International studio (23.1904)

Notes on the Crafts


BY THE MISSES MASON, NEW YORK


are represented by tour cases containing baskets,
silverwork, woven blankets, belts, etc., by modern
workers, the names being given in many instances.
It is impossible and unnecessary to give a com-
plete list of the exhibits, and many pieces of admir-
able work must remain unmentioned; but this
brief account will, it is
hoped, give the reader
some idea of the scope
and variety of the Ap-
plied Arts exhibit at the
Louisiana Purchase Ex-
position, and enable him
to realize its importance
in the art development
of our country.

OTES ON
THE
CRAFTS.
“ COMPARI-

BY THE MISSES

SONS are odious”; and,
what is more to the
point, they are, in the
art-world at any rate,
fatuous. That invidious
name given to the writer, the output of whose
verse is restricted, or whose vein is not popular,
“minor-poet,” is an instance of this fatuity. How
in the name of eternity is one to grade the true

work of real artists—be they poets, painters, or
musicians. True art lives for ever—through many
reincarnations perhaps; and the fact that a certain
influence is felt by you or me to preponderate, or
by this generation or that to be in the ascendant,
is no justification for labeling other true work
invidiously; to do so is
to argue oneself or one’s
age hopelessly ‘1 insular ’ ’
and “parochial”—
philistine in the worst
sense.
It is the tacit accepta-
tion of this truth by all
real artists that has given
us immortal masters in
every art and craft; and
as soon as a nation loses
sight of the fact, its arts
and crafts must decline.
Therefore we are thank-
ful to observe a tendency
here at home in the
United States, toward
the breaking down of
mason, new york an artistic snobbery very
threatening to our art
fife. It is instanced in one particular direction
by the revival of serious interest in keramics, in
which movement our contemporary The Keramic
Studio has done yeoman’s service. The pro-

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