Multiple aspects of form: the process of giving form to something may further be defined by reference to the following: number (forms may be repeated in such a way as to create quantities, groupings, clusters, configurations and positions, or may be divided up into segments and fragments); balance or equilibrium; contrast or juxtaposition; thickness, repetition; intervals or space, density; measure, format and organisation; position, location or place; proportions; direction and tension.
 
Structure concerns the composition, arrangement, connection, construction or organisation of dependent smaller parts into a greater whole. A surfaced structure enables the observer to see how the material came into being, as in the case of the graining of wood, the weave of textiles and the patterns found in granite and the veins of leaves.
N.B.: Individual aspects of form such as movement, material, light, colour (and the optic qualities of glass), time and space are dealt with in separate chapters.
 
DESIGN ASPECTS
Design aspects are those which, going beyond the communicative elements that imbue a work with meaning, give it form and content, or dictate the starting-point of the design process:
 
*Ad hoc: a design method which originated in America in 1970 as Adhocism, forming part of the Postmodernist movement. It involves the combining of loose components and objets trouvés. No new forms are contrived; instead, existing styles are appropriated and used to form a new composition which is thereby given a series of new meanings. Ad hoc design thus solves a set of problems by choosing a system or method which is to hand and selecting concepts which thereby make themselves known: recycling, assembly, montage and the use of second-hand materials.
 
