Adolf Loos, “Glass and China,” (1898) - David Rifkind

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10. Glass and China (1898) Glass and China 69 

"Show the pots a people have produced, and in general you can tell 

what kind of people they were and their level of culture," says 

Gottfried Semper in the preface to his section on pottery. 1And, one 

would like to add, it is not only pots that have this power of 

revelation, every object of everyday use can tell us something about 

the habits and character of a people. Pottery, however, does possess 

this power to an exceptional degree. 

Semper gives an example to back up his claim. He shows 

illustrations of two vessels women used for carrying water to the 

house, one from ancient Egypt and one from ancient Greece. The 

first is the situla, the Nile bucket, a container which happens to 

resemble the copper caldrons with which the Venetians draw water. 

It looks like a giant pumpkin with the top sliced off, has no foot, 

and has a handle like those on fire buckets. This water bucket 

reveals the whole physical geography of the country, its topography, 

its hydrography. We immediately realize the people who use such 

a vessel must live on a plain, on the banks of a slow-moving river. 

How different is the Greek vessel! Semper describes, 

. . . the hydria, whose purpose is not to scoop up 

water, but to catch it as it flows out of the spring. 

That explains the funnel shape of the neck and the 

caldron shape of the body, the center of gravity of 

which is as close as possible to the mouth, for 

Etruscan and Greek women carried their hydrias on 

their heads, upright when full, and horizontal when 

empty. Try to balance a stick on the end of your 

finger: you will find it easier if you have the 

heavier end at the top. This experiment explains 

the basic shape of the Hellenic hydria (the body 

resembles a heart-shaped turnip), which is completed 

by the two horizontal handles at the point of 

the center of gravity for lifting the vessel when full, 

and a third, vertical handle, for carrying it when 

empty and hanging it up, perhaps also to provide 

agrip for someone to help the water carrier lift the 

full vessel onto her head. 

Thus Semper. His explanation will certainly have cut the idealists 

to the quick. What?! Those magnificent Greek vases with their 

perfect shapes, shapes which seemed created solely to demonstrate 

the instinct for beauty of the Greek people? Their shapes are a 

product of crude functionality? The foot, the body, the handles, the 

size of the mouth were all dictated by the use they were put to? 

That means these vases were practical! And we always thought they 

were beautifUl! We have been misled. We had always been taught 

that practicality and beauty were mutually exclusive. 

In my previous article I made bold to assert the opposite, and 

since I have received so many letters proving that I must be wrong, 

I have had to barricade myself behind the ancient Greeks. I will not 

deny our craftsmen have reached a level that precludes any comparison 

with other peoples or other ages. But I would like to 

remind you the ancient Greeks also knew a little about beauty. And 

they were led by practical considerations alone, without taking 

beauty into account at all, without wanting to satisfYsome aesthetic 

need. And when an object was so practical it could not be made 

any more practical, they called it beautiful. The peoples that 

followed them did the same, and we, too, say these vases are 

beautiful. 

Are there still people who work in the same way as the Greeks? 

Oh, yes. A5 a nation, the English; as a profession, the engineers. 

The English and the engineers are our ancient Greeks. It is from 

them that our culture comes, it is from them that it is spreading 

over the whole globe. They are the exemplars of nineteenth-century 

man. 

These Greek vases are beautiful, as beautiful as a machine, as 

beautiful as a bicycle.In this respect our pottery does not for the 

most part match up to the products of the mechanical engineer. 

Not from the Viennese point of view, of course, but from the 

Greek. What a feast of superfluity! At the beginning of the century

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70 Adolf Loos Glass and China 71 

our pottery was quite in the classical mold. Then the architects 

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came to Us rescue. 

I once sang in an operetta. Naturally it was set in Spain. At one 

point there was some celebration-I think it was the birthday of the 

master of the house-and a chorus of estudianteswas brought on to 

give the composer the opportunity for a Spanish song, and the 

costume designer a number of female singers to dress out. They 

sing, and it makes no difference whether it's a wedding, a birthday, 

a baptism, an anniversary, or a name day, since: 

We have the one song 

For every occasion. 

We just come along 

To express our elation. 

The magic formula was: For he's a jolly good fellow. I am quoting 

from memory, of course. It was ten years ago. 

Such estudiantes were our architects. They had only one song. 

It had two verses: moldings and ornamentation. And everything was 

worked on and worked over with the same moldings and the same 

ornamentation: fa

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72 Adolf Loos 

exhibit, that is together with the interiors, and Plecnik's modern 

framework suits them down to the ground. The display of the firm 

of Emil Zahn from Blumenbach in Moravia, for example, shows 

excellent taste. There are English glasses mounted in nickel silver, 

and a cut glass with straight-line decoration and green flashing (the 

clear glass has been dipped into colored molten glass) in a free style, 

which provides the first satisfactory resolution of this straight-cut 

glass with flashing technique. Everything that meets the eye is in 

good taste-even the attendant, a delightful sweet sixteen, who won 

the beauty contest last year. Now that's what I call harmony! 

H. Kreibich, the well-known glass engraver, has a whole 

workshop in operation, and the master craftsman is always surrounded 

by visitors waiting while he engraves monograms and 

names on the Jubilee goblets for them. Particularly delightful is a 

goblet decorated with good-luck charms, which I am sure has a 

future. This modest glass might do much to revive glass engraving, 

which Lobmeyr's brought to its peak, but which is unfortunately 

stagnating at the moment. What I have in mind is the delightful 

arrangement of the charms, which recalls the principle of decoration 

under Emperor Francis 1. 

