Thanks for your contributions.

You are right in your remark about the path to images, Wolfgang. I was not
using any

\setupexternalfigure[location=default]

instruction. With your formulations the figure is recovered without problem.

Unfortunately the results of your rewrite of the macro are not so
satisfactory. Surely it is more *ConTeXt*ual than mine but it fails to
fulfill the main purpose of the exercice: it happily prints fleurons in
blank pages, as running your tests with 6 lines demonstrates. In such a
circumstance it should produce just two pages with six lines each, whereas
it outputs 4 pages, the two additional ones containing only ornaments.

Your suggestion, Bill, of using special decorative fonts will be a good
source of artistic material for the construction of alphabetically based
motives by artistically inclined future users of the code, as the
elaboration of the motives rests completely in their hands. The ones
provided are mere demonstration samples.

Regards

Fancisco