*Decoration is more than just idle ornamentation; instead, it is a meaningful addition to, or removal from, the surface of an object or something which emanates from a combination of materials, construction and technique.
Throughout history, man has everywhere left behind traces as a mark of ownership, with a view to distinguishing himself from, or conforming to, a group, making contact with his gods, indicating the limits of his physical being and of his world or giving form to the rhythm of day and night, the seasons, the years or the leaves on a tree.
Decoration is to be found on his skin, on things constituting his ‘second skin’ such as clothing and jewellery and attributes such as cars, paintings and crockery, and on items of his ‘third skin’ such as architecture, physical surroundings, urban development and landscape architecture. The decoration may be functional, as in the case of the knobs and spikes and spun glass thread found on a Koolstronk drinking glass, enabling it to be grasped firmly by chubby fingers during an era when cutlery was not yet used for eating with.
The decorating (from the Latin word decorare, meaning to adorn or embellish) of glass took place, and still takes place, by virtue of the creative techniques employed when the glass is given shape, the techniques used in working the object, such as those applied to its surface, and the processing techniques by which the form of the decoration is dictated by the spatial processing, construction and assembly, as found for example in:
– À jour or ajouré work, otherwise known as openwork: a form of open-worked decoration with openings which literally allow the light to pass through;
– Appliqué: a form of decoration whereby a motif from one piece of material is attached to the surface of another. Marquetry or inlay work is a decorative technique whereby previously constructed pieces of glass are applied to the still hot parison of a blown piece;
– Battuto (from the Italian word battuta, meaning a beat): signifies the incising of a series of small cuts, using a particular tool, aligned in a repeating pattern of cuts, grindings and grooves made in metal, wood and glass;
– Trailing: this is done by drawing a thread from the hot parison onto a punty and trailing it over the shaped glass object, thereby creating a threaded decoration. Where the thread is drawn in one direction from its starting-point, a combed effect is created, the pattern in which may be feathered, wavy, festooned, herring-boned or zig-zag.
– Facetting: the cutting and polishing of a glass surface in a pattern of planes, rhomboid shapes and facets. For further details, see the entries relating to particular glass techniques. As Pattern glass.
Decoration is the application of total ornamentation to glass or ceramics. N.B.: In the Dutch language, the words decoratief and versierend (meaning ornamental) are generally used in a negative sense, referring to something insignificant.
Terms used in relation to decoration include:
– Ornamentation (from the Latin word ornamentum, meaning equipment or adornment): a stylised form of decoration with a clearly connecting and dividing function. It often has symbolic significance. The various types found include: unlimited and limited ornamentation, such as ornamental strips or bands, e.g. strap-work, meander patterns, decorated rods and moulding in the form of leaves or eggs; extremities in the form of tassels, fringes, hems, embroidery, edging, lambrequin, pinnacle and knots, and supports in the form of a cannelure, round base, pedestal or pot base.
– Motif: a design based on a theme. This is the smallest unit of design from which the decoration, ornamentation and pattern can be developed. The various types found include: scattered motifs which are not repeated according to a rigid or geometrical format but appear to be strewn haphazardly over the surface beneath; geometrical motifs such as a running dog or wavy line, meander pattern, serrated frieze, quincunx, diamond-shaped band, rosette, fish bladder or mouchette and tracery; plant motifs such as acanthus leaves, ivy, strands of fruit, garlands and festoons, fleurons, fleur de lys, lilies, arabesques, moresques, palmettes and rocaille; animal motifs such as lions' heads, wings and volutes; human images such as masks, heads, dolmesgens and grotesqueries, profiles, angels' heads, skulls and astragals; and art motifs such as calligraphy, coats of arms and emblems, sulphides, tropes, buttons and knots, seals and initials.
– Designing (Dutch dessineren)/dessin): the planning, continuous drawing and surface working of a decoration on an object or material, consisting of the total composition of figures, signs, motifs, ornamentations and fond.
– Repeat: the smallest repeatable part of a design. Unending repeats are repeated up to all the edges and linked to each other, as in the case of wallpaper or curtain material. A pattern or design may consist of vertical, displaced (half-repeat), interwoven or reversed repeats.
– Pattern: a form of decoration which repeats itself at regular intervals as a fill-in, or as an unending and limited pattern and drawing on natural objects, such as the skin of a zebra. N.B.: Form cut (Schnitt in German) is a two-dimensional, flat cross-section made of cardboard cut to form the outline of a glass object to be produced, on the basis of which the shape is produced.
Pattern glass: cut or pressed glass with optical patterns known by hundreds of different names, such as Bull's eye, Loop of loop, Moose eye, Gem, Nailhead and Mitred diamond points.
– Patterned glass or Figure glass: glass with rolled patterns in flat glass, known by pattern names such as Kathedraal, Water drop, Tortoise, Rice grain, Kuitje, Janhagel, Wafel, Butsen, Blocked, Hammered, Gussglas and Diamond. For further details, see the section on the techniques of glass-rolling.
The Dutch word Strokend (meaning to be in alignment with something else): the continuation of a repeat of patterned glass which, after the patterned glass sheets have been cut up, has a glass side or direction and a placement side.
Figure: the whole composition of drawn or modelled lines and surfaces, used not as a representation but as ornamentation or as an image, such as a block, human form or floral form. Examples of figured glass include a bottle in the form of a head, bear or any other figurative form.
Fond or background: the basic surface or field of an ornament, design or pattern. The background bears the material on which the decoration is applied and may be that material or a specially applied colour.
Cartouche: originally, a simple shield to which a text was applied, but later on increasingly decorated with marginal motifs. The form is probably a continuation of a banderole, being a strip of wording or text deriving from a ship's pennant and, as a motif, the streaming ribbon on which a text is written.
– Signs: perceivable things to which a meaning is given. The different types include:
*Signal: a consciously given sign intended to communicate something to another person.
*Index (plural: indices): a sign that someone leaves behind, without consciously intending it to be a sign, such as a trace, fingerprint, etc.
*Symbol: a sign indicating the lack of a relationship between the person seeking to convey a meaning and the meaning itself. Symbols are important, inasmuch as their use makes it possible to communicate about abstract, absent or insubstantial matters.
*Icon (from the Greek eikon, meaning to resemble – used in contradistinction to eidolon: an idol): in Byzantine art, a painting or panel, generally having a religious, stylised, flat appearance; a portrait; an idol such as Elvis or Madonna who is an object of uncritical devotion, being, for example, young, sexy, energetic. Icons are to be distinguished from symbols and indices such as the visual indications or pictograms in a computer programme, since these always bear a likeness to the meaning of the thing for which they stand. N.B.: a graphic image or sign representative something, as in the case of a blue mark on a map, indicating water.
Allegory (from the Greek allos, meaning other, and gorein, meaning to say): the process of making concepts or ideas perceptible by means of human figures or personifications, such as virtues, parts of the world, gods and heavenly bodies.
Attribute: a distinguishing mark or sign of a person.
Emblem: pre-formed central part of a mosaic, put in place later on and portraying allegorical and symbolic objects. Found in examples of Dutch painting such as still lives and genre pieces portraying vanitas and memento mori.
N.B.: Patern and decoration was a style mid-1970s to early 1980s and started in the United States. Artists were inspired by non-Western cultures and wanted to challenge the taboo against decorative art and they used Islamic, Byzantine and Celtic art decoration and patterns as well as carpets, quilts and all sorts of decorated textile and paper.
 
