Studio: international art (9.1897)

The Arts and Crafts

designs officially published, or by
appealing to outsiders to submit
schemes within certain limits—to
take a more active part in promot-
ing the cause it supports.

Of course it may be urged that
you cannot expect to obtain beauti-
ful materials and good workmanship
at the prices of the market which
offers you poor material and slovenly
workmanship, partly hidden by
specious ornamentation. No sane
person supposes that you can, but
certain machine-made chairs (pro-
bably of American origin) and some
chance pieces of metal work and
pottery in the shops to-day, show
that it is possible to produce objects
neither ugly nor vulgar at very mode-
rate prices.

The society has already been the
direct inspiration of many revived
crafts. Enamelling, jewellery and
embroidery have all renewed their
vitality since it first came into exist-

ELECTROLIER DESIGNED BY W. A S. BENSON lndeed> therS 13 SC^Ce

an obsolete or foreign craft which
does not attract experiments. The

but inexpensive table glass, low priced but satis- colour-printing of Japan, the mosaics of Italy, the

factory wall-papers, cretonnes, and carpets. It is pierced carved work of India, the tapestries of the

true that in 1896 not all these objects were con- Middle Ages, and a dozen other applied arts, have

spicuously absent. But, as a rule, if you inquired their champions among us. But nearly all these

the price of an article exhibited, the cost was found are engaged upon the production of superfluities

to be so enormously beyond the reach of even a —prints for the portfolio, caskets or bric-a-brac, the

fairly liberal income that its aspect was at once adornment of public buildings, and the enrichment

changed. You no longer regarded it as a possible of palaces. Without tapping the energies already

thing for daily use, but as a tour de force for a well devoted to these pursuits, it seems possible

museum. Whether the museum be a public gal- that craftsmen not so well equipped could be found

lery, or the rooms of a millionaire, is a matter of who, working in intimate association with designers

small importance : in neither case is the average and artists, might give us electro-plate of simple,

home enriched by the presence of the object in novel, but beautiful design, and objects of every-

question. day use in pottery, wood and metal, at once comely

It is good that craftsmen should be able to carry and serviceable,
out their ideas with no hindrance of time or ex- Of what value is an illuminated missal, or other
pense ; and good that rich people should have an work, painfully obedient to the style of the fifteenth
opportunity of purchasing such works, approved as century ? How many incomes permit indul-
they are by the judgment of a committee selected gence in embroidered book-covers, costing ten
from a society as representative as this. But guineas apiece ? So the list might be continued,
without conflicting with the programme maintained On the other hand, let us not underrate the
during the past, the time has surely arrived to ask good already done. The silver-ware of Mr. Ash-
that the society shall do something more than bee, the excellent Fitzroy pictures, the delightful
record its approval of the spontaneous work of wall-papers by Messrs. Jeffrey and Messrs. Essex,
individual artists and craftsmen, that it should the carpets from Messrs. Tompkinson & Adam,
endeavour—whether as a corporate body, by the fabrics designed by Mr. Voysey, the brass and
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