Ornament begins as luxury. The more ornamented a building, a piece of clothing or an item of jewellery, the more labour has gone into its production and the more expensive it is. The Industrial Revolution and machine production changed everything. Suddenly decoration became cheap. Which coincided with the economic need for growth - the manufacture of more and more (decorated) stuff. This, in essence, is the argument of Marx, Morris, Loos and Veblen. Decoration characterised as a mechanism for capital to produce and sell more useless crap to the masses.
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