Ornamentalism

Ornamentalism (pronounced awr-nuh-men-tl-iz-uhm)

(1) The desire or tendency to feature (usually what’s judged an excess of) ornamentation in design or execution (buildings, interiors, furnishings, cars, artwork etc).

(2) Any artistic or architectural style characterised by ornamentation.

(3) In the pre-revolutionary Russian literary tradition, an intricate, mannered and ostentatious prose style most prevalent in the early twentieth century.

(4) In politics, something implemented to lend the appearance of being something substantive while in reality changing little (synonymous usually with “window dressing”).

1860s: The construct was ornament + -al + -ism.  Ornament (an element of decoration; that which embellishes or adorns) was from the Old French ornement, from the Latin ornamentum (equipment, apparatus, furniture, trappings, adornment, embellishment), from ornāre, the present active infinitive of ornō (I equip, adorn). The verb was derived from the noun.  The -al suffix was from the Middle English -al, from the Latin adjectival suffix -ālis, ((the third-declension two-termination suffix (neuter -āle) used to form adjectives of relationship from nouns or numerals) or the French, Middle French and Old French –el & -al.  It was use to denote the sense "of or pertaining to", an adjectival suffix appended (most often to nouns) originally most frequently to words of Latin origin, but since used variously and also was used to form nouns, especially of verbal action.  The alternative form in English remains -ual (-all being obsolete).  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Ornamentalism & ornamentalist are nouns; the noun plural is ornamentalisms.

Lindsay Lohan mug-shot Christmas tree ornament.  Even the blurb: “…handmade photo-fresco Ornament made with a hybrid Gypsum based polymer that has the crystaline structure of ceramics…” has about it the whiff of ornamentalism.  In some places, this ornament may be thought blasphemous.

The sense of the noun & adjective ornamental (the comparative “more ornamental”, the superlative “most ornamental”) differ from those of ornamentalism in that the former is almost always either positive or neutral.  In the narrow technical sense something ornamental has “no purpose beyond the decorative” although many “ornamental devices” often either can or do fulfill some function, thus the nuanced phrase “merely ornamental” to distinguish the pure forms.  As a noun, “ornamentals” are plants, fish and such bred or maintained for no purpose other than their aesthetic value (although obviously they also often a commercial product).

The same positive or neutral senses tend to be enjoyed by the noun & verb “ornament” which means usually “a decorative element or embellishment” (such as a ceramic piece displayed but never used for its nominal purpose).  In music it means specifically “a musical flourish not needed by the melodic or harmonic line, but which serves to decorate that line” while in the rituals of Christianity, ornaments (in this context always in the plural) are objects (crosses, altar candles, incense and such) used in church services.  So in musical and liturgical use, ornaments enjoy a duality in that they are both decorative and fulfill some function.  That is reflected in biology when the word is used to describe a characteristic that has a decorative function (typically in order to attract a mate) such as the peacock’s marvelously extravagant tail feathers.

Ornamentalisn is best known in architecture and design and can been seen in styles ranging from the rococo ((Würzburg Residenz, Würzburg Bavaria, Germany; left), to the McMansion (Wildwood New Jersey, USA; right))

In literary theory, ornamentalism is used to describe a style of writing in the pre-revolutionary Russian literary tradition in which prose was constructed in an intricate, mannered and ostentatious way.  It’s most associated with the early twentieth century and the great exponents of the art were the now sadly neglected Andrei Bely (1880-1934), the symbolist Fyodor Sologub (1863–1927) and the monumentally bizarre Alexei Remizov (1877-1957); it was one of the many stylistic trends briefly to flourish within the Russian avant-garde early in the twentieth century.  It came to be of some interest to later deconstructionists and post-modernists (the latter debatably among the greatest (or worst, depending on one’s view) ornamentalists) because the writers focused not on the capacity of the text to convey narrative or ideological content but the aesthetic and formal qualities of language itself; they treated language as an autonomous artistic medium, focusing on its rhythm, sound, texture and visual patterns.  Even at the time, there was criticism that the style was one of self-indulgence and intended for an audience of fellow writers and those who followed developments in the avant-garde; what comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) would later condemn as “formalism”.

What the ornamentalists did was elevate the elements of language (words, sentences, paragraphs etc) to be artistic objects to be assembled and arranged, their interplay as important (some critics suggested more so) than any implied or discernible meaning, thus the fragmented, non-linear prose which was a complete rejection of traditional realism: the ornamentalists called their work “associative structures”, suggesting they really were the proto postmodernists.  In that sense, it wasn’t the textual devices (repetition, alliteration, assonance) or the unusual syntactic structures which was most striking but the often chaotic mixture of prose and poetry and the interpolation of visual and performative elements into the text.  Needless to say, there was much symbolism, presumably thought an adequate substitute for coherence.  Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) was a noted critic of some of the more wilfully obscure ornamentalists but in his early Russian works and later English novels, their influence is detectable in his sensitivity to language's aesthetic possibilities.  While ornamentalism never really became a formal “school” of literature, it did exert a pull on Russian modernism and the possibility of elements like language operating as autonomous artistic objects.

In the US car industry peak ornamentalism happened between 1957-1962: 1960 Chrysler 300F (left), 1958 Buick Limited (centre) and 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz (right).

An earlier Russian literary tradition which was later sometimes a part of ornamentalism was skaz (from the sleazat (to tell)), a genre of folk tales consisting usually of an eye-witness account of an episode in peasant or provincial life, distinguished by the narrative being related by a fictitious narrator rather than the author directly.  What that method did was afford an author some latitude in the use of speech forms such as dialect, slang, mispronunciations and, not infrequently, neologisms, all of which lent the texts a naturalistic vigour and colourfulness which usually wouldn’t appear in a naturalistic piece, told in the first person.

