Embellishment: To Make Something More Attractive

Illustration: Embroidered velvet cover of a Bible, 1583.

In many ways embellishment is the ultimate tool of the decorator. It can be seen, with some degree of accuracy, as the heart and soul of the decorative world. To understand and accept embellishment is to understand and accept decoration. 

Picking up a dictionary, Collins English, the easy definition of the word embellish is:

to make something more attractive by adding decorations

or

to make a story more interesting by adding details which may not be true

Collins Thesaurus makes an addition to the word embellish by adding: decorate, enhance, adorn, dress, grace, deck, trim, dress up, enrich, garnish, ornament, gild, festoon, bedeck, tart up, beautify.

 Illustration: Decorative iron work from the doors of Notre Dame, Paris, 13th century.

To make an addition to, or to enhance the sum of, seems to be an integral part of human nature. We have always felt the need to embroider, using the word in its loosest term, whether that be through design or craft, or indeed through fact or fiction. In this we are as one species, as no matter what culture or era we think of, all used decoration to enhance and embellish most elements of the artificial world that they created around them. 

Textiles in particular has a long and full tradition of embellishment. Additions to fabric can take the form of nearly anything, from the addition of pure stitching to other fabrics, beads, metals, wood, glass, precious stones, animal products, and so on.

Embellishment can also take many forms, with pattern work following the suggestion of nature, the geometrical abstract, fonts and lettering. It can be perceived as a subtlety, the changing of colour, line and texture, or it can be much bolder, using large-scale shapes and patterns. Whatever the technique or suggestion for composition, the end result is always nearly the same, to make something more than it was, to add decoration to enhance its attraction to the individual.

 Illustration: Henry William Arrowsmith. Decorative design, 1811.

However, embellishment was by no means limited to textiles. Ceramics, glass, metal, wood in fact all the major and minor decorative arts used embellishment as a legitimate tool in which to decoratively enhance their results and it was seen by generation after generation as an integral addition to the skills base of the discipline, rather than as a filler or by-product of the main event.

This relatively intense and symbiotic human attraction to the decorative is something that Modernism, on the whole, failed to take into account. In many respects, Modernism saw one of its tasks as the declaring of war on the traditions of human nature and human decorative art, seeing decoration and pattern as the addition of extraneous embellishment through dishonesty to the form and function of the product. To be fair this does have some merit, embellishment can well be seen as a form of tarting up, a disguise or distraction of the practical purpose of the product if you will, even to the point of the deflection of the truth, anyone who has bought a frozen pizza in a box will know exactly what I mean. Even the second definition of the Collins English dictionary stated above, although being an application towards fiction and story-telling, does make the implication clear as far as at least a proportion of embellishment is concerned: adding details which may not be true.

 Illustration: Decorative ornamental detail, 1826.

Having said that, was it strictly necessary to have a near iconoclastic crusade against the world of embellishment, decoration and pattern? Probably not. A number of minimal Modernist enthusiasts had frankly disturbing ideas as to where they stood in the time frame of the decorative arts, compared to those who embellished. Many of those ideas and analogies bordered on cultural bigotry, with traditional decoration being seen by many as belonging to a world of the non-sophisticated and the culturally backward. It is perhaps an unsavoury aspect of some of the twentieth century theories on design and decoration, theories which are often stripped of their more contentious aspects by today's world.   

In many respects, the iconoclastic approach the Modernists took to decoration had a mixed result, at least on the level of the removal of pattern. The twentieth century history of textile pattern work is just as rich, if not more so, than the previous nineteenth century. However, embellishment is not quite what it used to be. We have no arabesques or curlicues to embellish our phones, TVs, cars, laptops, building exteriors, pavements. We live in an environment where embellishment is often limited and contained, leaving much of our artificial world often with a stark and plain prospect. In some respects, is it any wonder then that graffiti, apart from the sanctioned graffiti of the advertising world, is often the only outward appearance of colour, intensity and expression, and even this is frowned on as a departure from the norm, in other words an attack on the minimal by the decorative. 

 Illustration: Transylvanian embroidered woman's winter jacket.