*Function: aim, task, use or effectiveness. Functional design is based on the essential characteristics of things, such as chopping with an axe, sitting on a chair or drinking from a glass. Applied, decorative and functional design is created either from the sum of one's experiences, aimed at making the form as usable as possible, so as to achieve a synthesis between function and form, or by having recourse, when forming the product, to subjective, emotional and communicative things such as images, decoration, symbols, kitsch, humour, etc., so as to make the product more in tune with a trend.
Multi-functional products possess, or may come to possess, several functions; thus, a milk bottle may serve as a flower vase, a lamp or a means of conveying, at sea, a letter containing a message. Thanks to its various qualities and compositions, a multi-functional material such as glass may be serve an inexhaustible number of different functions.
 
*Handeling: an event, action or movement, or the behaviour of a physical system and the act of proceeding from one situation to another, as in the twisting, pulling and scratching whereby such treatment dictates the form of the object. Handeling processes frequently involve the use of preliminary techniques in which the movements are effected, the implements used (including one's hands) and the media employed are often of a simple nature. Thus, glass-rolling developed from the rolling out or flattening of glass with a steel rod, and glass-cutting derived from the incising and breaking of glass.
 
*Ideas and concepts: design begins from an idea or mental conception; a notion or thought involves a way of thinking or seeing, an image, project or use of imagination, which serves to develop the concept or design, to sketch it out and turn it into a detailed plan ready to be executed. Not all ideas are good ideas; they frequently turn out to be a bad joke. Thus, not every idea leads automatically to a sensible design. In the Dutch language – and no doubt in others too – an idea is often exaggerated by being called, first of all, a “concept” and thereafter elaborated in never-ending series.
In Conceptual Art, the idea is more important than the object; this movement came into existence in 1960 as a protest against the commercial art trade. The object becomes impersonal, bereft of any trace, handwriting, signature or ornamentation. This process of steadily removing more and more ultimately led to minimalism. Sometimes, the idea remained simply an idea, and no further trouble was taken to turn it into anything concrete.
Ideas-based art came into existence between 1880 and 1930, when the Symbolists, or ‘ideas artists’ (Dutch: Kunst van de Idee) expressed themselves primarily by means of symbols. According to them, the Idea “refers to nothing else”; it simply ‘is’. In other words, the world as perceived by the senses corresponds to an ideal reality. Well-known artists in this field include Johan Piet Mondriaan, Thorn Prikker, Roland Holst, Jan Toorop, Willem van Konijnenburg and H. P. Berlage.The basic form is often constructed in accordance with the Golden Section and basic geometric forms.
 
*Myths and rites: myths are the narrative traditions relating to religion and the way in which a people looks at the world, and tales of men and gods also find expression in architecture and the visual arts. Rites are the ritual customs and represent, in an ethnological sense, the use of a cult to initiate or continue contact between the human and the divine in acts involving religious symbols. The term ‘rites’ signifies rituals, religious customs and ecclesiastical ceremonies as a whole; church usages, prescribed ways in which a liturgical act is performed and a liturgical system becomes established in a church, mosque or synagogue.
 
