DOI Heft:
No. 63 (June, 1898)
DOI Artikel:The work of Mr. Selwyn Image, [1]
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21969#0020
Selwyn Image
merely from the Early Italian Renaissance, but
from the English Renaissance, in each case infused
by Pagan learning, as well as by the sterner creed
which Gothic art expressed.
Towards this new development, an awakening
to eclecticism as opposed to prejudiced adherence
to the tradition of a single style, the work of Mr.
Selwyn Image played a notable part; or, to be more
exact, the work of the Century Guild, of which
Mr. Selwyn Image was practically, yet not actu-
ally, a member. Its mouthpiece, a sumptuously-
produced quarterly—“ The Century Guild Hobby
Horse ”—showed that the movement was not re-
stricted to architecture nor to applied design, but
recognised in literature and music kindred ways of
expression. In short, to use a common and much-
abused term, it pleaded for “ culture ”—that is, for
a systematic knowledge of art, expressed by poet as
well as painter, by writings as well as by buildings. It
has been said that an esoteric periodical with pre-
sumably a very limited circulation could never have
affected popular taste. Against this fact, which
in one sense is true, must be set a still more
important truth, that very few people receive in-
fluence at first hand. For one person who uses
Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s tag, “ that is another
story,” dozens have caught it from his disciples,
not from his own writings. So it is probable, and
not incapable of circumstantial proof, that a large
number of designers who have never seen a copy of
the “ Hobby Horse ” are influenced still by its dis-
tinguished wrapper, even as people who have never
heard of an edition of Omar Khayyam, with Elihu
Vedder’s decoration, have borrowed the “ swirl,” an
emblem of life which appears upon its outside, as a
motive for decoration. A cover of a book, espe-
cially when, as in each of these two instances, it is
illustrated in miniature upon circulars or in reviews,
appears to be but a very small beginning for a new
influence in pattern-making. So was the Egyptian
lotus, the Greek honeysuckle, or the Gothic quatre-
foil—yet, as a too-clever church restorer has been
said to be capable of re-edifying a cathedral from
a broken base of a single pillar, or as Professor
Owen could reconstruct an extinct animal from a
fossil thigh-bone, so a maker of patterns may con-
stained glass
BY SELWYN IMAGE
7
merely from the Early Italian Renaissance, but
from the English Renaissance, in each case infused
by Pagan learning, as well as by the sterner creed
which Gothic art expressed.
Towards this new development, an awakening
to eclecticism as opposed to prejudiced adherence
to the tradition of a single style, the work of Mr.
Selwyn Image played a notable part; or, to be more
exact, the work of the Century Guild, of which
Mr. Selwyn Image was practically, yet not actu-
ally, a member. Its mouthpiece, a sumptuously-
produced quarterly—“ The Century Guild Hobby
Horse ”—showed that the movement was not re-
stricted to architecture nor to applied design, but
recognised in literature and music kindred ways of
expression. In short, to use a common and much-
abused term, it pleaded for “ culture ”—that is, for
a systematic knowledge of art, expressed by poet as
well as painter, by writings as well as by buildings. It
has been said that an esoteric periodical with pre-
sumably a very limited circulation could never have
affected popular taste. Against this fact, which
in one sense is true, must be set a still more
important truth, that very few people receive in-
fluence at first hand. For one person who uses
Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s tag, “ that is another
story,” dozens have caught it from his disciples,
not from his own writings. So it is probable, and
not incapable of circumstantial proof, that a large
number of designers who have never seen a copy of
the “ Hobby Horse ” are influenced still by its dis-
tinguished wrapper, even as people who have never
heard of an edition of Omar Khayyam, with Elihu
Vedder’s decoration, have borrowed the “ swirl,” an
emblem of life which appears upon its outside, as a
motive for decoration. A cover of a book, espe-
cially when, as in each of these two instances, it is
illustrated in miniature upon circulars or in reviews,
appears to be but a very small beginning for a new
influence in pattern-making. So was the Egyptian
lotus, the Greek honeysuckle, or the Gothic quatre-
foil—yet, as a too-clever church restorer has been
said to be capable of re-edifying a cathedral from
a broken base of a single pillar, or as Professor
Owen could reconstruct an extinct animal from a
fossil thigh-bone, so a maker of patterns may con-
stained glass
BY SELWYN IMAGE
7