A Spanish literary tradition in the same vein as ornamentalism was plateresco (from platero (silversmith), most associated with sixteenth century romances (with most of what that implies).  The English version of the terms was “plateresque” (silversmith-like) and literary criticism borrowed the idea from architecture & design where it describes the ornate styles popular in Spain during the sixteenth century, the word applied in the same way as rococo (which can be thought of as “high ornamentalism”).  The more familiar Spanish term was Gongorism which described the style of writing typified by that of the poet Luis de Góngora y Argote (1561-1627), famous for his baroque and affected ways with the language which featured a Latinistic vocabulary & syntax, intricate use of metaphors, much hyperbole, mythological allusions and a general weirdness of diction.  In fairness, Góngora did not always write in this manner but so distinctive were his narratives when he did that a minor industry of imitators followed including Richard Crashaw (1613-1649) and the English polymath Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) who had great fun while Gongorising.  Gongorism as practiced was a deliberate exaggeration of technique, unlike the earlier aureate (from the Latin aureatus (adorned or decorated with gold), the construct being aure(us) (golden, gilded) +‎ -ate (the adjective-forming suffix).  Arueate language (characterized by the use of (excessively) ornamental or grandiose terms) was most generously described as a sort of poetic diction and it was much in vogue for English and Scottish and poets of the fifteenth century, the works of whom are characterized by the used of ornate & ornamental language, often studded with vernacular coinages from Latin words.

Atavism

Atavism (pronounced at-uh-viz-uhm)

(1) In biology (most often in zoology & botany), the reappearance in an individual of characteristics of some (typically) remote ancestor which have not manifested in intervening generations.

(2) An individual embodying such a reversion.

(3) Reversion to an earlier or more primitive type (a “throwback” in the vernacular).

(4) In sociology and political science, the recurrence or reversion to a past behavior, method, characteristic or style after a long period of absence, used especially of a reversion to violence.

1825-1830: The construct was the Latin atav(us) (great-great-great grandfather; remote ancestor, forefather” (the construct being at- (akin to atta (familiar name for a father) and used perhaps to suggest “beyond”)  + avus (grandfather, ancestor) + -ism.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Atavism & atavist are nouns, atavic, atavistic & atavistical are adjectives and atavistically is an adverb; the noun plural is atavisms.

The primitive Indo-European awo meant “adult male relative other than the father”, the most obvious descendent the modern “uncle”.  The English form was influenced by the French atavisme (the coining attributed usually to the botanist Antoine Nicolas Duchesne (1747-1827 Paris) and was first used in biology in the sense of “reversion by influence of heredity to ancestral characteristics, resemblance of a given organism to some remote ancestor, return to an early or original type”.  The adjective atavistic (pertaining to atavism) appeared in 1847, joined three year later by the now rare atavic (pertaining to a remote ancestor, exhibiting atavism).  Atavism (and its related forms) are none of those words which can be used as a neutral descriptor (notably in botany) or to denote something positive or negative.  Although the core meaning is always some “past or ancestral characteristic”, it tends to be pejorative if use of people or human cultures reverting to some “primitive characteristics” (especially if they be war or other forms of violence.  In the vernacular, the earthier “throwback” has been more common than the rather formal “atavistic” although the circumlocution “skip a generation” is often used for traits that occur after a generation of absence and “throwback” anyway became a “loaded” term because of its association with race (in the sense of skin-color).

Medicine has constructed its own jargon associated with the phenomenon in which an inherited condition appears to “skip a generation”: it’s described often as “autosomal recessive inheritance” or “incomplete penetrance”.  While the phrase “skipping a generation” is not uncommon in informal use, the actual mechanisms depend on the genetic inheritance pattern of the condition.  Autosomal Recessive Inheritance is defined as a “condition is caused by mutations in both copies of a specific gene” (one inherited from each parent).  This can manifest as an individual inheriting only one mutated copy (which means they will be a carrier but will remain asymptomatic) but if two carriers have issue, there is (1) a 25% chance the offspring will inherit both mutated copies and express the condition, (2) a 50% chance the offspring will be a carrier and (3) a 25% chance the offspring will inherit no mutations.  Thus, the condition may appear (and for practical purposes does) skip a generation in those cases where no symptoms exist; the classic examples include sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis.  Incomplete Penetrance occurs when an individual inherits a gene mutation which creates in them a genetic predisposition to a condition but symptoms do not develop because of environmental factors, other genetic influences or “mere chance” (and in the matter of diseases like those classified as “cancer”, the influence of what might be called “bad luck” is still probably underestimated, and certainly not yet statistically measured.  In such cases, the mutation may be passed to the next generation, where it might manifest, giving the appearance of skipping a generation and the BRCA1 & BRCA2 mutations for (hereditary) breast cancer are well-known examples.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December, 2011.

In political science, “atavism” is used to refer to a reversion to older, more “primitive” means of furthering political ends.  Although it’s most associated with a critique of violence, political systems, ideologies, behaviors or economic policies have all be described as “atavistic” and their manifestation is linked often with ideas presented as representing (and implicitly offering a return to) a perceived “golden age”, a past structure which is idealized; it appear often as a reaction to change, notably modernity, globalization, or what is claimed to be a “decline in values”.  Political scientists identify stands in nominally non-violent atavism including: (1) Nostalgic Nationalism.  Nationalist movements are almost always race-based (in the sense of longing for a return to a “pure” ethnicity in which a population is “untainted” by ethnic diversity.  It’s usually a romanticization of a nation's past (historically, “purity” was less common than some like to believe) offering the hope of a return to traditional values, cultural practices, or forms of governance.  (2) Tribalism and Identity Politics. A call to primordial loyalties (such as ethnic or tribal identities), over modern, pluralistic, or institutional frameworks has been a feature of recent decades and was the trigger for the wars in the Balkans during the 1990s, the conflict which introduced to the language the euphemism “ethnic cleansing”, a very atavistic concept.  Tribalism and identity politics depends on group identities & allegiance overshadowing any broader civic or national unity on the basis of overturning an artificial (and often imposed) structure and returning to a pre-modern arrangement. (3) Anti-modernism or Anti-globalization. These are political threads which sound “recent” but both have roots which stretch back at least to the nineteenth century and Pius IX’s (1792–1878; pope 1846-1878) Syllabus Errorum (Syllabus of Errors, 1864) was one famous list of objections to change.  The strategy behind such atavism may be identifiably constant but tactics can vary and there’s often a surprising degree of overlap in the messaging of populists from the notional right & left which is hardly surprising given that in the last ten years both Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021; president elect 2024) and Bernie Sanders (b 1941; senior US senator (Independent, Vermont) since 2007) honed their messaging to appeal to the same disgruntled mass.

Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter (1898-1953, left) & Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950, right).  It was his third marriage.

Austrian political economist Joseph Schumpeter used the word “atavism” in his analysis of the dynamics which contributed to the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918), something he attributed to the old, autocratic regimes of Central and Eastern Europe “dragging the modern, liberal West” back in time.  Schumpeter believed that if commercial ties created interdependence between nations then armed conflict would become unthinkable and US author Thomas Friedman (b 1953) in The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (1999) suggested the atavistic tendency of man to go to war could be overcome by modern commerce making connectivity between economies so essential to the well-being of citizens that no longer would they permit war because such a thing would be so dangerous for the economy; it was an attractive argument because we have long since ceased to be citizens and are merely economic units.  Friedman’s theory didn’t actually depend on his earlier phrase which suggested: “…countries with McDonalds outlets don’t go to war with each other” but that was how readers treated it.  Technically, it was a bit of a gray area (Friedman treated the earlier US invasion of Panama (1989) as a police action) but the thesis was anyway soon disproved in the Balkans.  Now, Schumpeter and Friedman seem to be cited most often in pieces disproving their theses and atavism remains alive and kicking.

Lettrism

Lettrism (pronounced let-riz-uhm)

A French avant-garde art and literary movement established in 1946 and inspired, inter alia, by Dada and surrealism.  The coordinate term is situationism.

1946: From French lettrisme, a variant of lettre (letter).  Letter dates from the late twelfth century and was from the From Middle English letter & lettre, from the Old French letre, from the Latin littera (letter of the alphabet (in plural); epistle; literary work), from the Etruscan, from the Ancient Greek διφθέρᾱ (diphthérā) (tablet) (and related to diphtheria).  The form displaced the Old English bōcstæf (literally “book staff” in the sense of “the alphabet’s symbols) and ǣrendġewrit (literally “message writing” in the sense of “a written communication longer than a “note” (ie, something like the modern understanding of “a letter”)).  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Letterism is listed by some sources as an alternative spelling but in literary theory it used in a different sense.  Lettrism and lettrist are nouns; the noun plural is letterists.

Letter from letterist Lindsay Lohan (2003).

A Lettrist was (1) one who practiced Lettrism or (2) a supporter or advocate of Lettrism.  Confusingly, in the English-speaking world, the spelling Letterist has been used in this context, presumably because it’s a homophone (if pronounced in the “correct (U)” way) and the word is “available” because although one who keeps as diary is a “diarist”, even the most prolific of inveterate letter writers are not called “letterists”.  The preferred term for a letter-writer is correspondent, especially for those who writes letters regularly or in an official capacity.  The Letterist International (LI) was a Paris-based collective of radical artists and cultural theorists which existed 1952-1957 before forming the Situationist International (SI), a trans-European, unstructured collective of artists and political thinkers which eventually became more a concept than a movement.  Influenced by the criticism that philosophy had tended increasingly to fail at the moment of its actualization, the SI, although it assumed the inevitability of social revolution, always maintained many (cross-cutting) strands of expectations of the form(s) this might take.  Indeed, just as a world-revolution did not follow the Russian revolutions of 1917, the events of May, 1968 failed to realize the predicted implications; the SI can be said then to have died.  The SI’s discursive output between 1968 and 1972 may be treated either as a lifeless aftermath to an anti-climax or a bunch of bitter intellectuals serving as mourners at their own protracted funeral.  In literary theory, while “Lettrism” has a defined historical meaning, the use of “letterism” is vague and not a recognized term although it has informally been used (often with some degree of irony) of practices emphasizing the use of letters or alphabetic symbols in art or literature and given the prevalence of text of a symbolic analogue in art since the early twentieth century, it seem surprising “letterism” isn’t more used in criticism.  That is of course an Anglo-centric view of things because the French Lettrists themselves are said to prefer the spelling “Letterism”.

Jacques Derrida smoking pipe.

The French literary movement Lettrism was founded in Paris in 1946 and the two most influential figures in the early years were the Romanian-born French poet, film maker and political theorist Isidore Isou (1925–2007) and his long-term henchman, the French poet, & writer Maurice Lemaître (1926-2018).  Western Europe was awash with avant-garde movements in the early post-war years but what distinguished Lettrism was its focus on breaking down (deconstruction was not yet a term used in this sense) traditional language and meaning by emphasizing the materiality of letters and sounds rather than conventionally-assembled words.  Scholars of linguistics and the typographic community had of course long made a study of letters, their form, variation and origin, but in Lettrism it was less about the letters as objects than the act of dismantling the structures of language letters created, the goal being the identification (debatably the creation) of new forms of meaning through pure sound, visual abstraction and the aesthetic form of letters.  Although influenced most by Dada and surrealism, the effect the techniques of political propaganda used during the 1930s & 1940s was noted by the Lettrists and their core tenent was an understanding of the letter itself as the fundamental building block of art and literature.  Often they would break down language into letters or phonetic sounds, assessing and deploying them for their aesthetic or auditory qualities rather than their conventional meaning(s).  In that sense the Lettrists can be seen as something as precursor of post-modernism’s later “everything is text” orthodoxy although that too has an interesting origin.  The French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) made famous the phrase “Il n'y a pas de hors-texte” which often is translated as something like “there is no meaning beyond the text” but “hors-texte” (outside the text) was printers’ jargon for those parts of a book without regular page numbers (blank pages, copyright page, table of contents et al) and Derrida’s point actually was the hors-texte must be regardes as a part of the text.  There was much intellectual opportunism in post modernism and for their own purposes it suited may to assert what Derrida said was “There is nothing outside the text” and what he meant was “everything is part of a (fictional) text and nothing is real” whereas his point was it’s not possible to create a rule rigidly which delineates what is “the text” and what is “an appendage to the text”.  Troublingly for some post modernists, Derrida did proceed on a case-by-case basis although he seems not to have explained how the meaning of the text in an edition of a book with an appended "This page is intentionally left blank" page might differ from one with no such page.  It may be some earnest student of post-modernism has written an essay convincingly exactly that.

