DOI issue:
No. 68 (October, 1902)
DOI article:Newbery, F. H.: The international exhibition of modern decorative art at Turin, [5]: the English section
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22774#0342
Turin Exhibition
sample is better relegated to the merchant wno
sells. For the room is more to be preferred than
the covering of its walls, and the unrelated brings
us back to the picture again. It is not enough
that men see the apparent, for the right education is
to present the actual; and a chair or a table gains
in preciousness by being shown as part of our daily
surroundings. Otherwise the draper’s shop window
becomes the acme of excellence in arrangement,
and the customer sees and is tempted. It has
been said, and perhaps truly, that the English are
a nation of shopkeepers. But at any rate com-
merce should not be allowed to preach where she
should pray.
But when all is said and done, and every
censure passed that criticism can call for, the
exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society con-
tains work where beauty of design, coupled with
excellence of workmanship, make for all that
is best. For there are English architects who
have grasped the fact that an exterior, however
beautiful, is at the best but a part of a whole,
and that a man may leave the outside of his
house for the admiration of his neighbours, but
adorn the inside for his own delectation. And the
pity is that in many cases the plenishings for the
“ house beautiful ” have, in Turin, been treated as
PART OF AN OVERMANTEL PAINTED IN TEMPERA BY
JOSEPH E. SOUTHALL
GILDING AND GESSO
1IY MRS. PAYNE
with beauty ; and cartoons for stained glass are
unnecessary and altogether insufficient to re-
present the art of the glass mosaicist and
painter. The photograph of the house that
the builder has builded may be permissible,
because it shows the root of the matter, and
this is in some cases helped out by the model
of the house that the man would build. But the
photograph of the detail is best confined to the
trade catalogue; for handicraft is apparent only by
the presence of the cunning work, and men gaze
lovingly even upon the candlestick where brains
have guided the hand, whereas they turn away
from the picture of the thing that is because the
picture painter does it so much better. The wall
paper may be good and beautiful in itself; but the
proof of its artistic fitness lies in its use, and the
256
TAZ7.A CLOUDED WITH DESIGNED BY H. POWELL
COLOURS AND ENGRAVED EXECUTED BY THE
WITH SEA-GULLS WHITEFRIARS GLASS WORKS
sample is better relegated to the merchant wno
sells. For the room is more to be preferred than
the covering of its walls, and the unrelated brings
us back to the picture again. It is not enough
that men see the apparent, for the right education is
to present the actual; and a chair or a table gains
in preciousness by being shown as part of our daily
surroundings. Otherwise the draper’s shop window
becomes the acme of excellence in arrangement,
and the customer sees and is tempted. It has
been said, and perhaps truly, that the English are
a nation of shopkeepers. But at any rate com-
merce should not be allowed to preach where she
should pray.
But when all is said and done, and every
censure passed that criticism can call for, the
exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society con-
tains work where beauty of design, coupled with
excellence of workmanship, make for all that
is best. For there are English architects who
have grasped the fact that an exterior, however
beautiful, is at the best but a part of a whole,
and that a man may leave the outside of his
house for the admiration of his neighbours, but
adorn the inside for his own delectation. And the
pity is that in many cases the plenishings for the
“ house beautiful ” have, in Turin, been treated as
PART OF AN OVERMANTEL PAINTED IN TEMPERA BY
JOSEPH E. SOUTHALL
GILDING AND GESSO
1IY MRS. PAYNE
with beauty ; and cartoons for stained glass are
unnecessary and altogether insufficient to re-
present the art of the glass mosaicist and
painter. The photograph of the house that
the builder has builded may be permissible,
because it shows the root of the matter, and
this is in some cases helped out by the model
of the house that the man would build. But the
photograph of the detail is best confined to the
trade catalogue; for handicraft is apparent only by
the presence of the cunning work, and men gaze
lovingly even upon the candlestick where brains
have guided the hand, whereas they turn away
from the picture of the thing that is because the
picture painter does it so much better. The wall
paper may be good and beautiful in itself; but the
proof of its artistic fitness lies in its use, and the
256
TAZ7.A CLOUDED WITH DESIGNED BY H. POWELL
COLOURS AND ENGRAVED EXECUTED BY THE
WITH SEA-GULLS WHITEFRIARS GLASS WORKS