*Process: in the context of design, the results of processes – that is to say, the altering or changing of things by virtue of some metamorphosis, sequence or series, and the effect on them of the passage of time, general wear and tear and movement – are rendered visible. The significance of the process is often more important that its result. The artist sets a process in motion and awaits the result. Process art – as found in a much Arte Povera – was developed in the decade from 1960 - 1970 as a reaction to Minimalism, with all the formality which the latter entailed. The artists use materials such as glass, wax, felt, ice, water and chocolate in order to make life, and thus the processes inherent in transience and mortality or growth and change, visible. The materials possess hardly any structure, construction or direction. Smell is one of their more important aspects. The ultimate form is to be found in the work of Damien Hirst, who inter alia allows the corpses of cows slowly to decay in glass cases.
 
*Technique: the application of knowledge and skill for practical purposes; more particularly, the method, process, procédé or way of working by which craftsmanship and mastery of resources and media play a decisive role in arriving at the realisation of a product.
 
*(according to) Verbalisation: a word, term or linguistic phenomenon forms the starting-point for the design. Narrative works tell a story. Narrative design which has got out of hand has become a problem primarily with American Studio glass, in respect of which endless ‘rubbish and twaddle’ is spoken with regard to figurative matters.
 
*(according to) Imagination: the design process is implemented on the basis of recollection and fantasy.
 
*(according to) Perception: man's ability to register, analyse and interpret the information provided to, and perceived by, him. The design process may be set in motion by any sensory perception, such as seeing the surface of a pool of water, with its mirroring, ruffling effect, its transparency and the association which that creates with glass.
 
DESIGN STYLES
Design styles are styles in which the design forms the totality of what is happening. Style: the incorporation, as a whole, of clear characteristics of form within the work of an artist or the works of a certain period, region, nation or discipline.
- Representative styles, also called imitative or mimetic styles, possess the nature, the reality and the spirit required to produce, in a realistic way, a design, starting-point or theme. Such representative styles may be applied according to the artist's perception or imagination, in such a way as to depict, describe or portray their subject.
 
- Presentational styles: are by their nature not intended to produce a design but to transform or refashion a design, or reality, changing it into an abstract, non-figurative or unrecognisable subject. Theo van Doesburg called this style “concrete art”, reflecting his view that the design process is always the opposite of abstraction. An example of presentationnal styles are to be found in Minimalism, a movement which emerged in 1960 from Constructivism, whereby the pictorial media are reduced to a minimum, reflecting the essence of the work. Abstract and frequently basic forms are stripped of any personal qualities or imagination.
 
– Ecological styles are those showing how man has adapted himself to his surroundings. The various sources of the types of design include folklore, folk art, outsider art, popular art, naïve and so-called ‘primitive’ or original art:
*Handicraft: the production by hand of useful articles, in which ancient traditions and customs are made visible. Artisans joined together in Europe to form associations, guilds or professional organisations. In that context, instruction and training were given a formalised structure in two stages, with apprentices and journeymen working in conjunction with the teacher and ultimately, after undergoing a test, acquiring the title of Master. The production of handicraft products calls for great skill and aptitude in the mastery of special techniques and implements. Up until the Industrial Revolution, artisans tended to work at home, catering for their own domestic needs and selling the surplus or making semi-finished products for factories, or alternatively putting the finishing touches to semi-finished industrial products. Techniques, production, distribution and markets began to influence design, but handicrafts have continued to survive where, within certain disciplines, there has been no development of industrial or mass production. They sometimes manifest themselves as the ultimate pursuit of a hobby, and sometimes as the exercise of an independent profession with the emphasis on technique, but are moving steadily and increasingly away from the sphere of industrial arts and closer to that of applied and liberal arts.
 