The Lettrism project was very much a rejection of traditional language structures and the meanings they denoted; it was a didactic endeavor, the Lettrists claiming not only had they transcended conventional grammar & syntax but they could obviate even a need for meaning in words, their work a deliberate challenge to their audiences to rethink how language functions.  As might be imagined, their output was “experimental” and in addition to some takes on the ancient form of “pattern poetry” included what they styled “concrete poetry” & “phonetic poetry”, visual art and performance pieces which relied on abstraction, the most enduring of which was the “hypergraphic”, an object sometimes describe as “picture writing” which combined letters, symbols, and images, blending visual and textual elements into a single art form, often as collages or as graphic-like presentations on canvas or paper.  This wasn’t a wholly new concept but the lettrists vested it with new layers of meaning which, at least briefly, intrigued many although it was dismissed also as “visual gimmickry” or that worst of insults in the avant-garde: “derivative”.  Despite being one of the many footnotes in the history of modern art, Lettrism never went away and in a range of artistic fields, even today there are those who style themselves “lettrists” and the visual clues of the movement’s influence are all around us.

Chrysler’s letterism: The Chrysler 300 “letter series” 1955-1965.

The “letter series” Chrysler 300s were produced in limited numbers in the US between 1955-1965; technically, they were the high-performance version of the luxury Chrysler New Yorker and the first in 1955 was labeled C-300, an allusion to the 300 hp (220 kW) 331 cubic inch (5.4 litre) Hemi V8, then the most powerful engine offered in a production car.  The C-300 was well received and when an updated version was released in 1956, it was dubbed 300B, the annual releases appending the next letter in the alphabet as a suffix although in 1963 “I” was skipped when the 300H was replaced by the 300J, the rationale being it might be confused with a “1” (ie the numeral “one”), the same reasoning explaining why there are so few “I cup” bras, some manufacturers filling the gap in the market between “H cup” & “J cup” with a “HH cup” but there’s no evidence the corporation’s concerns ever prompted them to ponder a “300HH”.  Retrospectively thus, the 1955 C-300 is often described as the 300A although this was never an official factory designation.  While in the narrow technical sense not a part of the “muscle car” lineage (defined by the notion of putting a “big” car’s “big” engine into a smaller, lighter model), the letter series cars were an important part of the “power race” of the 1950s and an evolutionary step in what would emerge in 1964 as the muscle car branch and the most plausible LCA (last common ancestor) of both was the Buick Century (1936-1942).  The letter series was retired after 1965 because the market preference for high-performance car had shifted to the smaller, lighter, pony cars & intermediates (neither of which existed in the early years of the 300) though the “non letter series” 300s (introduced in 1962) continued until 1971 with an toned-down emphasis on speed and a shift to style.

1955 Chrysler C-300 (300A).

The 1955 C-300 typified Detroit’s “mix & match” approach to the parts bin in that it conjured something “new” at relatively low cost, combining the corporation’s most powerful Hemi V8 with the New Yorker Series (C-68) platform, the visual differentiation achieved by using the front bodywork (the “front clip” in industry jargon) from the top-of-the-range Imperial.  The justification for the existence of the thing was to fulfill the homologation requirements of NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) that a certain number of various components be sold to the public before a car could be defined as a “production” car (ie a “stock” car, a term which shamelessly would be prostituted in the years to come) and used in sanctioned competition.  Accordingly, the C-300 was configured with the 331 cubic inch Hemi V8 fitted, with dual four barrel carburetors, solid valve lifters and a high-lift camshaft profiled for greater top-end power.  Better to handle the increased power, stiffer front and rear suspension was used and it was very much in the tradition of the big, powerful grand-touring cars of the 1930s such as the Duesenberg SJ, something that with little modification could be competitive on the track.  Very successful in NASCAR racing, the C-300 also set a number of speed records in timed trials but it was very much a niche product; despite the price not being excessive for what one got, only 1,725 were made.

1956 Chrysler 300B (left) and Highway Hi-Fi phonograph player (right).

The 300B used a updated version of the C-300s body so visually the two were similar although, ominously, the tailfins did grow a little.  The big news however lay under the hood (bonnet) with the Hemi V8 enlarged to 354 cubic inches (5.8 litres) and available either with 340 horsepower (254 kW) or in a high- compression version generating 355 (365), the first time a US-built automobile was advertised as producing greater than one horsepower per cubic inch of displacement.  It was a sign of the times; other manufacturers took note.  The added power meant a top speed of around 140 mph (225 km/h) could be attained, something now to ponder given the retardative qualities of the braking system but also of note was the season's much talked-about option: the "Highway Hi-Fi" phonograph player which allowed vinyl LP records to be played when the car was on the move; the sound quality was remarkably good but on less than smooth surfaces, experiences were mixed.  Success on the track continued, the 300B wining the Daytona Flying Mile with a new record of 139.373 MPH, and it again dominated NASCAR, repeating the C-300’s Grand National Championship.  Despite that illustrious record, only 1,102 were sold.

