Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
nized by local wildlife. (Seven stories above the street I witnessed a mother duck
strutting ahead of a string of ducklings who had been born in the wooded thicket
atop the KunsthausWien instead of the nearby Stadtpark.)
27. These limiting variables, praiseworthy for what they can contribute to social
unity, are the foundation of the approach advocated by Prince Charles in his suc-
cessful revitalization efforts through the Prince's Trust.
28. Exotic goods were used sparingly for palace or temple, but never for common
homes: “And Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants to Solomon; for he had heard
that they had anointed him king in the room of his father; for Hiram was ever a
lover of David.” (1 Kings 5: 1) “And Hiram sent to Solomon, saying, I have consid-
ered the things which you sent to me for: and I will do all you desire concerning
timber of cedar, and concerning timber of fir. My servants shall bring them down
from Lebanon unto the sea: and I will convey them by sea in floats unto the place
that thou shalt appoint me.” (1 Kings 5: 8, 9) Having already written about this once
before, I see no reason to try to reformulate my position in less efficient expres-
sions:The materials of which things are made can and do, by themselves, carry asso-
ciations. Extraordinarily fine components, rich and exotic materials, indicate the
princely mode (to acknowledge Oleg Grabar), a form of “conspicuous consump-
tion” (to acknowledge Thorstein Veblen,
The Theory of the Leisure Class,
1899).
Things have cost, and the price of things is relatively well-known to people in a
given society, and the object carries that implicit cost in labor and materials,
whether barter is appropriate or not. Things evidently or subtly exhibit the tech-
nique by which they were made, and high artisanship implies a tremendous caloric
investment by the entire culture as the artisan is being trained, and thereby his or
her labor and creativity are withheld from other, capital-forming, work. Craft rep-
resents a mixture of practicality and culture-specific aptness, a symbolic precipitate
of which every object is the residue. This symbolic component has a history, as
much as the evolution of functions, so that style can be divisible from function, but
only to an outside observer. Together, all these considerations convey a powerful
social message that completely transcends the ostensible use to which a thing is to
be put by the user. To the beholder things mean something else entirely than to
their putative or actual owners.The deliciousness of the situation arises from all of
us being both users and observers. (Harry Rand, “The Uses of Things,”
Things
5,
winter 1996)
29. See Isaac Herzog,
The Royal Purple and the Biblical Blue
(Keter, 1987).
30. For a discussion of the origin of this style's name, see Bevis Hillier,
Art Deco
(Studio Vista, 1968), 10. For a discussion of how one of the most successful artists
of this period interpreted the unstated assumptions by which Art Deco suffused a
society that had already solicited its birth, see Harry Rand,
Paul Manship
(Smith-
sonian Institution Press, 1989).
