Studio: international art (45.1909)

Studio-Talk

BERLIN.—Eyes accustomed to singling
out good work among the masses of
modern art production cannot overlook
the fans of Margarete Erler. This
artist is steadily developing her taste and execution.
She is cultivating the crafts of the jeweller, the
lace-maker, the embroiderer
and the painter in order to
perfect her favourite art,
that of the fan-maker. We
never trace a striving after
show or cheap effect in her
work, an unfailing charac-
teristic of which is its
reticence and solidity, and
we always enjoy the deli-
cacy of feeling and refine-
ment of taste which we
find in it. Such produc-
tions are not without
significance in our days,
when the taste of the
middle classes is improv-
ing so much. In Mrs.

Erler’s opinion the art of
the fan - maker ought to
include in its scope the
leaf as well as the frame,
as both are parts of one
whole. She abhors the in-
difference of procedure in
industry which permits of
the production of parts
regardless of the whole.

Each of her fans must, in
spite of its complicated pro-
duction, be the expression
of a harmony of real feel-
ing. In one of them now
reproduced tufts of yellow
roses are embedded in
white gauze leaves, tenderly
edged with cream-coloured
silk. The material of the
ground or foundation is cut
out and filled with a kind
of guipure-stitch in yellow
silk. The rose-design is
also repeated in the ivory
frame, where the blossoms
of the front blade are
slightly tinted in yellow.

Another of the fans has the
primrose for its viotif ; a

wreath of white gauze flowers embroidered with
yellow is placed against a mass of maidenhair fern,
in which the shades of the tortoise-shell frame
seem mirrored. Another is a beautiful glitter of
mother-o’-pearl tints. The frame concentrates the
colour-idea, and the painted leaves of the lunary

FANS

BY MARGARETE ERLER

3T3