Count Harrach's Glass Factory in Neuwelt is exhibiting, 

probably for the first time, Tiffany glasses made in Austria. With 

the help of Venetian glassmakers, and using the latest devlopments 

in molten glass, Louis C. Tiffany, the son of the American goldsmith 

Tiffany, has discovered a new method of decorating glass. 

The pieces are formed not by cutting or painting, but by a cunning 

system of dipping them into different-colored molten glass during 

blowing, in 'contrast to the Venetians, who weld a piece together 

while blowing. This process produces bowls and vases which surely 

represent the very highest achievement of modern art. In the 

handling of color, the pieces from Neuwelt are rather tame, but at 

least a start has been made, and we hope that the glassworks will 

manage to attract some artists to work with them. 

The same optimism cannot be expressed about our pottery 

industry. China painting still holds fast to the pretty-pretty tradition 

Glass and China 73 

of the previous century. In stoneware and majolica there are such 

shapes! Among other things, there is an ashtray in the shape of a 

concave coat of arms of our imperial house. Is there not a College 

of Heralds that could step in? To be sure, there is quite a lot of 

second-rate stuff among the glassware, but one can pass over that 

in silence. In the pottery section, however, one is confronted with 

the brash sign, "All shapes and patterns enjoy legal protection for 

all countries of the world." My God! Should one not rather give all 

countries legal protection agaimt these shapes and designs? One 

cannot help such thoughts when bad taste flaunts itself like that. 

It is in vain that one will look for pieces such as are manufactured 

in Copenhagen, more recently in Meissen, Rookwood near 

Cincinnati, and by the German firms of Lauger, Schmutz-Baudig, 

and Heider. There is a marvelous new-very new-material 

available, an Austrian invention, eosine, but it is still waiting for the 

artist who will create an appropriate style for it. The copies of 

Raguenet decoration-in the Oriental Art section-or the imitation 

marbled enamel crockery are not enough. Keep it refined and 

delicate; the Raguenet decoration seems to me to suit eosine better. 

But find an artist, a real artist! The china painters Franz D6rfl and 

Josef Zasche display excellent pieces in the traditional Viennese 

style, but even here we will have to be more precise in copying to 

beat off the competition over the next few years. Or create 

something new. But then something really new, as they do in 

Copenhagen. Theo Zasche should not find that too difficult. 

In the large display of the firm of Ernst Wahlig the sample 

plates from their stock of dinner services are once more the delight 

of the connoisseur. In these articles the firm has reached a level 

unrivaled anywhere in the world. All the princely houses, the 

aristocracy of birth and of money in all parts of the world, have 

their china dinner services made here. Plates for Indian rajahs rub 

shoulders with ones for American plutocrats. To me, many of these 

plates seem to symbolize the ~eginning dominance of a universal 

culture, a symbol of all-pervading English eating habits and of 

all-informing Viennese taste. Not all of them achieve their effect 

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through richness of decoration. One only has to look at the plate 

of Archduke Otto, a very model of simplicity. 

Moritz Hacker, the nickel silver manufacturer, is demonstrating 

a patent method of decoration which is new here. This, too, comes 

from America, and was used there first by the Gorham Mfg. Co. 

Glass, china, and majolica can be given a silver coating by dipping 

them in a galvanizing bath. A partial coating is also possible, 

meaning that any decorative pattern can be reproduced. The pieces 

in the Japanese spirit, realistic flowers on one side only, are 

magnificent; the rococo pieces dreadful. 

Notes 

1. In: Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Kunsten, oder 

Praktische Aesthetik (Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts, or 

Practical Esthetics), 2 vols, 1861-1863. 

11. Luxury Carriages (1898) 

"Neustadt-all change." 

The passengers get out. "BUt we want to go to Steffelsdorf." 

"That means two hours in the mail coach." 

"What, two whole hours rumbling along, that's terrible!" 

We're in Austria. 

"Kingston-all change." 

Here too the passengers get oUt. But they want to go to 

Lonsdale. 

"That means two hours in the mail coach." 

"What, in the mail coach!? That's marvelous!" 

We're in England. 

We Austrians think it rather odd to prefer, at the end of the 

nineteenth century, a perch in the mail coach to a comfortable seat 

in the train. But first of all let us take a look at ourselves. We prefer 

a cab to the steam or electric tram, though only when we think we 

might be seen. Without an audience to gawk, we find no pleasure 

even in the fastest cab. We should be honest enough to admit that. 

But the English just enjoy traveling. They still have a sense of 

the poetry of the open road. In the town they climb into a hack or 

a hansom only in emergencies. Even the most refined of ladies will 

go on the omnibus or tram, and in summer they are happy to find 

a seat on the open top. Here we sneak, shamefaced, into the 

interior of the vehicle and are plunged into despair if an acquaintance 

should spot us in the omnibus. For a trip into the country, 

however, we get into the train with all the rest. 

In England for a trip out into the countty, people ride the mail 

coach.And not squashed inside, but outside, up on the top. Men, 

women, and children all climb aboard, higgledy-piggledy; the four 

horses are hitched to the carriage, the guard blows a merry tune on 

his long horn, and away they go. And they don't lean back in their 

seats, blase and bored, as if to say to pedestrians, "Please don't look 

at me." They laugh and look round, merry and bright, one big 

happy family. 

