plain and fancy
This is a question I have found myself asking countless times, in one way or another, working in the collections of the Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC). Why get fancy with a utilitarian object? What’s the point of decoration, elaboration, adornment, enhancement? I had long ago put away the notion that ornamentation was gratuitous–laid on because the maker had time on his/ her hands. Nor was it useful to think of aesthetic embellishment as (merely) driven by a basic human tendency to make things beautiful (though dozens of cave paintings and Neolithic carvings might attest to this). No, ornamentation had to be there for a reason, and my job was to delve into what that might have been. I suppose part of what ornament does is express a kind of crafter’s boast (I adorn because I can), or a sense of play (Hey, wouldn’t this look cool!) But surely something else is at work. What is the nature of the additional information brought by decoration? Is it, in all cases, additional? Does ornament reflect context, or does it bring its own context with it? Or is it the context? Is all ornament of the same order?
CMC no. 82-297
Photography: Canadian Museum of Civilization