1957 Chrysler 300C.

The 1955-1956 Chryslers had a balance and elegance of line which could have remained a template for the industry but there were other possibilities and these Detroit choose to pursue, creating a memorable era of extravagance but one which proved a stylistic cul-de-sac.  The 1957 300C undeniably was dramatic and featured many of the motifs so associated with the US automobile of the late 1950s including the now (mostly) lawful quad-headlights, the panoramic “Vista-Dome” windshield, the lashings of chrome and, of course, those tailfins.  The Hemi V8 was again enlarged, now in a “tall deck” version out to 395 cubic inches (6.4 litres) rated at 375 horsepower (280 kW) and for the first time a convertible version of the 300 was available.  By now the power race was being run in earnest with General Motors (GM) offering fuel-injected engines and Mercury solving the problem in the traditional American (there’s no replacement for displacement) way by releasing a 430 cubic inch (7.0 litre) V8 although it was so big and heavy it made the bulky Hemi seem something of a lightweight; the 430 did however briefly find a niche in in power-boat racing.  For 300C owners who wanted more there was also a high-compression version with more radical valve timing rated at 390 horse power (290 kW) and this was for the first time able to be ordered with a three-speed manual transmission.  Few apparently felt the need for more and of the 2,402 300Cs sold (1,918 coupes & 484 convertibles), only 18 were ordered in high-compression form.

1958 Chrysler 300D.

Again using the Hemi 392, now tuned for a standard 380 horsepower (280 kW), there was for the first time the novelty of the optional Bendix “Electrojector” fuel injection, which raised output to a nominal 390 horsepower (290 kW) although its real benefit was the consistency of fuel delivery, overcoming the starvation encountered sometimes under extreme lateral load.  Unfortunately, the analogue electronics of the era proved unequal to the task and the unreliability was both chronic and insoluble, thus almost all the 21 fuel-injected cars were retro-fitted with the stock dual-quad induction system and it’s believed only one 300D retains its original Bendix plumbing.  Also rare was the take-up rate for the manual transmission option and interestingly, both the two known 300Ds so equipped were ordered originally with carburetors rather than fuel injection.  The engineers also secured one victory over the stylists.  After testing on the proving grounds determined the distinctive, forward jutting “eyebrow” header atop the windscreen reduced top speed by 5 mph (8 km/h), they managed to convince management to authorize an expensive change to the tooling, standardizing the convertible’s compound-curved type “bubble windshield”, a then rare triumph of function over fashion.  Although the emphasis of the letter series cars was shifting from the track to the roads, the things genuinely still were fast and one (slightly modified) 300D was set a new class record of 156.387 mph (251.681 km/h) on the Bonneville Salt Flats.  Production declined to 810 units (619 coupes & 191 convertibles).

1959 Chrysler 300E.

With the coming of the 1959 range, the Hemi was retired and replaced by a new 413 cubic inch (6.8 litre) V8 with wedge-shaped combustion chambers.  Lighter by some 100 lb (45 kg) and cheaper to produce than the Hemi with its demanding machining requirements and intricate valve train, the additional displacement allowed power output to be maintained at 380 horsepower (280 kW) while torque (something more significant for what most drivers on the street do most of the time actually increased).  The manual transmission option was also deleted with no market resistance and despite the lower production costs, the price tag rose, something probably more of a factor in the declining sales than the loss of the much vaunted Hemi and, like the 300D (and most of the rest of the industry) the year before, the economy was suffering in the relatively brief but sharp recession and Chrysler probably did well to shift 390 units (550 coupes & 140 convertibles).

1960 Chrysler 300F (left) and 300F engine with Sonoramic intake in red (right).

Although the rococo styling cues remained, underneath now lay radical modernity, the corporation’s entire range (except for exclusive Imperial line) switching from ladder frame to unitary construction.  The stylists however indulged themselves with more external flourishes, allowing the tailfins an outward canter, culminating sharply in a point and housing boomerang-shaped taillights.  Even the critics of such things found it a pleasing look although they were less impressed by the faux spare tire cover (complete with an emulated wheel cover!) on the trunk (boot), dubbing it the “toilet seat”.  The interior though was memorable with four individual bucket in leather with a center console between extending the cockpit’s entire length and there was also Chrysler’s intriguing electroluminescent instrument display which, rather than being lit with bulbs, exploited a phenomenon in which a material emits light in response to an electric field; the ethereal glow was much admired.  Buyers in 1959 may have felt regret in not seeing a Hemi in the engine bay, but after lifting the hood (bonnet) of a 300F they wouldn’t have been disappointed because, in designer colors (gold, silver, blue & red) sat the charismatic “Sonoramic” intake manifold, a “cross-ram” system which placed the carburetors at the sides of engine, connected by long tubular runners.  What the physics of this did was provide a short duration “supercharging” effect, tuned for the mid-range torque most used when overtaking at freeway speeds.  Also built were a handful of “short ram” Sonoramics which had the tubes (actually with the same length) re-tuned to deliver top-end power rather than mid-range torque.  Rated at a nominal 400 (300 kW) horsepower, these could be fitted also with the French-built Pont-a-Mousson 4-speed manual transmission used in the Chrysler V8-powered Facel Vega and existed only for the purpose of setting records, six 300Fs so equipped showing up at the 1960 Dayton Speed Week where they took the top six places in the event’s signature Flying Mile, crossing the traps at between 141.5-144.9 mph (227.7-233.3 km/h).  The market responded and sales rose to 1217 (969 & 248 convertibles) and the 300F (especially those with the “short ram” Sonoramics) is the most collectable of the letter series.