This is a pleasure that everyone can afford in England. The 

demand has brought the prices down. A carriage leaves every large 

hotel at a set time. And people drive far out into the country, where

56 Adolf Loos 8. The Interiors in the Rotunda (1898) 

At a later date, when I discuss the individual interiors, I will 

have the opportunity of demonstrating whether, and how, the 

notions I have outlined above have been realized in the Rotunda. 

Notes 

1. Named after the Austrian painter of huge historical canvases 

Hans Makart (1840-1884), whose love of sumptuous furnishings so 

dominated the interiors of the wealthy Viennese middle classes that 

the eighties came to be known as the "Makart decade." 

In my last report I made some truly heretical demands. Neither the 

archaeologist, nor the interior designer, nor the architect, nor the 

painter, nor the sculptor should furnish our apartments. Who 

should do it, then? The answer is quite simple: Every man his own 

interior designer. 

That means, of course, that we will not be able to live in such 

"style" anymore. But that "style," style in quotation marks, is no 

longer necessary. What is that "style" anyway? It is hard to define. 

In my opinion the best answer was given by the worthy lady who 

said that if you have a lion's head on the nightstand, and the same 

lion's head is on the sofa, on the wardrobe, on the beds, on the 

chairs, on the washstand, in a word, on every object in the room, 

then that is style. Word of honor, craftsmen of Vienna, have you 

not done your best to encourage the spread of such ridiculous 

opinions among the public? It didn't have to be a lion's head, but 

there always had to be something molded onto the furniture, be it 

a column, a boss, a balustrade, sometimes elongated, sometimes 

shortened, sometimes thickened, sometimes slenderized. 

These rooms tyrannized their poor owners. Woe betide those 

unfortunates who dared to buy some additional item! Their 

furniture refused to accept anything else near them. If one was 

given a present, one had nowhere to put it. And if one moved, and 

one's new home did not have the same room sizes, then farewell to 

"style" for good. One might even, horror of horrors! have to put the 

German renaissance settle-cum-dresser in the blu'e rococo drawing 

room, and the baroque cupboard in the Empire sitting room. How 

terrible! 

How fortunate, by comparison, was the stupid peasant, or the 

poor laborer, or the old spinster. No such problems for them! No 

"style" in their homes. One thing came from here, another from 

there, all mixed up together. But just a minute!The painters, whom 

we had thought of as such paragons of taste, when they did 

paintings of interiors, ignored our magnificent apartments and 

painted the homes of the stupid peasant, or the poor laborer, or the 

old spinster. How can anyone find such things beautiful? For, as we 

have been taught, the beauty of an apartment lies in its "style."


But the painters were right. They who, thanks to their trained 

and practiced vision, have a much sharper eye for all outward 

appearances, have always recognized the superficial, pretentious, 

alien, unharmonious nature of our "stylish" apartments. The people 

do not fit in with the rooms, nor the rooms with the people. And 

how could they? The architect or the interior designer hardly even 

knows by name the person for whom he is working. Even if the 

occupant has paid for the rooms a hundred times over, they are still 

not his rooms. In spirit they will always remain the property of the 

one who created them. That is why they do not, cannot appeal to 

the painter. They lack any inner connection with the people who 

occupy them, they lack that certain something he finds in the room 

of the s~upid peasant, the poor laborer, the old spinster: a feeling of 

intimacy. 

I did not, thank God, grow up in such a "stylish" apartment. 

In those days they were unknown. Now, unfortunately, things have 

changed in my family as well. But in those days! Take the table: a 

crazy jumble of a table with some dreadful metalwork. But our 

table, our table! Can you imagine what that meant? Can you 

imagine what wonderful hours we spent at it? By lamplight! In the 

evening when I was a little boy I just could not tear myself away 

from it, and father kept having to imitate the night watchman's 

horn to make me scuttle off in fright into the nursery. My sister 

Hermine spilled ink on it when she was a little tiny baby. And the 

pictures of my parents! What dreadful frames! But they were a 

wedding present from father's workmen. And this old-fashioned 

chair here! A leftover from grandmother's home. And here an 

embroidered slipper in which you can hang the clock. Made in 

kindergarten by sister Irma. Every piece of furniture, every object, 

every thing had a story to tell, the story of our family. Our home 

was never finished, it developed with us, and we with it. It was 

certainly without "style"; that is, it had no alien, no old "style." But 

it did have a style, the style of its occupants, the style of our family. 

During the period in which the pressure to furnish one's 

apartment in "style" became greater and greater-when all one's 

The Interiors in the Rotunda 59 

acquaintances already had "aIde German" rooms, how could one 

lag behind them?-all the old junk was thrown out. Junk for 

anyone else, but hallowed relics for the family. The rest is-the 

upholsterer. 

And now we have had enough. We want to be lords and 

masters within our own four walls again. If we lack taste, that's fine, 

we'll furnish our homes in a tasteless manner. If we have good taste, 

all the better. But we refuse to be tyrannized by our own rooms any 

longer. We will buy everything, as we happen to have need of it 

and as we like. 