There is always more than one way of looking at things and there are of course merits within the decorative and non-decorative worlds. However, personally I would be more than happy to own a piece of technology that favoured the flamboyant, and would love to walk down a high street that favoured pattern through tessellation, rather than grey flagstones and tarmac. In other words, long live the human capacity for embellishment.

Futher reading links:

Biophilia, Nature and Decoration

Illustration: Hargreaves. Printed textile design, 1849.

Biophilia is the concept that humans have an innate biological need for a consistent connection with nature for their physical, mental and social well-being. It is this connection, or lack of, that gives us either a harmonious balance within ourselves, or a build-up of frustrations, alienation, illness and aggressive and unbalanced behaviour. Although the connection between the human species and its natural surroundings is by no means a new discovery, tagging the phenomena with the term biophilia does allow it to become both a contemporary talking point and focus for debate and exploration.

Although biophilia and biophilic design is mostly concerned with architecture and the human environment, allowing a mixture of man-made and natural phenomena within mostly urban environments, there is a case for expanding at least the general understanding of biophilia, to include the human decorative experience, with its innate need for stimulus and expression from the natural world. The potential of nature based decoration producing a similar harmonic balance within humans, certainly when compared to the minimal aesthetics expanded from the Modernist era, is perhaps self-evident. Considering the thousands of years of near constant nature-based human decoration compared to the few decades where lack of decoration was seen more as an intellectual gesture rather than an emotional one, it is perhaps hard not to see the connection.

Illustration: Photo taken in the local environment by the author, June 2012.

Biophilia sees decoration and ornamentation as natural analogues, that is secondary stimulation, in other words a connection with nature that is removed from direct contact, a representation of the real. However, despite the fact that decoration can only represent elements of the natural world through different mediums such as textiles, ceramics, glass, wood and metal for example, the connection is much more fundamental than just one that is visually motivated. Humans have spent most of their life as a species connected to nothing but the natural world. Our urban societies are a near-contemporary phenomenon and are therefore not really connected with the many memories and deep-rooted attachments to nature that were formed over countless generations. It is this attachment that has made nature-based decoration such a fundamental core value in human decorative arts.

The urban experience is often blamed for the uncoupling of humanity from its attachment to the natural environment, eventually resulting in indifference, neglect, even alienation of the environment outside of the city landscape, and certainly affecting our responsibilities towards a harmonious natural environment. City life in many respects can appear artificial and divorced from the world around it and certainly in a number of cases from the planet itself. Biophilia means to reconnect urban humanity with its long-time partner, nature. However, I wonder whether the link has ever been truly broken in all human concepts. Physically and practically, many of our urban environments contain much more concrete than plant life and creating an environmental harmony between the two may take some time or never really be achieved satisfactorily. 

 Illustration: Example of crewel embroidery work, 19th century.

Although many may not have the luxury or opportunity to experience nature as an enveloping partner in life, many still have emotional and spiritual connections with the natural world. That these are often manifested through decoration found on personal possessions such as jewellery, clothing and skin, personal or communal spaces, online personas and many other forms of personal and public contemporary life, shows how important the connection with nature still is for many. The old and faithful relationship between human and their natural environment is still jealously guarded by many and is manifested in a number of small ways whether that be physically through a flowering plant or compact herb garden, or imaginatively through the idealism of a perfect retreat which is very often set into or surrounded by a natural landscape.

By reinforcing our love of nature through the use of decoration and pattern within all of the mediums at the disposal of the artist, designer or maker, whether through industry or craft, allows us to constantly reaffirm our connection with the natural world. Many may find themselves living in a largely man-made environment, but flora and fauna decoration, whether through big flowers on a pair of curtains, leaves on a wallpaper, birds on a bed cover, unconsciously and consciously connect us with the life of our ancestors and the natural and real environment of the planet.

Illustration: Ceramic mural from the Mosque of Ibrahim Agha.

Artists, designers and makers will never tire of reinterpreting nature through fine art, pattern and craft. It is this continual and constant use of nature as first hand inspirational source material that keeps many in the creative community permanently in a state of wonder at the many manifestations of the natural world.

Further reading links: