Studio: international art (46.1909)

Wrought Iron IVork

CANDLESTICKS IN WROUGHT STEEL, SHOWING COMPLICATED INTERLACING
FORGED BY WALTER SPENCER. DESIGNED BY EDWARD SPENCER

and the output of sound simple work began to
assume considerable dimensions; while the occa-
sional appearance of a veritable masterpiece such as
Mr. Henry Wilson’s organ screen at Holy Trinity,
Sloane Square, or the late Mr. Bentley’s grilles at
the Roman Catholic Church at Watford, seemed
to promise a return of the golden period.

During the last ten years, however, many circum-
stances have combined to check the development
of the craft, to starve and cramp its healthy exuber-
ance, and to stereotype
the forms that seemed so
full of vigour and spon-
taneity in the early years
of the movement; the long-
continued depression in
trade has had a disastrous
effect upon domestic archi-
tecture, and to cope with
the dwindling prices and
hollow - ground specifica-
tions of the day, the smith
has been driven to a thou-
sand labour-saving, labour-
shirking devices that react
in a disastrous and inevit-
able manner no less upon
the quality of the particular
work affected than upon
his own skill and enthu-
siasm as a craftsman and
the honour of the craft.

208

Commercialism and cut-
throat competition, shut
out at first by the almost
religious enthusiasm for
architecture and for the
newly-revived crafts, have
long since found their way
into workshop and office
alike, turning the archi-
tect into a draughtsman
and the smith into a mere
scroll-hand or leaf-hand.

The prevalence and
popularity among the
pioneer architects of the
Georgian manner led the
strayed Victorian crafts-
men to a view of the
Renaissance no less Eng-
lish than the masterpieces
of Wren or Reynolds;
but the fine restraint and
solid constructive qualities which characterise the
best work of this sort have almost disappeared in
the weldless confusion of broken-backed scrolls
and thin sheet acanthus that under the practised
hand of the modern draughtsman looks so im-
portant and expensive in a competition drawing.

Even at the best period of the English Renais-
sance, when the gates and railings of Chelsea were
being forged, there was a notable lack of variety
in the methods of the English smith, and though

CIGAR BOX IN ENGLISH WALNUT AND STEEL, SHOWING SECTIONED HINGES
AND MOULDINGS, AND THE USE OF PUNCHES OF DIFFERENT PATTERNS
FORGED BY WALTER SPENCER. FITTED BY BERTRAM EDWARDS

DESIGNED BY EDWARD SPENCER