Naturally, this Department of Ornament is the most ordained section of the palace. Long before marks were used to inscribe language, humans employed it to adorn and decorate. Let us, despite its condemnation as mere decoration by dogmatic modernists, never underestimate the persisting value of beauty. True, ideas and interpretations of beauty shift, stir and fluctuate. Yet it is exactly these changes that reflect the changeability of cultural conceptions. An exaggeration? Perhaps so, but who could resist the lure of flamboyant language in ascribing value to such exquisite ornamented artefacts.
Like a chef, relying on ingredients for new recipes or classic cuisine, the typographic mason lends its ingredients to create traditional or innovative visual languages. Culturally diverse ornamental tendencies allow for new congregations that inherit the historical legacy into contemporary design approaches. Each ingredient has its own backstory, origin, history, and heritage. Ornament is no mere historic object. Instead, as a Janus-faced approach, it inherits historical craft into contemporary graphic language.
