Designed by Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov. 1929

25. Shukhov Tower on the Oka River, Russia. Designed by Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov. 1929