This dissertation reconsiders the history of modern architecture through the use of ornament manufactured by dissenter Elanor Coade at her Artificial Stone Manufactory in Lambeth from 1769 to 1821. Tracing the construct of ownership and identity through the ornament of architecture as it was sold internationally by Coade’s mail order catalog, eighteenth-century material experiments in the applied arts and exports from the British Empire reveal a transnational history of modern architecture predicated upon replication, cheapness, and abstraction. Relying upon archival evidence, this dissertation examines experiments in architecture, insurance, and material science which sought to redress defects in nature through the work of intellectual property. Beginning with a study of artificial ontologies and the use of proof in building, artificial stone ornament constructs a history of modern architecture from the intangible substance of experiments that dramatically changes the duration of construction. With the aid of artifice, architecture could be built to exist beyond non-natural durations of time. Following this experimental substance as it was sold through the eighteenth century, this study considers the value of intellectual property as a means to secure both mental and manual labor. In this dissertation, I demonstrate the value of artificial stone ornament to alleviate risk to the built environment from fire, frost, and accident. Lastly, this study examines the curation, exhibition, and exchange of intangible property through craft epistemologies that disseminate technical knowledge across artisans, manufactories, builders, craftspersons, and architects. What at first appears paradoxical reveals a startling reality. The more we know about the risks posed to the built environment, the less capable we are of managing potential catastrophic failure. In the haste to declare Nature defective and capable of replacement by cheaper things made to last longer in the eighteenth century, artificial substances bore the seed of human prosperity and the possibility of our catastrophic demise. Within a political climate fracturing amidst a discourse on the value of facts, the inability to predict total failure becomes imminent. Or, when natural stone becomes replaced by its artificial counterpart, we consign catastrophe to an outdated model.