II

I!
I
III
~I
II
II!
II,
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,
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 com-
parison 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
. . . 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 comp-
leted 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
70 Adolf Loos
Glass and China 71
our pottery was quite in the classical mold. Then the architects
." "
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.
Go out into the world and see what is wanted. And when you have
fully grasped that, go and work at the smelting furnace or the
potter's wheel." If they accepted that advice, ninety-nine percent of
artists would leave making pots alone.
Here in Austria we have not reached that point yet. But the
English spirit has entered our craftsmen and is rebelling against the
dominion of the architect. I was secretly pleased, recently, to hear
a colleague complain to me that a potter had flatly refused to work
from his design. He was not even willing to try. He clearly wasn't
interested in being "saved." I told my colleague the man was right.
He probably thought me a fool.
It is high time our craftworkers tried to throw off this un-
called-for tutelage and started to rely on their own good sense.
Anyone who wants to collaborate is welcome. All credit to anyone
who is willing to don an apron and take his place at the humming
potter's wheel, or strip to the waist and help at the furnace. But
those dilettantes who want to dictate their designs to the creative
artist from the comfort of their studios should stick to their own
field, namely graphic art.
It was from England that the liberation of the craftsman came,
and that is why modern objects are all English in style. It was from
England that the new glass cutting technique came: straight or
curved lines with prismatic cross-sections form geometric decoration
over the whole glass. That this technique has already reached such
a standard over here that we can compete with America, a country
where it is in full flower, is not surprising, given the skill of our
glass cutters. Indeed, many of our creations are more refined ~nd
elegant in their form; the American straight-lined patterns all have
an overexuberance which I find old-fashioned. Almost all firms
represented in the Exhibition have good examples, but I would just
like to single out for special mention the glass table set from
Stolzle's Sons, the most elegant and modern set of glasses I could
Imagme.
This firm and the others mentioned below have set up house in
the applied arts section of the Lower Austrian Trades Association
(
- )
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<;:adesand portfolios, inkwells and pianos, door
plates and exhibitions. Glassware and pottery too. First of all they
would draw a line. That was the central axis. Then, to the right or
left, depending on whether the artist was right- or left-handed, they
would start merrily drawing in moldings, so many moldings it was
a pleasure to behold. The moldings just came pouring out of their
pencils. Abacus, torus, abacus, scotia, abacus, torus, abacus, scotia,
with the occasional ogee in between. The section was traced onto
the opposite side and the solid of revolution was complete. Then
followed the second verse: ornamentation. That, too, was done with
the help of geometry with which-even if, as the popular song tells
us, you cannot get to the bottom of a cucumber-you can certainly
construct solids of revolution; it was easy and it was magnificent.
Then along came those nasty English and spoiled the game for
our knights of the drawing board. They said, "Don't design, make.
72 Adolf Loos
III
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 sur-
rounded 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 gold-
smith 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
III
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 manu-
factured 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
II"
74 Adolf Loos
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 technischenund tektonischenKunsten, oder
Praktische Aesthetik (Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts, or
Practical Esthetics), 2 vols, 1861-1863.
11. LuxuryCarriages (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 acquaint-
ance 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)
Notes
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."
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.
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."
58 Adolf Loos
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,
60 Adolf Loos
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
62 Adolf Loos
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 ap-
propriate 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, be-
cause it would not reflect their individuality; therefore, it is
imperfect and we can no longer talk of beauty. There is a con-
tradiction there.
What do we understand by beauty? Complete perfection. It is,
therefore, out of the question that something not satisfactorily per-
forming its intended function can be beautiful. The first basic
condition any object must fulfill, if it is to be considered "beauti-
ful," 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!"
166 Adolf Loos
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.
,
~
29. Ornament and Crime (1929)1
In the womb the human embryo goes through all phases of de-
velopment 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!?
168 Adolf Loos
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 monar-
chy. 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 strag-
glers. 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
170 Adolf Loos
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 eco-
nomic 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..
Ornament and Crime 171
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 ornamen-
tation, 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 Eck-
mann'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.
172 Adolf Loos
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: Theform 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 bet-
ter than one who buys something only when the old one becomes
worn out with use. Industry needs that. The rapid changes in fash-
ion 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 materi-
als, 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
.........
Ornament and Crime 173
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 man-
hours of work, do they become truly unaesthetic. I have to admit
I was the first to demand quality workmanship. Professor Hoff-
mann'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-
174 Adolf Loos
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.
'I
[
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Ornament and Crime 175
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 un-
dreamed-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
176 Adolf Loos
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.