DSDN 171 blog assignment 3

Image: Heywood, Higginbottom & Smith Crystal Palace 1850's
http://thetextileblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/false-principles-of-design-exhibition.html

From Owen Jones' opinion that 'Construction should be decorated. Decoration should never be purposefully constructed.' (the Grammar of Ornament (1856)) that he agrees with the likes of A.W.N Pugin in terms of what he thinks should define design.

During the early to mid 19th century there was a great advancement in industry and mass production. This saw the gap between the classes particularly in Britain lessen as a previously unseen middle class emerged. This upset a natural and longstanding hierarchy that Britain held in which the rich stood well above the poor and the gap between the two was clearly definable. Now due to the low cost of goods from mass production some could afford to live more luxuriously and in turn began to mimic the upper class through design.

The style of design that was once considered rich and classy became cheap, mass produced imitations. Because the middle class were now buying these designs they were posing as the upper class which meant that a new design styles had to emerge so that the rich could stay above the middle class. So came design reformers such as Pugin and Jones who decided design should be relevant.

These reformers devised true and false principles which would outline what was good and bad design at the time. Two of the false principles were 'inappropriate decoration for function' and 'ornament constructed', these link directly with Jones' opinions. So when he said it he meant design should first made useful and then beautiful, if done the other way round it would not work, and I agree with him. I believe design look like what it really is, rather than falsifying it in an attempt to make it seem more valuable or classy than it truly is.