As we like! There we have the style we have been seeking for so 

long, the style we wanted to bring into our apartments. A style that 

does not depend on one repeated lion's head, but on the taste-or, 

if you like, the lack of taste-of an individual or a family, and 

complies with their wishes. What would then unite all the pieces of 

furniture in a room would be the fact that their owner had selected 

them. And even if he were to prove somewhat capricious, especially 

insofar as the choice of colors was concerned, it still would not be 

a disaster. A home that has grown along with the family can put up 

with quite a lot. Putting just one single ornament that does not 

belong into one of the "stylish" rooms can ruin the whole effect. In 

a "family" room it would immediately be absorbed into the whole. 

That kind of room is rather like a violin: just as a violin is broken 

in by playing it, so a room can be "broken'in" by living in it. 

These considerations do not affect the functional rooms in an 

apartment. My bathroom and lavatory and kitchen will be designed 

by the specialist in those areas. And this applies even more to those 

rooms used for receiving guests, for social gatherings and special 

occasions. For those one should call in the architect, the painter, the 

sculptor, or the interior designer. You can rest assured that everyone 

I will find the designer he deserves.There is always a contact in 

temperament between producer and consumer, which, however, 

does not go deep enough for the living areas. 

That is the way things always used to be. Even the king would 

Llive in a room that had grown along with him, but he receivedhi,


guests in chambers designed by the court architect. And when an 

honest subject was conducted around those golden halls and 

galleries, he would heave an honest subject's sigh. "That's the life! 

If only I could live in such a place!" Our honest subject imagines 

the king always goes around in a purple cloak trimmed with 

ermine, his scepter in his hand and his crown on his head. No 

wonder, then, that our honest subject, as soon as he has made some 

money, uses it to purchase what he imagines are regal apartments. 

It has always surprised me that I have never yet come across anyone 

dressed in purple in them. 

Gradually, and to our horror, we have come to realize kings live 

in very simple quarters, and that has led to a sudden about-turn. 

Simplicity is all the rage, even in rooms for special occasions. Once 

again, other countries are setting off on the new tack while we are 

still starting the about-turn. We will have to go through with it, 

despite what our furnishing industry would like to think. There 

have always been close links between taste and the desire for change. 

Today we wear narrow trousers, tomorrow they will be wide, and 

the day after narrow again. Every tailor knows that. Couldn't we 

just abolish the wide-trouser period, then? Oh no! We need it to be 

able to enjoy our narrow trousers again. Similarly, we need a period 

of simple rooms for special occasions in order to prepare us for the 

return of richly decorated ones. If the industry wants us to get 

through the period of simplicity more quickly, there is only one 

solution: they must impose it on us. 

At the moment, though, this is just starting here in Austria. 

The best indication of the industry's tack is probably the fact the 

most admired room in the Rotunda is the simplest. It is a bedroom 

with en-suite bathroom. It was executed by Schenzel, upholsterers 

to the Court, for the man who designed it for himself. I think 

perhaps that aspect has most attracted the members of the public, 

who crowd around it. It exerts the powerful fascination of the 

individual, the personal. No one else could live in it, no one else 

could fill it with his personality, could make it fully his own, apart 

from the owner himself, Otto Wagner. 

The Interiors in the Rotunda 61 

Hofrat Exner immediately acquired the room for the Paris 

exhibition, where its purpose will be to foster delusions among the 

people of Paris about the nature of Viennese bedrooms and 

bathrooms. To ourselves we can admit we are still a long way away 

from that. But this room is destined to bring about a great 

transformation in the way we furnish our apartments, for, as I 

explained above, the people like it. The Austrian Museum paved the 

way for this with its Christmas Exhibition. Just imagine, now the 

Viennese even think a brass bedstead is beautiful! And not a richly 

ornamented one either, but the simplest one possible, on which the 

upholsterer has not even attempted to disguise the brass bars with 

fabrics, as was previously standard practice when brass bedsteads had 

to be "sheathed." 

The room is encased in smooth, polished, green paneling with 

valuable engravings let into it in places. An ottoman with a 

polar-bear skin, two brass bedside cabinets, two wardrobes and two 

cupboards, a table with two armchairs, and several chairs complete 

the decor. Over the paneling is a wall hanging with realistic cherry 

branches embroidered on it. The canopy over the bed is decorated 

with the same motiE The ceiling is whitewashed, and the lamps, 

hanging from silk cords, are arranged in a circle with plaster rays 

spreading out from it. The color effect, with the green of the wood, 

the yellow of the brass, the white of the fur, and the red of the 

cherries is exceptional. I will discuss the chairs in this room later, 

but for today I will say that the carpet 'is wrong. We have done 

away with the rosebuds we used to have to clamber around, but I 

do not think it is an improvement if the carpets awake the illusion 

that one might stumble over exposed tree roots. The cherry tree 

spreads its roots allover the floor. 

The bathroom is also a gem. The walls, the floor, the ottoman, 

and the cushions are all covered in the woolly material we use for 

our bathrobes. It has a restrained violet pattern, and the white and 

violet, together with the silver of the nickel-plated furnishings, the 

toilet articles, and the bath, determine the color tone of the room. 

The bath is made of mirror glass with nickel mountings. Even the


faceted glasses on the washstand were made to Wagner's designs, 

the delightful toilet set as well, of course. 

