International studio (60.1916/1917)

The Arts and Crafts Exhibition

Weaving Company. Fans, lace, and needlework
of all kinds were shown in the cases, and a few
good pieces of pottery were also to be seen in
the room, among them a shapely vase of bluish-
green exhibited by the Pilkington Tile and Pottery
Company, and some large two-handled vases
designed by A. H. and Louise Powell.
The old Water-Colour Gallery at Burlington
House was transformed into five rooms, the
largest of which was devoted, so far as the walls
were concerned, chiefly to lithography, designs for
stained glass, and drawings of various kinds. In
the cases were examples by Miss Gwen White,
Miss Lucia B. Bergner, Miss Louisa Benjamin,
Miss Gertrude De la Mare, and others, of that
work in stained wood which is practised with so
much success at the Regent Street Polytechnic,
and of which numerous articles were recently
reproduced in this Magazine. In the Lithograph
Room also were placed two of Mrs. Phoebe
Stabler’s capital designs in lead for the adorn-
ment of gardens, the little figure of a girl carrying
a huge garland of fruit and flowers (91), and the
ingeniously contrived Bird Bath (152) which we
have already illustrated. Some of the smaller
apartments on either side of this room were occu-
pied by the Royal College of Art and the Birming-
ham Municipal School of Art, the only institutions
of this kind that showed collective exhibits. The
Birmingham group contained more than 120

objects, ranging from jewellery, silversmith’s work,
and steel dies, to embroidery and designs for
stained glass. It was in every way creditable to
Birmingham, and it is a pity that there were no
representative groups from such great London
schools of the applied arts as the Central and
Camberwell, whose students,however, gave valuable
assistance in the decoration of the galleries.
In the room occupied by the Royal College of
Art the work of the embroidery class alone was
represented, and among the many articles shown
by Mrs. A. H. Christie’s clever pupils the sampler
was very much in evidence, as it was, too, in other
parts of the exhibition. Apparently there is a
revival of the fashion for the sampler, in executing
which the modern girls show themselves to be as
skilful as their forebears of bygone centuries.
Some of those from the Royal College of Art are
topical, and should be interesting, if preserved, to
future generations. Such are Miss C. N. Crew’s
War Sampler (189), and Miss H. Wheeler’s
London Town, 1916.
Most of the metal work and jewellery at the
exhibition was arranged in the small gallery
familiar to visitors to the Royal Academy as the
Black and White Room. Here was a fine group
of enamels by Mr. Harold Stabler, small decora-
tive plaques remarkable for originality of design
as well as for their colour. In a case close by was
the casket of silver, gold, and enamel made by the

SIDEBOARD IN ENGLISH WALNUT AND EBONY, DESIGNED BY ERNEST W. GIMSON, EXECUTED BY E. SMITH AND H. DAVOLL
(Lent by Allan Tangy e, Esq.)


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