Review: Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local, by Gülru Necipoğlu and Alina Payne

Abstract

Gulru Necipoglu and Alina Payne, eds. Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016, 454 pp., 204 color and 34 b/w illus. $60, ISBN 9780691167282 This wide-ranging and beautifully produced collection of essays, edited by Gulru Necipoglu and Alina Payne, addresses the role of ornament in architecture and the decorative arts in light of its recent revival in cutting-edge architecture and design. The publisher's description presents Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local as “the first major global history of ornament from the Middle Ages to today”; this is not a comprehensive survey, however, but an episodic study, composed of twenty-six individual contributions arranged thematically rather than chronologically. The result of a conference held at Harvard in 2012, it features many scholars with ties to that university. The coverage is impressively wide-ranging but by no means global. Almost all the essays address European, Asian, or North African material. Aside from Jonathan Hay's essay on a single Chinese vase, however, most of Asia, at least those parts of it lying east and south of India—not to mention Australia and sub-Saharan Africa—does not figure in a volume that is less a compendium than an assortment of highly focused, individual studies. The essays do not share a single approach or theme. The opening chapters attempt to justify the return of ornament; most of the rest examine artifacts and architecture from perspectives developed in recent years by historians of early modern material culture and economic exchange. The strongest contributions generally follow this second approach. The rather scattered trio of essays at the end also merit attention; although they do not fit neatly into either category, they build a chronological bridge between them. Grounded in theories of architecture and ornament, especially the writings of Gottfried Semper and Adolf Loos, the initial chapters seek to provide a theoretical framework for the use of ornament by today's “starchitects.” All avoid acknowledging art nouveau as a key precedent for the current interest in …