 It was a reaction against a perceived decline in standards that the reformers associated with machinery and factory production.Their critique was sharpened by the items that they saw in the Great Exhibition of 1851 which they considered to be excessively ornate, artificial, and ignorant of the qualities of the materials used.Art historian Nikolaus Pevsner writes that the exhibits showed "ignorance of that basic need in creating patterns, the integrity of the surface", as well as displaying "vulgarity in detail".