The End of the Beautiful Meaningless

One of the reasons I'm not a fan of applied ornament on furniture is that it's lost its meaning during the last few centuries. To be certain, some ornament is just gilding the lily, filling in blank spaces to delight or dazzle (or even disgust) the viewer.

But a lot of ornament, especially the early stuff, transmitted deliberate and uncoded messages to the viewer. Many times the ornament told a story. Or it reminded people of something important. Or it put the viewer in his or her place in the world.

This sort of ornament or symbology was supposed to work hand in hand with the overall form of the piece of furniture (or building) to create a harmonious whole.

The problem is that we lost the code book.

Let's look at a couple examples that (I hope) will illustrate our modern collective ignorance. Before we start, know that I hate quizzes. So I'm not trying to make you feel stupid with the following questions. Mostly, I'm trying to show how disconnected we are from our past.

Example No. 1.* Here's a common moulding that you will see on buildings and furniture. It has been around for thousands of years. But what does it mean?

Answer: Most of us would call this moulding "Greek key" or something similar. It's a classical motif that appears any time that classicism rears its head. The other name for the moulding is "meander." And that gets us closer to its original meaning. This unbroken line is supposed to remind us of infinity. It circles a building or piece of furniture and symbolizes eternity.

Example No. 2.* Here's another common moulding. This carved ornament also appears in the many "classical" phases our society has gone through, including the Renaissance and the Federal periods, for starters.

If you know your stuff, you might identify this as "egg and dart" moulding. I knew the name for this stuff for many years before I gave a thought to what it means.

It represents life and death. Egg for birth. Dart (or arrow) for death. The meaning of this moulding hit me like a ton of eggs when I encountered it in the courtroom of the Kentucky Supreme Court. The moulding surrounded the entire room, and it wasn't found many other places in the Beaux Arts capitol building.

Clearly, the architect knew how the symbol worked and where to put it.

Nowadays I see "egg and dart" applied in weird ways. In the nursery? The kitchen? OK, maybe putting it in the henhouse/abattoir is OK. But maybe don't put the stuff in the bathroom? (Unless you are Elvis Presley.)

There is a lot of lost information. We don't look at a Greek or Roman column and see a burial chamber for a young girl with a plant growing out of the top. And we sure as hell don't know the story that goes with the plant. Or how we should feel about it.

It wasn't just the Greeks and Romans who encrypted their furniture. Most cultures did, including the peasants of the High Carpathian mountains (which have become somewhat of an obsession for me).

Before I found the books written in Hungarian that helped me translate these old encoded messages, I simply stared at these patterns for hours – on an airplane, while waiting in line at the grocery or (yes) sitting on the toilet like Elvis. I tried to blur my eyes and think like a peasant. And I'd ask: What does this shape remind me of?

Sometimes I guessed correctly. Many times, however, I did not.

What was especially strange was when an old symbol reminded me of something quite new. A series of concentric arcs looked a lot like a WiFi signal to me. And that connection was difficult to dislodge from my head. Soon my brain began to find other meanings in these old symbols.

At some point I decided to create a set of patterns that I would engrave into my furniture. Then I decided I would tell everyone what they meant – so it wouldn’t get lost. It a ridiculous idea, like creating a new language or a furniture style. But the more I looked at these patterns and symbols, the more sense it made to me.

I call these symbols "spells," which I know upsets people who associate the word with dark things. If you have a half-open brain and read on, I think you'll see these "spells" are nothing of the sort.

These symbols are a completely areligious reminder of something important. When I think of a "spell," I think of something (words, pictures, sounds) that changes your mind. Here's a very simple spell. The first one I devised.

It's a graph of parallel lines. Or rectangles perhaps. Look at the image for a few moments and see if it reminds you of anything.

OK, what if I add these additional lines? Does this look like something familiar? Something ugly? Something we should avoid?

For me, these rectangles look like the cheap and awful drop ceilings that have been a feature of every single corporate job I've ever had. I know instinctually the pattern of the fluorescent panels in the grid. And when I gaze at this image, I can even hear the low background buzz of the lights.

This spell is what I call a "ward." Avoid this. These drop ceilings either obscure great beauty or they paper over a deeper ugliness. In any case, I don't want to be around them because they are almost always paired with cubicles, lightweight steel filing cabinet systems and performance reviews.

The only people who want these drop ceilings in their buildings are cheap landlords or corporate architects who are trying to remove a few dimes from the cost per square foot of their class A office space.

If you avoid these (that's the ward), I think your life will automatically (not magically) be better.

*Both of these images are from the "Handbook of Ornament" by Franz Sales Meyer, Dover, 1957. Thanks to Eric Brown for giving me a copy years ago.