I think that Owen Jones was trying to say that the form of an object should firstly support what its purpose is. Meaning that the way it is designed should be most effective for what the object is used for. I do agree that a person should set out to design something with a certain use and then decorate afterwards, not set out to create a flower and then give it a purpose like a light. Although I believe that if someone does want something that is ‘decoration constructed’, there is no reason why they shouldn’t be able to. The image above, for example is an urn that holds water and follows the “true principles of design”. Its shape makes it easy to hold water and to carry it, something that might be looked over if it was decoration constructed. I do not fully agree with the “true principles of design”; “nature as model for ornament, appropriate ornament for object (and use), abstraction in representation”, I don’t think that nature does have to be a model for ornament, the way it is decorated doesn’t have to relate to its purpose and I don’t believe it is that important to abstract decoration. These rules, that were set out to stop “bad design”, were too strict in the way they saw good design. I believe that design is always evolving, and putting restrictions on the way that people design would stunt the evolution and improvement of the way that we design today.
