Universal Ornament

“Ornament is a system of figuration that must embody and become inhabited by the thing being ornamented” was the first in a series of statements laid out by Kent Bloomer in sketching a seemingly comprehensive theory of ornament on Wednesday for the Ornament's Refracted Cosmologies colloquium series at Yale. “You can’t have autonomous ornament.” “Like an alphabet, ornament consists of a finite or limit of figures.” “A figure of ornament must visually adopt principles of constructions and work without discarding its own identity.” “There is no new ornament.” Examples ranging from 6500-year-old pottery to Louis Sullivan’s Carson Pirie Scott Building to Bloomer’s own contemporary work for the Reagan Airport in Washington DC were shown. It wasn’t just said what ornament is, however, but what ornament isn’t. Ornament isn’t a sign, symbol, or “mere” decoration. When asked on the difference between ornament and pattern, he said, “the difference…is that ornament has a content—cosmos, and pattern does not. Pattern is the generality…once you grant ornament its cosmos, then it b…