1961 Chrysler 300G.

The 300G gained canted headlights, another of those styling fads of the 1950s & 1960s which quickly became passé but now seem a charming period piece.  There was the usual myriad of detail changes the industry in those days dreamed up each season, usually for no better reason that to be “different” from last year’s model and thus be able to offer something “new”.  As well as the slanted headlights, the fins became sharper still and taillights were moved.  Mechanically, the specification substantially was unaltered, the Sonoramic plumbing carried over although the expensive, imported Pont-a-Mousson transmission was removed from the option list, replaced by Chrysler’s own heavy-duty 3-speed manual unit, the demand for which was predictably low.  The lack of a fourth cog didn’t impede the 300G’s performance in that year’s Daytona Flying Mile where one would again take the title with a mark of 143 mph (230.1 km/h) and to prove the point a stock standard model won the one mile acceleration title.  People must have liked the headlights because production reached 1617 units (1,280 coupes & 337 convertibles).

1962 Chrysler 300H.

Perhaps a season or two too late, Chrysler “de-finned” its whole range, prompting their designer (Virgil Exner (1909–1973)) to lament his creations now resembled “plucked chickens”.  For 1962 the 300 name also lost some of its exclusivity with the addition to the range of the 300 Sport series (offered also with four-door bodywork) and to muddy the waters further, much of what was fitted to the 300H could be ordered as an option on the basic 300 so externally, but for the distinctive badge, there was visually little to separate the two.  Mechanically, the “de-contenting” which the accountants had begun to impose as the industry chase higher profits (short-term strategies to increase “shareholder value” are nothing new) was felt as the Sonoramic induction system moved to the 300H’s option list with the inline dual 4-barrel carburetor setup last seen on the 300E now standard.  However, because of weight savings gained by the adoption of a shorter wheelbase platform, the specific performance numbers of 300H actually slightly shaded its predecessor but the cannibalizing of the 300 name and the public perception the thing’s place in the hierarchy was no longer so exalted saw sales decline 570 (435 coupes & 135 convertibles), the worst year to date.  The magic of the 300 name however seemed to work because Chrysler in the four available body styles (2 door convertible, 2 & 4 door hardtop & 4 door sedan) sold 25,578 of the 300 Sport series, exceeding expectations.  Since 1962, the verbal shorthand to distinguished between the ranges has been “letter series” and “non letter series” cars.

1963 Chrysler 300J.

Presumably in an attempt to atone for past sins, a spirit of rectilinearism washed through Chrysler’s design office while the 1963 range was being prepared and it would persist until the decade’s end when new sins would be committed.  Unrelated to that was the decision to skip a 300I because of concerns it might be read as the wholly numeric 3001.  The de-contenting (now an industry trend) continued with the swivel feature for the front bucket seats deleted while full-length centre console was truncated at the front compartment with the rear seat now a less eye-catching bench.  The 413 V8 was offered in a single configuration but the Sonoramics were again standard and the manual transmission remained optional, seven buyers actually ticking the box. The 300J was still a fast car, capable of a verified 142 mph (229 km/h) although the weight and gearing conspired against acceleration but a standing quarter mile (400 m) ET (elapsed time) of 15.8 was among the quickest of the cars in its class.  Still, it did seem the end of the series might be nigh with the convertible no longer offered and the sales performance reflected the feeling, only 400 coupes leaving the showrooms.

The BUFF: The new version of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (replacing the B-52H) will be the B-52J, not B-52I or B-52HH.   

The US Air Force also opted to skip “I” when allocating a designation for the updated version of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (1952-1962 and still in service).  Between the first test flight of the B-52A in 1954 and the B-52H entering service in 1962, the designations B-52B, B-52C, B-52D, B-52E, B-52F & B-52G sequentially had been used but after flirting with whether to use B52J as an interim designation (reflecting the installation of enhanced electronic warfare systems) before finalizing the series as the B-52K after new engines were fitted, in 2024 the USAF announced the new line would be the B-52J and only a temporary internal code would distinguish those not yet re-powered.  Again, the “I” was not used so nobody would think there was a B521.  Although the avionics, digital displays and ability to carry Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM, a scramjet-powered weapon capable exceeding Mach 5) are the most significant changes for the B-52J, visually, it will be the replacement of the old Pratt & Whitney TF33 engines with new Rolls-Royce F130 units which will be most obvious, the F130 promising improvements in fuel efficiency of some 30% as well as reduction in noise and exhaust emissions.  Already in service for 70 years, apparently no retirement date for the B-52 has yet been pencilled-in.  In USAF (US Air Force) slang, the B-52 is the BUFF (the acronym for big ugly fat fellow or big ugly fat fucker depending on who is asking).  From BUFF was derived the companion acronym for the LTV A-7 Corsair II (1965-1984, the last in active service retired in 2014) which was SLUFF (Short Little Ugly Fat Fellow or Short Little Ugly Fat Fucker).

1964 Chrysler 300K.

Selling in 1963 only 400 examples of what was intended as one of the corporations “halo” cars triggered management to engage in what the Americans had come to call an “agonizing reappraisal”.  The conclusion drawn was the easiest way to stimulate demand was to lower the basic entry price to ownership of the name and if buyers really wanted the fancy stuff once fitted as standard, they could order it from an option list; it was essentially the same approach as used for most of Chrysler’s other ranges.  Accordingly, the leather trim and many of the power accessories joined air-conditioning on the option list.  The base engine was now running a single four barrel carburetor although for and additional US$375, the Sonoramic could be ordered and combined with Chrysler’s new, robust four-speed manual transmission.  Surprising some observers, the convertible coachwork made a return to the catalogue.  All that meant the 300K could be advertised for US$1000 less than the 300J and the market responded in a text book example of price elasticity of demand, production spiking to 3647 (3,022 coupes & 625 convertibles).