I am against the trend Wagner represents, which sees a positive 

advantage in having everything in a building, right down to the coal 

shovel, come from the hand of one architect. In my opinion it 

results in very boring looking buildings. Every characteristic gets 

lost. But in the face of Otto Wagner's genius I capitulate. Otto 

Wagner has one quality which until now I have observed in only a 

few English and American architects: he can leave his architect's 

perspective behind him and see things with the eye of the appropriate 

craftsman. He creates a water glass-he thinks like a glass 

blower and a glass cutter; he makes a brass bedstead-he thinks and 

feels like a brass worker. All his great architectural knowledge and 

skill he has left behind. There is just one thing he takes everywhere 

with him, his artistry. 

9. Chairs (1898) 

The Otto Wagner Room-the modern bedroom and bathroom in 

the applied arts section of the Lower Austrian Trades Association 

display-is beautiful, not because but in spite of the fact it was 

designed by an architect. This architect just happens to be his own 

interior designer. The room would not be right for anyone else, because 

it would not reflect their individuality; therefore, it is 

imperfect and we can no longer talk of beauty. There is a contradiction 

there. 

What do we understand by beauty? Complete perfection. It is, 

therefore, out of the question that something not satisfactorily performing 

its intended function can be beautiful. The first basic 

condition any object must fulfill, if it is to be considered "beautiful," 

is that it does not contravene the rules of practicality. But 

being functional alone does not make it beautiful. There is more to 

it than that. The artists of the cinquecento probably gave the most 

precise definition: "An object is beautiful if it is so perfect you 

could not add anything or take anything away without spoiling it." 

That would be the most perfect, absolute harmony. 

A beautiful man? That would be the complete man, the man 

who, through his physique and mental qualities, could offer the best 

guarantee of producing healthy offspring and being able to support 

a family. A beautiful woman? That would be the complete woman. 

Her responsibility would be to arouse love in the man, to 

breast-feed her own children, and to give them a good upbringing. 

Then she will have the most beautiful eyes, keen, practical eyes, not 

myopic, glazed ones; she will have the most beautiful brow, the 

most beautiful hair, the most beautiful nose. A nose through which 

One can breathe perfectly. She will have the most beautiful mouth, 

the most beautiful teeth, teeth with which she can chew her food 

perfectly. Nothing in nature is superfluous, and it is the degree of 

functional value, when combined with the harmony of the other 

parts, that we call pure beauty. 

From this we can see that the beauty of a practical object can 

be determined only in relation to its function. For these objects 

there is no such thing as absolute beauty. 

"Look, what a lovely desk!"


King Solomon are quoted on the wall, but is not: "Art, which made 

the floor under the ancient's foot and the vault of the church ceiling 

over the Christian's head, is now cramped onto boxes and bracelets. 

The times are worse than one thinks." 

Notes 

1. Hermann Muthesius (1861-1927), a member of the Werk- 

bund. His three-volume Das englische Haus (1904, The English 

House) was very influential in spreading the ideas of the Arts and 

Crafts movement in Germany. 

2. See Note on p. 133. 

3. Kunstschau 1908, the title of an exhibition of arts and crafts 

showing many of the Secessionartists a decade after their emergence. 

] osef Hoffmann designed the pavilion. 

, 

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29. Ornament and Crime (1929)1 

In the womb the human embryo goes through all phases of development 

the animal kingdom has passed through. And when a 

human being is born, his sense impressions are like a new-born 

dog's. In childhood he goes through all changes corresponding to 

the stages in the development of humanity. At two he sees with the 

eyes of a Papuan, at four with those of a Germanic tribesman, at six 

of Socrates, at eight of Voltaire. At eight he becomes aware of 

violet, the color discovered by the eighteenth century; before that, 

violets were blue and the purple snail was red. Even today physicists 

can point to colors in the solar spectrum which have been given a 

name, but which it will be left to future generations to discern. 

A child is amoral. A Papuan too, for us. The Papuan slaughters 

his enemies and devours them. He is not a criminal. But if a 

modern person slaughters someone and devours him, he is a 

criminal or a degenerate. The Papuan covers his skin with tattoos, 

his boat, his oars, in short everything he can lay his hands on. He 

is no criminal. The modern person who tattoos himself is either a 

criminal or a degenerate. There are prisons in which eighty percent 

of the inmates have tattoos. People with tattoos not in prison are 

either latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats. 

The urge to decorate one's face and anything else within reach 

is the origin of the fine arts. It is the childish babble of painting. 

But all art is erotic. 

A person of our times who gives way to the urge to daub the 

walls with erotic symbols is a criminal or a degenerate. What is 

natural in the Papuan or the child is a sign of degeneracy in a 

modern adult. I made the following discovery, which I passed on to 

the world: the evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of 

ornamentation from objects of everyday use. I thought by doing so I 

would bring joy to the world: it has not thanked me for it. People 

were sad and downcast. What depressed them was the realization we 

could no longer create new ornament. What? We alone, the people 

of the nineteenth century, were not capable of doing something 

every negro tribesman could do, something every age and nation 

before us had done!?


The objects mankind created in earlier millennia without 

ornament have been casually tossed aside and allowed to go to 

wrack and ruin. We do not possess a single workbench from the 

Carolingian period, but any piece of trash having even the slightest 

decoration was collected, cleaned up, and put in an ostentatious 

palace built specially to house it. And we made our way sadly 

around the showcases, ashamed of our impotence. Every epoch had 

its own style, and ours alone should be denied one!? By style people 

meant ornamentation. But I said, "Do not weep. Do you. not see 

the greatness of our age resides in our very inability to create new 

ornament? We have gone beyond ornament, we have achieved plain, 

undecorated simplicity. Behold, the time is at hand, fulfillment 

awaits us. Soon the streets of the cities will shine like white walls! 

