Introduction

The collection is about the meaning of ornament and its theoretical role in the formative constitution of modernism especially in England, Austria, and Germany. ¹ The volume integrates a genealogy of previous publications going back to Herbert Read, Nikolaus Pevsner, and Alf Bøe and develops theories and practices of mid-nineteenth-century England (the Reformers of Design and Owen Jones) towards the Werkbund and the Bauhaus. Well-known figures such as Owen Jones, Gottfried Semper, Alois Riegl, Adolf Loos, Wilhelm Worringer, Hermann Muthesius, and Henry van de Velde, who contributed to the development of modernism in particular in the English- and German-speaking world, have been interpreted afresh while the interest in ornament showed by August Schmarsow—one of the foundational figures of art history—has never before received any in-depth treatment. The essay collection ends up with Ernst Gombrich, who sought to engraft a theory of ornament and art into a general theory of perception.