A master glass-maker conducts the group of workers who have gathered to produce an article together. In Germany, the word Meister is a protected title for artisans and artists possessing their own studio and workshop where they alone may carry out their own work and that of others, whilst Master is an academic degree between those of Batchelor and Doctor. A Master-class is a short form of post-academic training focusing primarily on the content of the work of those taking part. A distinction is to be drawn between the practice of artistic crafts and conventional handicrafts such as clog-making and basket-weaving, on account of the visual attractiveness of the products and, very often, denial of the possession by them of any function. The works of artistic craftsmen are produced either as one-off pieces or in limited series by specialist professionals such as potters, stained glass artists, glass blowers, metalworkers, weavers, paper-makers, etc.
*Crafts Revival: this began as a conception of design in America in the 1950s, inspired by the Danish Moderns with their natural, outward-looking and principled craftsmanship and the presence on the scene of numerous Bauhaus-trained artisans. In England, the influence of the Arts & Crafts tradition spread, permeating the field of design. With the support of the World Craft Councils, practitioners of artistic crafts developed a market-oriented approach, diverging from the “one-off” economy with its single or limited series works. The artists concerned formed, as teachers, the basis for industrial design. From 1970 onwards, the movement was known in America as “Crafts-as-Art”, with clay ceramic sculptures and glass sculptures being produced as works of art.
Studio glass (sometimes known in English as “New Glass” and in German as Neues Glas): as a part of the Crafts Revival, in which design and production once again combined in the same hands, artists at the beginning of the 1970s severed their associations with glass factories and set up their own studios equipped with glass-melting furnaces and ancillary apparatus. They frequently experimented with glassblowing and glass casting, and, above all, carried out research into glass as a material, processing and techniques. In particular, much attention was given to fire-born techniques, which use fire for creative purposes, as in the production of glass, metals and ceramics. “Home-made” became a mark of quality; “honest” materials and techniques were sought after.
 
– Design comes from the Latin word designare, meaning not only to draw or delineate but also to study and plan. As a result of linguistic confusion (in English, the word “design” covers the whole gamut of the production process, from the initial conceptualisation of the work to its final realisation), the significance of the term has been somewhat inflated. Design is invisible; it is the creative process extending from the development of plans and projects for giving a work its form to its ultimate production; it involves the development and forming of the work, in such a way that the end result is not itself the design but something from which that design may be inferred. Design takes account of social, political, ideological, functional and financial matters; in so doing, it aims to achieve the ideal product for a particular target group. Everything is thought out, from the initial concept to production, recycling, packaging, logistics and the question of how the product is ultimately to reach the consumer. Design in this sense differs from industrial design and artistic handicrafts, inasmuch as the design process seeks not only the realisation of a possible end-product but also to find the answers to problems and to arrive at the one possible solution for the entire set of problems arising. In the context of this kind of activity, the designer is the person who gives the work its form. N.B.: Anti-design emerged in Italy after 1965 as an answer to the excessive consumerism of the 1950s and 1960s, in which the term “good design” had degenerated into a cheap marketing trick and the formalistic aesthetic of Modernism withheld the socio-economic content of products. Ettore Sottsass was one of the first to breathe fresh life into their cultural and political role. The radicalisation of design was continued by the Memphis Group and architects such as Borek Sipek. The designing of design gave rise to “Meta-design”, which made its influence felt in architecture, interior design and product design in the 1980s.
 
