On Henry van de Velde's Manuscript on Ornament

Abstract

This article discusses Henry van de Velde's unpublished Manuscript on Ornament, which I have reassembled from variousfragments in his archives.1 Henry van de Velde is known principally for his role in the development of Art Nouveau in Belgium and Germany around the turn of the twentieth century, andfor his polemical role in the 'Werkbund' conference in Cologne in 1914, which later came down in history as a reactionary attempt to oppose the historical progress of modernism. What is less well known, or even ignored, is the role that van de Velde played in elaborating an aesthetic theory: a synthesis of the two opposite poles of rational conception associated with machine production and an 'empathic' conception of art articulated around a particular understanding of the ornamentalfunction. The Manuscript on Ornament shedsfurther light on this aesthetic theory, and the role played therein by the notion of ornament. It constitutes therefore an important document in the sequence of his writings, the culmination of a long process, as evidenced by the author's repeated indications of his intention ofpublishing a 'historical-theoretical' treatise on ornament. It is true that throughout his earlierpublications he touched on this issuefrom diferent angles, but nowhere did he set out to produce a document such as this one [1].2