Like Zion, the Holy City, Heaven's capital. Then fulfillment will 

be ours." 

But there were hobgoblins who refused to accept it. They 

wanted mankind to continue to strain under the yoke of ornament. 

Mankind had reached the point where ornament was no longer a 

source of pleasure, where a tattooed face, instead of increasing 

people's aesthetic pleasure as it does for the Papuans, diminished 

pleasure. People had reached the point where they liked a plain 

cigarette case, while they would not buy a decorated one, even if 

the price was the same. They were happy with their clothes, and 

glad they did not have to go around dressed like fairground 

monkeys in red velvet trousers with gold braid. And I said, "See, 

the room where Goethe died is more splendid than all your 

renaissance pomp, and a plain piece of furniture is more beautiful 

than your museum pieces with all their inlay work and carving. 

Goethe's language is more beautiful than all the flowery language 

of the Nuremberg pastoral poets." 

That displeased the hobgoblins, and the state, whose task it is 

to obstruct the people's cultural progress, decided to promote the 

development and revival of ornamentation. Woe to the state whose 

revolutions are made by its civil servants! Soon in the Vienna 

Museum of Applied Art there was a sideboard called "The Miracu~ 

~ 

Ornament and Crime 169 

lous Draught of Fishes," soon there were cupboards with names like 

"The Bewitched Princess," referring to the decoration with which 

these unfortunate pieces were covered. The Austrian state takes its 

task so seriously it ensures the ancient footcloth does not disappear 

entirely from within the bounds of the Austr~Hungarian monarchy. 

It forces every cultured twenty-year-old man to spend three 

years marching in footcloths instead of in knitted hosiery. After all, 

every state works on the assumption that a primitive population is 

easier to govern than a cultured one. 

The epidemic of ornament enjoys state recognition and state 

subsidy, then. For my part, however, I see that as a retrograde step. 

I do not accept the objection that ornament is a source of increased 

pleasure in life for cultured people, the objection expressed in the 

exclamation, "But if the ornament is beautiful!" For me, and with 

me for all people of culture, ornament is not a source of increased 

pleasure in life. When I want to eat a piece of gingerbread, I choose 

a piece that is plain, not a piece shaped like a heart, or a baby, or 

a cavalryman, covered over and over with decoration. A fif~ 

teenth-century man would not have understood me, but all modern 

people will. The supporters of ornament think my hunger for 

simplicity is some kind of mortification of the flesh. No, my dear 

Professor of Applied Arts, I am not mortifying the flesh at all. I 

find the gingerbread tastes better like that. 

It is easy to reconcile ourselves to the great damage and 

depredations the revival of ornament had done to our aesthetic 

development, since no one and nothing, not even the power of the 

state, can hold up the evolution of mankind. It can only be slowed 

down. We can afford to wait. But in economic respects it is a 

crime, in that it leads to the waste of human labor, money, and 

materials. That is damage time cannot repair. 

The speed of cultural development is hampered by the stragglers. 

I am living, say, in 1912, my neighbor around 1900, and that 

man over there in 1880. It is a misfortune for a state if the culture 

of its inhabitants stretches over too great a time span. The peasant 

who farms in the shadow of the GroBglockner lives in the twelfth


century. On the occasion of the festival procession to celebrate the 

Emperor's jubilee we shuddered to learn that here in Austria we still 

have tribes from the fourth century. Happy the land that does not 

have many cultural stragglers and laggards. Happy America! Here 

in Austria even in the cities there are people who are not modern, 

people still living in the eighteenth century, horrified at a picture 

with violet shadows because they have not yet learned to see the 

color violet; people to whom a pheasant tastes better if the cook has 

spent days preparing it, and to whom a cigarette case looks better 

if it is covered in renaissance ornament. And out in the country? 

Clothes and household goods all belong to earlier times. The 

peasant is not a Christian, he is still a heathen. 

These people who lag behind are slowing down the cultural 

development of the nations and of humanity. As far as the economic 

aspect is concerned, if you have two people living next door 

to each other who have the same needs, the same aspirations, and 

the same income, but who belong to different cultural epochs, you 

will find the man of the twentieth century getting richer and richer, 

and the man of the eighteenth century poorer and poorer. I am 

assuming, of course, that in both cases their lifestyles reflect their 

attitudes. The man of the twentieth century needs much less capital 

to supply his needs, and can therefore make savings. The vegetables 

he likes are simply cooked in water and served with a knob of 

butter. They taste good to the other only if there are nuts and I 

honey mixed in, and a cook has spent hours over them. Decorated 

plates cost more, while twentieth-century man likes his food on 

white crockery alone. The one saves money while the other throws 

it away. And it is the same with whole nations. Woe betide the 

people that lag behind in their cultural development. The English 

are getting richer, and we poorer. . . . 

