International studio (22.1904)

DESIGN FOR A CUP BY A. FISHER

in his humble judgment he found that the picture
which was produced in Court was an artistic and
satisfactory picture and portrait, and of the value
alleged. There would accordingly be judgment
for the plaintiff with costs.

His work is dominated from the beginning
by his desire to shape something which shall be
the expression of his mood at the time. This
element of emotionalism is the parent of beauty,
whether in painting or in the simplest object
which a man shall shape to his fancy. It can
inform with the significance of art every detail
of mechanical construction. Art was divorced
from craft and the production of beautiful things
suspended, when from one craftsman or artist
to another work was passed on independent of
their sympathy with the design at its completion.
And so it is to-day, workers contribute piece-
work to designs they never see: each man works
blindly towards an end that means nothing to
him.
Just now Mr. Fisher is engaged upon a silver
jewel-casket, the corners of which are cased in
iron. This he forges in his studio, bending the
metal to his will and to his caprice. In the
unsympathetic bar of iron before it is forged the
artist sees already in his mind the delicate shape
it shall take in the place it finally will assume.
A lover of colour, Mr. Fisher's enamels have
brought him fame : his love of form, the pleasure
he takes in things of beautiful shape, has led him
to give us silverwork that would have delighted
Cellini. But it is in the symbolism with which he
has crowded his creations that, as a thinker, he finds
expression.
In the jewel-casket here reproduced he has

A MAKER OF
/\ BEAUTIFUL
/—^THINGS: MR.
ALEXANDER
FISHER AND HIS
SILVERWORK. BY
T. MARTIN WOOD.
ALTHOUGH working in
material demanding ex-
haustless patience and
calling for the highest
order of mechanical skill
before lending itself to
any sort of aesthetic expres-
sion, Mr. Fisher does not
separate in his mind the
early and prosaic stages
from what of ultimate
beauty he seeks to attain.
224


CASKET

BY ALEXANDER FISHER