Some important types of design a.o. are:
*Constructivism: an art movement which emerged in the Communist countries in 1917, immediately after the Russian Revolution, lasting until 1922. Artists such as Tatlin, Malevich, Rodchenko and Kandinsky, influenced by European Cubism and Futurism, brought art into the factories and coupled it with mass production, so that art was placed at the service of the new society, in which visual artists became the designers of Production Art.
*Danish Modern: this term describes the activities of the post-war Scandinavian designers. Unlike their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, they did not use modern, new materials but continued to develop their own tradition. This “soft Modernism” was highly popular on an international basis during the 1950s.
*Deconstruction: this term originates from the literature of the late 1960s, whereby a text was literally cut up into pieces so that the individual parts of it, and the new meaning which they thereby acquired, could be perceived afresh. Its influence on architecture and design grew steadily, such that, towards the end of the 1970s, it had come to be used as a way of describing the process of design as a mental approach. In the late 1980s the deconstructivist style was marked by aggressive or overlapping forms, the use of geometrically organised surfaces and intense colours. Its visual complexity is also to be found in Dutch and American graphic design and architecture.
*Deskill: the choice to show bad skills by bad education of techniques and knowledge.
*Eco-design: the roots of “green design” are in America, where, in the 1960s, the anti-consumer movement was taking off. The topics with which it deals include: the protection of natural sources of energy and materials and the fight against the pollution and waste caused by industrial production. It seeks to draw attention to the vulnerable equilibrium of ecology on a global scale. Glass recycling and bottle banks are important in this regard. The newest variant is intended to offer the consumer not the latest version of a product such as an energy-saving washing machine or environmentally-friendly washing powder but the entire concept of a “clean wash”.
*Engineering design: this term describes the aspect of three-dimensional and constructional design which is concerned more with the technical operation of a product than with its aesthetic, formal or functional characteristics. The Delft Hogeschool (technical college) has a design department dealing with this subject, and designs, from the standpoint of their technical operation, anything from coffee machines to cranes.
*Functionalism: this word was coined by the architect Louis Sullivan, who, in a publication dating from 1986, put forward his proposition that “form follows function”. Whilst initially the factors influencing design related primarily to matters such as physical and climatological considerations, later on the design process came to be increasingly dictated by questions of form relating solely to the product itself. The concept became interchangeable with Rationalism. Corbusier is evidently an exponent of the functional design process, even though he remained true to the expressive qualities of objects and materials.
*Futurism: a visual arts movement dating from the beginning of the 20th century, started by Fillipo Tommaso Marinetti. Its adherents paid homage to the dynamic forces of the mass economy, the machine and the revolution in global communications which would change nature and culture. Together with the spirit of the Constructivists, Futurism paved the way for the Modern Movement. Nuovo- or Neofuturists formed groups in Italy in the early 1980s, taking up and following on from the earlier mentality of Futurism and contending that old art should be dragged out of museums because artists must be allowed to concentrate, from within themselves, on the present instead of the past. They are opposed to the extreme, and often sick and destructive, works of the “New Wild Painters’ or Neo Expressionists. In their view, there should be a re-awakening of design, full of patterns and decoration, like the “great vogue for ornamentation” which a century ago heralded the fin du siècle, showing that life is a party. The media used, together with aspects of design and fashion and computer images play a significant role in this, and its practitioners regard themselves as skilled artisans rather than as artists. Their works are rich in colour and joyful, and they like to embellish entire rooms with such humorous objects. The Groningen Museum contains a large collection of their crazy works. Also see Decoration.
– Good design is a concept which originated after the war in northern Europe and North America. The Design Council in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Ulm Hochschule have issued many publications, organised exhibitions and readings and produced inexpensive products and identifying marks and signs. Since the designers concerned were not seeking to preach any political or social message, and did not adopt a critical approach to capitalism and mass production (“arbiters of taste and cultivators of needs”, their works prompted the emergence of Anti-Design.
– Industrial design: this term is used to describe the conceptualisation, design and manufacture of mass-produced articles and, generally, the adaptation of industrial products to the needs of a large group of consumers. After the Industrial Revolution, as a result of scientific and technological progress, the production of goods, which had previously been the preserve of artisans, was catered for in factories, where there was a great need for designers. After the Second World War, industrial design academies were established in Germany, England and the Netherlands. Industrial design is geared to mass production: the greater the number of customers and the larger the market, the lower the price. The adaptation of products to correspond to a general taste has reduced design and quality to a lowest common denominator. Re-designing is the process of reworking the design of a product, whereby the form is retained but technical and practical improvements are introduced, as in the case of the new design of the Volkswagen Beetle or the Coca-Cola bottle. Industrial designers are responsible for the design aspects of these industrial processes. N.B.: Styling has nothing to do with industrial design, since it involves only the outward appearance of a product. Re-styling is the application of small, superficial changes to a product to reflect a new trend or target group.
*High Tech: is an approach to industrial products in a different context. It grew out of the Modern Movement, and the first exhibition, featuring laboratory glass in its entrance foyer, was staged in 1936 by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The Pompidou Centre in Paris represents a good example, with its escalators, conduits, pipes and tubes being left visible to the public on the outside of the building. The High Tech trend proved popular during the 1970s and in the early part of the present decade, featuring in restaurant equipment, holograms, punched steel and industrial glass.
 