1965 Chrysler 300L (four speed manual).

Despite the stellar sales of the 300K, even before the release of the 300L, the decision had been taken it would be the last of the letter series.  The tastes of those who wanted high performance had shifted to the smaller, lighter pony cars and intermediates which hadn’t even been envisaged when the C-300 had made its debut a decade earlier.  Additionally, the letter series had outlived their usefulness as image-makers for the corporation now they were no longer the fastest machines in the fleet and production-line rationalization meant it was easier and more profitable to maintain a single 300 line and allow buyers to choose their own combination of options; in other words, after 1965, it would still be possible to create a letter series 300 in most aspects except the badge and the now departed Sonoramics of fond memory.  When the last 300L was produced it was configured with a single four barrel carburetor and had it not been for the badges, few would have noticed the difference between it and any other 300 with the same body.  The lower price though continued to attract buyers and in its final year 2845 were sold (2,405 coupes & 440 convertibles). 

Quartervent

Quartervent (pronounced kwawr-ter-vent)

A small, pivoted, framed (or semi-framed) pane in the front or rear side-windows of a car, provided to optimize ventilation.

1930s: The construct was quarter + vent.  Dating from the late thirteenth century, the noun quarter (in its numerical sense) was from the Middle English quarter, from the Anglo-Norman quarter, from the Old French quartier, from the Latin quartarius (a Roman unit of liquid measure equivalent to about 0.14 litre).  Quartus was from the primitive Indo-European kweturtos (four) (from which the Ancient Greek gained τέταρτος (tétartos), the Sanskrit चतुर्थ (caturtha), the Proto-Balto-Slavic ketwirtas and the Proto-Germanic fedurþô).  It was cognate to quadrus (square), drawn from the sense of “four-sided”.  The Latin suffix –arius was from the earlier -ās-(i)jo- , the construct being -āso- (from the primitive Indo-European -ehso- (which may be compared with the Hittite appurtenance suffix -ašša-) + the relational adjectival suffix -yós (belonging to).  The suffix (the feminine –āria, the neuter -ārium) was a first/second-declension suffix used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals.  The nominative neuter form – ārium (when appended to nouns), formed derivative nouns denoting a “place where stuff was kept”.  The Middle English verb quarteren, was derivative of the noun.  Dating from the mid fourteenth century, vent was from the Middle English verb venten (to furnish (a vessel) with a vent), a shortened form of the Old French esventer (the construct being es- + -venter), a verbal derivative of vent, from the Latin ventus (wind), in later use derivative of the English noun.  The English noun was derived partly from the French vent, partly by a shortening of French évent (from the Old French esvent, a derivative of esventer) and partly from the English verb.  The hyphenated form quarter-vent is also used as may be preferable.  Quartervent is a noun; the noun plural is quartervents.  In use, the action of using the function provided by a quartervent obviously can be described with terms like quarterventing or quartervented but no derived forms are recognized as standard.

The 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz of course had quarter vents (“vent windows” to the Americans) but unlike most in the world, they were electrically-activated.  This was a time when the company's slogan “Standard of the World” really could be taken seriously.

The now close to extinct quarter vents were small, pivoted, framed (or semi-framed) panes of glass installed in the front or rear side windows of a car or truck; their purpose was to provide occupants with a source of ventilation, using the air-flow of the vehicle while in motion.  The system had all the attributes of other admirable technologies (such as the pencil) in that it was cheap to produce, simple to use, reliable and effective in its intended purpose.  Although not a complex concept, General Motors (GM) in 1932 couldn’t resist giving the things an impressively long name, calling them “No Draft Individually Controlled Ventilation” (NDICV being one of history’s less mnemonic initializations).  GM’s marketing types must have prevailed because eventually the snappier “ventiplanes” was adopted, the same process of rationality which overtook Chrysler in 1969 when the public decided “shaker” was a punchier name for their rather sexy scoop which, attached directly to the induction system and, protruding through a carefully shape lacuna in the hood (bonnet), shook with the engine, delighting the males aged 17-39 to whom it was intended to appeal.  “Shaker” supplanted Chrysler’s original “Incredible Quivering Exposed Cold Air Grabber” (IQECAG another dud); sometimes less is more.  Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) suggested a good title for his book might be Viereinhalb Jahre [des Kampfes] gegen Lüge, Dummheit und Feigheit (Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice) but his publisher thought that a bit ponderous and preferred the more succinct Mein Kampf: Eine Abrechnung (My Struggle: A Reckoning) and for publication even that was clipped to Mein Kampf.  Unfortunately, the revised title was the best thing about it, the style and contents truly ghastly and it's long and repetitious, the ideas within able easily to be reduced to a few dozen pages (some suggest fewer but the historical examples cited for context do require some space).

The baroque meets mid-century modernism: 1954 Hudson Italia by Carrozzeria Touring.  

Given how well the things worked, there’s long been some regret at their demise, a process which began in the 1960s with the development of “through-flow ventilation”, the earliest implementation of which seems to have appeared in the Hudson Italia (1954-1955), an exclusive, two-door coupé co-developed by Hudson in Detroit and the Milan-based Italian coachbuilder Carrozzeria Touring.  Although some of the styling gimmicks perhaps haven’t aged well, the package was more restrained than some extravagances of the era and fundamentally, the lines were well-balanced and elegant.  Unfortunately the mechanical underpinnings were uninspiring and the trans-Atlantic production process (even though Italian unit-labor costs were lower than in the US, Touring’s methods were labor-intensive) involved two-way shipping (the platforms sent to Milan for bodies and then returned to the US) so the Italia was uncompetitively expensive: at a time when the bigger and more capable Cadillac Coupe de Ville listed at US$3,995, the Italia was offered for US$4,800 and while it certainly had exclusivity, it was a time when there was still a magic attached to the Cadillac name and of the planned run of 50, only 26 Italias were produced (including the prototype).  Of those, 21 are known still to exist and they’re a fixture at concours d’élégance (a sort of car show for the rich, the term an unadapted borrowing from the French (literally “competition of elegance”) and the auction circuit where they’re exchanged between collectors for several hundred-thousand dollars per sale.  Although a commercial failure (and the Hudson name would soon disappear), the Italia does enjoy the footnote of being the first production car equipped with what came to be understood as “flow-through ventilation”, provided with a cowl air intake and extraction grooves at the top of the rear windows, the company claiming the air inside an Italia changed completely every ten minutes.  For the quartervent, flow-through ventilation was a death-knell although some lingered on until the effective standardization of air-conditioning proved the final nail in the coffin.

