Ornament making is one of the oldest art forms in human history. Our ancestors used ornaments to physically encode messages to their descendants and gods alike; to make sense of the world around them and to symbolically appropriate it for themselves. This has been the case since prehistory. But in the 20th century, ornaments came to be seen as relics of the past, as a sign of 'savagery', as something inappropriate for the modern world. Let's try to find out why this happened and take a look at the traditional ornamental patterns of Latvia.