Studio: international art (72.1918)

Irish Arts and Crafts

GREY MOROCCO BINDING, WITH JEWELS,
INLAY, AND GOLD TOOLING
BY ELEANOR KELLY

so also it must be the mode of expressing
the hopes and fears and joys of her people.
If if cannot be perfected without paying due
homage to all that our forefathers have done
in the service of beauty, still less can it exist
on the recollection of past achieve-
ments, however splendid. It must
draw its life from the ideals of the
moment, or rather must be the expres-
sion of the strongest tendency in the
current of feeling of the race. It is a
consoling thought that Art cannot long
be stagnant in any country, however
poor, in which there is life and strength
and progress. For strength and pro-
gress of any kind cannot fail for any
length of time to inspire a love of and
a demand for the things of beauty.

Art depends on the vitality, the mental
alertness of a people, and in all its
long history it will not be found that
great art of some kind or other ever
was wanting to any people who were
conscious of their own spiritual or na-
tional mission, or ever flourished in a
people on the road to decay.”

It was inevitable that under guid-
ance of this kind, having regard to the
peculiarly great Celtic traditions and
to those strong national character-
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istics that have been recognized in the Irish
literary revival, the Arts and Crafts move-
ment in Ireland was destined to bring forth
work with a character of its own. There are
many qualities in the English work that occur
to the mind at once on the mention of “ Arts
and Crafts ”—some of high excellence, others
less worthy but more generally prevalent.
Some of the latter are to be accounted for
probably by the social views of the leader of
the movement. Art, in English Arts and Crafts,
is often prone to play : to quit the deep mystery
that wraps life about with awe and wonder, for
the childlike assumptions necessary to games :
to assume the function of mere cheerfulness, of
affording relaxation, rather than that of
revelation. So it is that much of the English
work seems allied to the nursery. This quality
is not found in the Irish work. Art there is not
sought among pretences to the ways of childhood.
Yet in its suitability for association with chil-
dren, could anything be more delightful than
the Cot Cover (No. 170) embroidered in silks on
fine blue linen by May Courtney from a design
by Lily Yeats, of Dundrum, Co. Dublin ? The
delicacy of the design and drawing, the beauty
of the colour and materials chosen, and the
simplicity of the needlework, all unite in their