Studio: international art (28.1903)

The Arts and Crafts Exhibition

to be the custodians of the Morris tradition in art,
rather than the founders of a living tradition of to-
day. Necessary and invaluable as that re-action was
which drove men back upon an age that was in itself
sincere, it did not suffice to give strength and
sincerity to the work of the present day. The im-
mediate products of that re-action have too often
been taken as the final word in contemporary art,
and the aesthetic language of that past age as a
tongue which must be learned anew. A typical
utterance of this notion dropped from the lips of a
well-known craftsman the other day, in defence of
heraldy, " Ah, but it makes such good decorative
material ? " The problem is to discover good
decorative material in modern life. Neither the
public nor the artists themselves have yet recog-

nised this, as is clear (to take an instance further
afield) from the attitude generally assumed on the
subject of the fallen campanile at St. Mark's,
Venice. A new campanile is to be built in exact
imitation of the old. Only one artist—the sculptor
Calandra—has had the courage to protest in the
Italian press, and to declare that if living architects
have nothing of their own to say, they should say
nothing, and merely respect the ruins of the tower.

In plain terms, the personnel of the Arts and
Crafts Society has changed but little since
William Morris was working with it in his prime
and trying to convert rich and poor alike to the
luxury of sound workmanship and beautiful stuffs.
To the rich the change has merely been a change
of fashion, though welcome enough at that. To

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BY R. MORTON NANCE