DOI Heft:
No. 52 (July, 1897)
DOI Artikel:White, Gleeson: Some Glasgow designers and their work, [1]
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18389#0105
Some Glasgow Designers
paper that wishes to main-
tain its self-respect.
The decorative move-
ment in Great Britain to-
day is showing many signs
of vitality which promise
well for its future. That
not a few of its new de-
partures are in opposition
to the Gothic ideals which
William Morris cherished,
or to those of the English
Renaissance which the
Century Guild proclaimed,
need not be wholly re-
gretted. Growth is essen-
tial, and if some branches
ultimately produce flowers
and no fruit, it is yet too
early in the spring of the
new Renaissance to decide
which will ultimately ripen
to maturity and which will
perish under adverse criti-
cism, or die from sheer
inanition. Eccentricity is
often enough, we fear, the
first title given to efforts,
which, later on, are ac-
cepted as proofs of serious
advance. Continental
CANDLESTICKS IN BEATEN BRASS CUtlCS, restlessly CUHOUS aS
DESIGNED AND EXECUTED BY FRANCES MACDONALD tO what England is doing,
[By permission of Talwin Morris, Esq.) are by no means agreed.
One eminent French critic
makers, it is also, as a rule, no less a source thinks that the Egyptian Court at the British
of income to those who produce them. Therefore Museum is responsible for most of the so-called
it may seem as if a paper devoted to such things novelty in design at the late Arts and Crafts Exhi-
were indirectly a disguised advertisement. It is so bition. Had he seen the products of Young Glas-
as much and no more than is every notice of a picture gow the statement would have seemed far more
at the Royal Academy, every review of a book, plausible. Yet those sons and daughters of Scot-
every critique of a concert. land, who appear to be most strongly influenced
If the same privilege long since accorded to the by Egypt, affect to be surprised at the bare sug-
Fine Arts be allowed to the Applied Arts, then it is gestion of such influence, and disclaim any in-
no more venal to praise a sideboard than to applaud tentional reference to " allegories on the banks of
a portrait. If press notices send a designer more the Nile " ; nor in their studios "do you see any
clients possibly they send the portrait-painter more casts, photographs, or other reproductions of
commissions. A rough-and-ready rule would seem Egyptian art. As a rule, a designer gathers round
to be that all original designs, whether in picture, him, unconsciously may be, examples of his favourite
pattern, or material, should be granted the privilege period. In one such studio the Italian Renaissance
of open appreciation, while all articles issued with is to the fore; in another Mediaeval or Jacobean
no recognition of the painter or designer should relics ; in a third Japanese; but Glasgow betrays
fall under the head of manufactures, which can only no archaeological bias to any of these divers ways,
be commended generally in guarded terms in any There is a legend of a critic from foreign parts
88
paper that wishes to main-
tain its self-respect.
The decorative move-
ment in Great Britain to-
day is showing many signs
of vitality which promise
well for its future. That
not a few of its new de-
partures are in opposition
to the Gothic ideals which
William Morris cherished,
or to those of the English
Renaissance which the
Century Guild proclaimed,
need not be wholly re-
gretted. Growth is essen-
tial, and if some branches
ultimately produce flowers
and no fruit, it is yet too
early in the spring of the
new Renaissance to decide
which will ultimately ripen
to maturity and which will
perish under adverse criti-
cism, or die from sheer
inanition. Eccentricity is
often enough, we fear, the
first title given to efforts,
which, later on, are ac-
cepted as proofs of serious
advance. Continental
CANDLESTICKS IN BEATEN BRASS CUtlCS, restlessly CUHOUS aS
DESIGNED AND EXECUTED BY FRANCES MACDONALD tO what England is doing,
[By permission of Talwin Morris, Esq.) are by no means agreed.
One eminent French critic
makers, it is also, as a rule, no less a source thinks that the Egyptian Court at the British
of income to those who produce them. Therefore Museum is responsible for most of the so-called
it may seem as if a paper devoted to such things novelty in design at the late Arts and Crafts Exhi-
were indirectly a disguised advertisement. It is so bition. Had he seen the products of Young Glas-
as much and no more than is every notice of a picture gow the statement would have seemed far more
at the Royal Academy, every review of a book, plausible. Yet those sons and daughters of Scot-
every critique of a concert. land, who appear to be most strongly influenced
If the same privilege long since accorded to the by Egypt, affect to be surprised at the bare sug-
Fine Arts be allowed to the Applied Arts, then it is gestion of such influence, and disclaim any in-
no more venal to praise a sideboard than to applaud tentional reference to " allegories on the banks of
a portrait. If press notices send a designer more the Nile " ; nor in their studios "do you see any
clients possibly they send the portrait-painter more casts, photographs, or other reproductions of
commissions. A rough-and-ready rule would seem Egyptian art. As a rule, a designer gathers round
to be that all original designs, whether in picture, him, unconsciously may be, examples of his favourite
pattern, or material, should be granted the privilege period. In one such studio the Italian Renaissance
of open appreciation, while all articles issued with is to the fore; in another Mediaeval or Jacobean
no recognition of the painter or designer should relics ; in a third Japanese; but Glasgow betrays
fall under the head of manufactures, which can only no archaeological bias to any of these divers ways,
be commended generally in guarded terms in any There is a legend of a critic from foreign parts
88