1965 Ford Cortina GT with eyeball vents and quartervents.

The car which really legitimized flow-through ventilation was the first generation (1962-1966) of the Ford Cortina, produced over four generations (some claim it was five) by Ford’s UK subsidiary between 1962-1982).  When the revised model displayed at the Earls Court Motor Show in October 1964, something much emphasized was the new “Aeroflow”, Ford’s name for through-flow ventilation, the system implemented with “eyeball” vents on the dashboard and extractor vents on the rear pillars.  Eyeball vents probably are the best way to do through-flow ventilation but the accountants came to work out they were more expensive to install than the alternatives so less satisfactory devices came to be used.  Other manufacturers soon phased-in similar systems, many coining their own marketing trademarks including “Silent-Flow-Ventilation”, “Astro-Ventilation” and the inevitable “Flow-thru ventilation”.  For the Cortina, Ford took a “belt & braces” approach to ventilation, retaining the quartervents even after the “eyeballs” were added, apparently because (1) the costs of re-tooling to using a single pane for the window was actually higher than continuing to use the quartervents, (2) it wasn’t clear if there would be general public acceptance of their deletion and (3) smoking rates were still high and drivers were known to like being able to flick the ash out via the quartervent (and, more regrettably, the butts too).  Before long, the designers found a way economically to replace the quartervents with “quarterpanes” or “quarterlights” (a fixed piece of glass with no opening mechanism) so early Cortinas were built with both although in markets where temperatures tended to be higher (notable South Africa and Australia), the hinged quartervents remained standard equipment.  When the Mark III Cortina (TC, 1970-1976) was released, the separate panes in any form were deleted and the side glass was a single pane.

Fluid dynamics in action: GM's Astro-Ventilation.

So logically a “quartervent” would describe a device with a hinge so it could be opened to provide ventilation while a “quarterpane”, “quarterlight” or “quarterglass” would be something in the same shape but unhinged and thus fixed.  It didn’t work out that way and the terms tended to be used interchangeably (though presumably “quartervent” was most applied to those with the functionality.  However, the mere existence of the fixed panes does raise the question of why they exist at all.  In the case or rear doors, they were sometimes a necessity because the shape of the door was dictated by the intrusion of the wheel arch and adding a quarterpane was the only way to ensure the window could completely be wound down.  With the front doors, the economics were sometimes compelling, especially in cases when the opening vents were optional but there were also instances where the door’s internal mechanisms (the door opening & window-winding hardware) were so bulky the only way to make stuff was to reduce the size of the window.

1976 Volkswagen Passat without quartervents, the front & rear quarterpanes fixed.

The proliferation of terms could have come in handy if the industry had decided to standardize and the first generation Volkswagen Passat (1973-1980) was illustration of how they might been used.  The early Passats were then unusual in that the four-door versions had five separate pieces of side glass and, reading from left-to-right, they could have been classified thus: (1) a front quarterpane, (2) a front side-window, (3) a rear side-window, (4) a rear quarterpane and (5) a quarterwindow.  The Passat was one of those vehicles which used the quarterpanes as an engineering necessity to permit the rear side-window fully to be lowered.  However the industry didn’t standardize and in the pre-television (and certainly pre-internet) age when language tended to evolve with greater regional variation, not even quarterglass, quartervent, quarterwindow & quarterpane were enough and the things were known variously also as a “fly window”, “valence window”, “triangle window” and “auto-transom”, the hyphen used and not.

1967 Chevrolet Camaro 327 with vent windows (left), 1969 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 without vent windows (centre) and Lindsay Lohan & Jamie Lee Curtis (b 1958) in Chevrolet Camaro convertible during filming of the remake of Freaky Friday (2003) (provisionally called Freakier Friday), Los Angeles, August 2024.  The Camaro can be identified as a 1968 or 1969 model because the vent windows were deleted from the range after 1967 when “Astro-Ventilation” (GM’s name for flow-through ventilation) was added.  In North American use, the devices typically are referred to as “vent windows” while a “quarter light” is a small lamp mounted (in pairs) in the lower section of the front bodywork and a “quarter vent” is some sort of (real or fake) vent installed somewhere on the quarter panels.

Ford Australia’s early advertising copy for the XA Falcon range included publicity shots both with and without the optional quartervents (left).  One quirk of the campaign was the first shot released (right) of the “hero model” of the range (the Falcon GT) had the driver’s side quartervent airbrushed out (how “Photoshop jobs” used to be done), presumably because it was thought to clutter a well-composed picture.  Unfortunately, the artist neglected to defenestrate the one on the passenger’s side.

Released in Australia in March 1972, Ford’s XA Falcon was the first in the lineage to include through-flow ventilation, the previously standard quartervent windows moved to the option list (as RPO (Regular Production Option) 86).  Because it’s a hot place and many Falcons were bought by rural customers, Ford expected quite a high take-up rate of RPO86 (it was a time when air-conditioning was expensive and rarely ordered) so the vent window hardware was stockpiled in anticipation.  However, the option didn’t prove popular but with a warehouse full of the parts, they remained available on the subsequent XB (1973-1976) and XC (1976-1979) although the take-up rate never rose, less the 1% of each range so equipped and when the XD (1979-1983) was introduced, there was no such option and this continued on all subsequent Falcons until Ford ceased production in Australia in 2016, by which time air conditioning was standard equipment.