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	title of this thread your message between the lines, we find that Wright is hoping we'll agree with him that the definition of Simplicity is sufficiently elastic to include the kinds of "organic" embellishment that he enjoyed drawing. Whatever he wanted to do was, by definition, a Good Thing, honest and true. So, if he preferred to indulge in decoration, then that meant that it was somehow vital to the completion of the vision. To his credit, much if not most of these decorations -- always drawn with the same instruments that constructed the buildings themselves, meaning that they were composed of a limited number of "regular" angles, and arcs -- were well integrated into the fabric of the structure, seldom looking like tacked-on afterthought. In the paragraphs above, he seems to struggle to find language sufficiently convincing to convey this (veiled) message; in the end he succeeds -- barely, I believe. Superficially, at least, a coherent image of something Good is achieved, even if we are left scratching our heads a bit as to what exactly he is talking about. So, why did Wright feel the need to obscure his message about ornament ? Did he know that his young readers of 1932 would have trouble accepting a role for architectural decoration, when all around them was the evidence of a stripped and clean modernity -- the latest thing, well and truly established on all shores, celebrated just the year before in the International Style show at the Modern ? Did he need to code his language, concealing his true feelings in a veil of poetic prose, hoping to be both true to himself and appealing to his audience ? In fact, he was on the verge of "cleaning up" his work: within a year the first Usonian house would appear, with no art glass and no applied ornament -- save for the occasional patterned-board ceiling, and the jig-sawn perforated wood found on the strip windows of many of the houses in the later 'thirties. The textures of board and brick itself were the ornament. Only in the 'fifties did roof-edge dentils appear in the work. . . associated web images (optional) associated web link (optional) your email your password create a forums account \| you forgot your password?