– Period styles: these are styles marking a particular time or period, such as Romanesque, baroque, Biedermeier, gothic, medieval, modern, post- and neo-modern, and Depression glass (inexpensively pressed glass made in the USA between 1920 and 1950);
– Personal styles reflect the individualistic approach of the artist, whose work is often later subsumed in greater styles. Examples include: Andries Dirk Copier, Willem Heesen, Richard Meitner, Louis Comfort Tiffany and Émile Gallé. N.B.: Idiom is a word used to describe the style in which, and the techniques whereby, an artist expresses himself, or those which are characteristic of a period, movement or medium.
 
– Procedural styles, otherwise known as formal and morphological styles: these include styles the most important aspect of which is the method used, the design process applied or the outward appearance of the work, as in the case of Arte Povera and Pop Art:
*Kitsch (from the German word verkitschen, meaning to make trashy or tawdry): a sentimental, futile and pathetic representation or production expressing an apparently artistic but sham feeling or sentiment. The techniques used are employed in an ungracious way, and it often happens that excessive recourse to materials and decoration results in a form which is mere packaging. In the 1980s the style was consciously chosen with a view to degenerating into the realm of the camp.
*Art Deco: a style which originated in France in the 1920s and reached its peak in England and America in the 1930s. It took its name from the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels held in Paris. Influenced by Cubism, Fauvism, the Ballets Russes, African and Egyptian art, and also by Modernists such as Josef Hoffmann, Frank Lloyd Wright and Adolf Loos, the style is characterised by the use of sumptuous new materials and stylised natural and graphic ornamentation.
*Art Nouveau: a style which developed simultaneously throughout Europe in 1880, reached its peak around 1900 and faded away with the onset of the First World War. Its most characteristic feature was the use of sweeping lines and forms of organic growth. It took its name from the Paris shop known as the Maison de l'Art Nouveau. Japanese and rococo influences made themselves felt in two distinct manifestations of the style. The first of these was the over-ornate French and Belgian style of Horta and Mucha, whilst the other was the more severe version found in the works of, for example, Mackintosh and the members of the Secession movement, the Wiener Werkstätte and the German Werkbund, which introduced a simplified form of the style into their industrial design.
*Camp: a style in which bad taste and scoffing irony are uppermost. The use of cult products and films is a frequent feature of camp works, such as the music of Zangeres zonder Naam and the paintings of the “huilend sigeunerkind”. In its purest form, the design invariably goes “over the top”. As John Waters has said: “In order to show bad taste, you have to have, above all, very very good taste”.
*Eclecticism: a combination of visions and styles taken from different sources, cultures and periods. The term, which now has negative connotations, was used in the 19th century to indicate that only the best expressions of the visual heritage were chosen, and in that sense it is closely related to Historism.
 
– Regional and national styles: for example, American, Celtic, Venetian, Leerdam, Flemish and Bohemian;
 
– Religious styles: for example, Christian, Byzantine and Islamic;
 
– School styles: where the identity of the artist is unknown but none the less recognisable, or his work shows influences of a regional or national style and/or of an artist imitated by him, then it is often classified as belonging to a certain school, such as the Amsterdam School, the École de Paris, the school of Giotto, the Barbizon School, etc.
 
 
Translation James Benn, Luxembourg

See part 1>
 
©Angela van der Burght
This article has been published in 2002 in This Side Up!