DOI issue:
No. 59 (January, 1902)
DOI article:The first international "Studio" exhibition, [1]
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22772#0226
First International “ Studio ” Exhibition
blemish that tells of a too
BY HELEN SMITH
hold fittings there was ample scope, which found
full response from the contributors. An intuitive
understanding of the material itself grows quickly
in an artist as he becomes a craftsman, as he learns
to handle metals with tools, with fire, with all
manner of fair processes that seem almost magical
as one sees colour and form leap forth under the
master-hand, and reveal those secrets of beauty
which the dull ore kept so well.
In no branch of the crafts is the new decorative
spirit so well seen as in the treatment of metal.
No other medium has illustrated so happily the
ideal of decoration—like that of education—as of
something brought out rather than put on • an
individual and native charm like the colour
developed by hammer or heat; a character not
abstractly conceived in the mind of the designer,
but suggested by the material itself, only waiting
the right touch to call it into life. This, the more
humble and patient method, is also the more
imaginative and fruitful way of dealing with
material about us, whether in human or inanimate
things ; and to those who know anything of the
romance of working in metal, the exhibits in this
class were specially attractive. Among the best
were the fire-irons belonging to a curb set by
W. H. Marklew. These were carried out in bright
iron, and ended in bold poppy-head finials full of
vigour and character and perfectly decorative in
design. The increasing use of bright iron for the
appointments of the hearth is a change for utility
as wrell as beauty; for who does not look back to
days when the icily polished steel fender and fire-
irons were numbered among the terrors of the
drawing-room,—a source of eternal feud between
strenuous movement — an
instant’s lapse into dreams
—than that the individual
character be lost in dull
perfection ; the living per-
sonality fail of its sincere
and palpable expression.
With the limited space
at command for an exhi-
bition necessarily on a ten-
tative scale, it was found
impossible in the present
case to include anything
of an architectural charac-
ter, beyond examples of
flat design and a few light cotter tray
articles of furniture. Tex-
tiles, pottery, and jewellery
formed the most profuse and striking exhibits ; and
for metal work of the finer kinds in relation to house-
PANEL IN OPAQUE GLASS BY E. A. TAYLOR
T 76
blemish that tells of a too
BY HELEN SMITH
hold fittings there was ample scope, which found
full response from the contributors. An intuitive
understanding of the material itself grows quickly
in an artist as he becomes a craftsman, as he learns
to handle metals with tools, with fire, with all
manner of fair processes that seem almost magical
as one sees colour and form leap forth under the
master-hand, and reveal those secrets of beauty
which the dull ore kept so well.
In no branch of the crafts is the new decorative
spirit so well seen as in the treatment of metal.
No other medium has illustrated so happily the
ideal of decoration—like that of education—as of
something brought out rather than put on • an
individual and native charm like the colour
developed by hammer or heat; a character not
abstractly conceived in the mind of the designer,
but suggested by the material itself, only waiting
the right touch to call it into life. This, the more
humble and patient method, is also the more
imaginative and fruitful way of dealing with
material about us, whether in human or inanimate
things ; and to those who know anything of the
romance of working in metal, the exhibits in this
class were specially attractive. Among the best
were the fire-irons belonging to a curb set by
W. H. Marklew. These were carried out in bright
iron, and ended in bold poppy-head finials full of
vigour and character and perfectly decorative in
design. The increasing use of bright iron for the
appointments of the hearth is a change for utility
as wrell as beauty; for who does not look back to
days when the icily polished steel fender and fire-
irons were numbered among the terrors of the
drawing-room,—a source of eternal feud between
strenuous movement — an
instant’s lapse into dreams
—than that the individual
character be lost in dull
perfection ; the living per-
sonality fail of its sincere
and palpable expression.
With the limited space
at command for an exhi-
bition necessarily on a ten-
tative scale, it was found
impossible in the present
case to include anything
of an architectural charac-
ter, beyond examples of
flat design and a few light cotter tray
articles of furniture. Tex-
tiles, pottery, and jewellery
formed the most profuse and striking exhibits ; and
for metal work of the finer kinds in relation to house-
PANEL IN OPAQUE GLASS BY E. A. TAYLOR
T 76