The harm done by ornament to the ranks of the producers is 

even greater. Since ornament is no longer a natural product of our 

culture, but a symptom of backwardness or degeneracy, the 

craftsman producing the ornament is not fairly rewarded for his 

labor. The conditions among wood carvers and turners, the 

) 

...f6.. 


criminally low rates paid to embroiderers and lace makers are 

well-known. An ornamental craftsman has to work for twenty hours 

to reach the pay a modern worker earns in eight. In general, 

decoration makes objects more expensive, but despite that it does 

happen that a decorated object, with materials costing the same and 

demonstrably taking three times as long to produce, is put on sale 

at half the price of a plain object. The result of omitting decoration 

is a reduction in working hours and an increase in wages. A 

Chinese wood carver works for sixteen hours, an American laborer 

for eight. If I pay as much for a plain box as for one with ornamentation, 

the difference in labor time belongs to the worker. And if 

there were no ornaments at all-a state that will perhaps come 

about after thousands of years-we would need to work for only 

four hours instead of eight, since at the moment half of our labor 

is accounted for by ornamentation. 

Ornament means wasted labor and therefore wasted health. 

That was always the case. Today, however, it also means wasted 

material, and both mean wasted capital. 

As there is no longer any organic connection between ornament 

and our culture, ornament is no longer an expression of our culture. 

The ornament being created now bears no relationship to us, nor 

to any human being, or to the system governing the world today. 

It has no potential for development. Where is Otto Eckmann's 

ornamentation now,2 or that of van der Velde? In the past the artist 

was a healthy, vigorous figure, always at the head of humanity. The 

modern ornamental artist, however, lags behind or is a pathological 

case. After three years even he himself disowns his own products. 

Cultured people find them intolerable straight away, others become 

aware of it only after a number of years. Where are Otto Eckmann's 

works today? Where will Olbrich's be in ten years' time. 

Modern ornament has no parents and no offspring, no past and no 

future. Uncultivated people, for whom the greatness of our age is 

a closed book, greet it rapturously and then disown it after a short 

time.


Humanity as a whole is healthy, only a few are sick. But these 

few tyrannize the worker, who is so healthy he is incapable of 

inventing ornaments. They compel him to execute the ornaments 

they have invented, in a wide variety of different materials. 

The changing fashion in ornament results in a premature 

devaluation of the product of the worker's labor; his time and the 

materials used are wasted capital. I have formulated the following 

principle: The form of an object should last, that is, we shouldfind it 

tolerable as long as the object itself lasts. I will explain: A suit will 

change its style more often than a valuable fur. A woman's ball 

outfit, intended for one night alone, will change its style more 

quickly than a desk. Woe betide us, however, if we have to change 

a desk as quickly as a ball outfit because we can no longer stand the 

old style. Then we will have wasted the money we paid for the 

desk. 

Ornamental artists and craftsmen are well aware of this, and in 

Austria they try to show this deficiency in a positive light. They say, 

"A consumer who has furnishings he cannot stand after ten years, 

and thus is forced to refurnish his apartment every ten years, is better 

than one who buys something only when the old one becomes 

worn out with use. Industry needs that. The rapid changes in fashion 

provide employment for millions." 

This seems to be the secret of the Austrian economy. When a 

fire breaks out, how often does one hear someone say, "Thank God! 

Now there is work for people again." Just set a house on fire, set 

the Empire on fire, and everyone will be rolling in money! Just keep 

on making furniture we chop up for firewood after three years, 

mountings we have to melt down after four, because even at 

auction they will not fetch a tenth of the cost of labor and materials, 

and we will get richer and richer! 

Not only the consumer bears the loss, it is above all the 

producer. Nowadays, putting decoration on objects which, thanks 

to progress, no longer need to be decorated, means a waste of labor 

and an abuse of material. If all objects would last as long in 

aesthetic terms as they last physically, the consumer would be able 

......... 


to pay a price for them that would allow the worker to earn more 

money and work shorter hours. For an object from which I am 

convinced I will get full use until it is worn out I am quite happy 

to pay four times the price of another I could buy. I am happy to 

pay forty crowns for my shoes, even though there are shoes for ten 

in another shop. But in those trades that languish under the yoke 

of the ornamental artist, no value is put on good or bad workman- 

ship. Work suffers because no one is willing to pay for it at its true 

value. 

And that is a good thing too, since these ornamented objects 

are bearable only when they are shoddily produced. I find it easier 

to accept a fire when I hear it is only worthless rubbish that is 

being destroyed. I can enjoy the trumpery in the Kunstlerhau~ 

because I know it takes a few days to put it up and one day to tear 

it down. But throwing coins instead of stones, lighting a cigar with 

a bank note, crushing up and drinking a pearl, I find unaesthetic. 

Only when these ornamented things have been made from the 

best material with the greatest care, and have taken up many manhours 

of work, do they become truly unaesthetic. I have to admit 

I was the first to demand quality workmanship. Professor Hoffmann's 

interior for the Apollo Candle Factory shop in Vienna, done 

in pine with a colored stain fourteen years ago, is by no means as 

unbearable as his current designs. Or as unbearable as Hoffmann's 

designs will look in a further fourteen years' time. My Cafe 

Museum, however, which opened at the same time as the shop, will 

be unbearable only when the carpentry work begins to fall apart. 

A modern person, who regards ornament as a symptom of the 

artistic superfluity of previous ages and for that reason holds it 

sacred, will immediately recognize the unhealthy, the forced-pain- 

fully forced-nature of modern ornament. Ornament can no longer 

be produced by someone living on the cultural level of today. It is 

different for individuals and people who have not yet reached that 

level. 

The ideal I preach is the aristocrat. What I mean by that is the 

person at the peak of humanity, who yet has a profound under-

'I 


standing of the problems and aspirations of those at the bottom. 

