Ornamenting is a thing too easily done, killing artistic taste. In 1840 Sir Francis Palgrave wrote:
The means of multiplying elegant forms by punches, squeezes, moulds, types, dies, casts and like contrivances, enables us to produce objects with a sufficient degree of beauty to satisfy the general fancy for art or ornament, but so as to kill all life and freedom. A permanent glut of pseudo-art is created; the multitudes are overfed with a superabundance of trashy food, and their appetite will never desire any better nutriment.
(Quoted from page 416 of The Collected Historical Works of Sir Francis Palgrave. Volume X. Cambridge University Press, 2014.)
For a brief biography of Sir Francis Palgrave, click here. For images of or relating to Sir Francis Palgrave, click here.
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