Studio: international art (69.1916)

The Arts and Crafts Exhibition

ARTS AND CRAFTS AT THE
ROYAL ACADEMY.
(First Article.)

That the eleventh exhibition of the Arts and
Crafts Society is held at Burlington House is
a matter for congratulation not only to the Society
which obtains gratuitously the use of the finest
galleries in London, but to the Royal Academy
whose generous action may pave the way to a

lancastrian lustre vase.
designed and painted by r. joyce (pilkingtons)

greater unity of effort among artists in the
near future. The suggestion that the Arts and
Crafts Society should be allowed the use of the
Academy galleries was originally made as far back
as 1888 at the first Congress, held at Liverpool, of
the National Association for the Advancement of
Art and its application to Industry. The Liverpool
meeting was held in December, and as the first
exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society had been
opened a few weeks earlier at the New Gallery,
Leighton as President of the Congress referred to
it in his opening address, and admitted that the
men by whom it was promoted had already done
much to improve and elevate the taste of the
community.

" It is true," said Leighton, "that certain specific
attributes are, or seem to be, feeble in our race;
it is true, too true, that the general standard of
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taste is low, and it is true also—I have it on the
repeated assurance of apologetic vendors—that
with us the ugliest objects have the largest market.
Nevertheless the amount of good artistic produc-
tion in connection with industry (I purposely
speak of this first) has grown in an extraordinary
degree within the last score or so of years, and
through the initiative, mind, of a mere handful of
enthusiastic and highly gifted men. In a propor-
tionate degree also has the number increased of
those who accept and desire it, and this growth
has been steady and organic, and is of the best
augury. Now the increase in the number of those
who desire good work and the concurrent develop-
ment of their critical sensitiveness in matters of
taste stimulate in their turn the energies and sus-
tain the upward efforts of the producers; and thus
through action and reaction a condition of things
shall be slowly and surely evolved which shall
more nearly approach that general level of artistic
culture and artistic production so anxiously desired
by us all. It is in the hastening of this desired
result that we invoke, not your sympathy alone,
but your patient, strenuous aid."

lancastrian lustre vase.
designed and painted by r. joyce (tilkingtons)