One who well understands the way the African works patterns into 

his cloth according to a certain rhythm, so the design appears only 

when the fabric is taken off the loom; likewise the Persian weaving 

his rug, the Slovak peasant woman making her lace, the old woman 

making marvelous needlework from silk and glass beads. The 

aristocrat lets them carry on in their own accustomed way, he 

knows the time they spend on their work is sacred to them. The 

revolutionary would go and tell them it was all pointless, just as he 

would drag an old woman away from the wayside shrine, telling her 

there is no God. But the atheist among the aristocrats still raises his 

hat when he passes a church. 

My shoes are covered with decoration formed by sawtooth 

patterns and holes. Work done by the shoemaker, work he has not 

been paid for. Imagine I go to the shoemaker and say, "You charge 

thirty crowns for a pair of shoes. I will pay you forty-eight." It will 

raise the man to such a transport of delight he will thank me 

through his workmanship and the material used, making them of 

a quality that will far outweigh my extra payment. He is happy, and 

happiness is a rare commodity in his house. He has found someone 

who understands him, who respects his work, and does not doubt 

his honesty. He can already see the finished shoes in his mind's eye. 

He knows where the best leather is to be found at the moment, he 

knows which of his workers he will entrust with the task, and the 

shoes will have all the sawtooth patterns and holes an elegant pair 

of shoes can take. And then I say, "But there is one condition. The 

shoes must be completely plain." I will drag him down from the 

heights of bliss to the depths of hell. He will have less work, and I 

have taken away all his pleasure in it. 

The ideal I preach is the aristocrat. I can accept decoration on 

my own person if it brings pleasure to my fellow men. It brings 

pleasure to me, too. I can accept the Mrican's ornament, the 

Persian's, the Slovak peasant woman's, my shoemaker's, for it 

provides the high point of their existence, which they have no other 

means of achieving. We have the art that has superseded ornament. 

[ ~ 


After all the toil and tribulations of the day, we can go to hear 

Beethoven or Tristan. My shoemaker cannot. I must not take his 

religion away from him, for I have nothing to put in its place. But 

anyone who goes to the Ninth and then sits down to design a 

wallpaper pattern is either a fraud or a degenerate. 

The disappearance of ornament has brought about an undreamed-of 

blossoming in the other arts. Beethoven's symphonies 

would never have been written by a man who had to dress in silk, 

velvet, and lace. Those who go around in velvet jackets today are 

not artists, but clowns or house painters. We have become more 

refined, more subtle. When men followed the herd they had to 

differentiate themselves through color, modern man uses his dress 

as a disguise. His sense of his own individuality is so immensely 

strong it can no longer be expressed in dress. Lack of ornamentation 

is a sign of intellectual strength. Modern man uses the ornaments 

of earlier or foreign cultures as he likes and as he sees fit. He 

concentrates his own inventive power on other things. 

Afterword 

This article by the Viennese architect, written in 1908, at which 

time it was the caUseof riots among applied artists in Munich, but 

received with rapturous applause when delivered as a lecture in 

Berlin, has never before been published in German. The title, 

"Ornament and Crime," is a catchword for many, known even to 

people who never knew where it came from. The article has 

appeared in the languages of all advanced nations, even in Japanese 

and He.brew. The only one missing was German. We are grateful 

it has been made available to us so we can publish it on the 

occasion of the Frankfurt meeting of the International Association 

for New Building. It demonstrates to us today that, at the time 

when art nouveau was flourishing, Adolf Loos was perhaps the only 

person who was clear about what is modern. Just as the houses 

Adolf Laos built twenty years ago, and which at that time aroused 

J


a storm of indignation, are now accepted as expressions of pure 

functional form.4 

Notes 

1. "This essay was written in 1908. We dedicate it to the 

Second International Congress for New Building, meeting today in 

Frankfurt." Footnote in the Frankfurter Zeitung. 

2. See note, p. 38. 

3. The gallery of the Association of Viennese Artists. 

4. The Afterword appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung. 

........ 

30. Brief Intermezzo (1909) 

Opposite the Opera, in the Heinrichshof, is the Viennese branch of 

the French metalware manufacturer Christofle. I have to pass it 

every day. The window display never makes me stop. 

A year ago something special happened. I was about to rush 

past again when something pulled me back with a jerk. 

In the middle of all the tableware and cutlery-cutlery of 

English design for people who can eat, and cutlery for those who 

can't, after designs by Olbrich-there was a life-sized Doberman 

pinscher. White china, glazed. Only the eyes and muzzle were 

colored. 

My first thought was: Copenhagen. And I began to revise my 

verdict on Copenhagen chinaware. I certainly would like to possess 

that dog. So there were artists who could create things in this style 

people want to possess. What was the artist called? Where did he 

live? 

I went in and asked. And learned the man had been dead for 

something like a hundred and fifty years. It was a copy from the 

Sevres factory. 

I couldn't afford to buy it, but from then on I stopped every 

day to see my dog. 

It went on like that for a year, but then recently all my pleasure 

vanished. The dog had gone. I went in and asked, "Where is my 

d :>" 

og. 

An American had bought it. But they promised they would 

have another sent and pur it in the window. 

And I hope the Americans will use the sidewalk on the other 

side of the street.

Adolf Loos, “Glass and China,” (1898) - David Rifkind

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