DOI issue:
No. 338 (May 1921)
DOI article:Studio-talk
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21392#0211
STUDIO-TALK
"lorenzo de' medici"
woodcut by ettore cosomati
months ago became Principal of the Royal
College of Arts, ought to be widely read.
The subject of the lecture was " Possi-
bilities for the Improvement of Industrial
Art in England," and at the outset the
Professor complained that our museums
—and more especially those of the pro-
vinces—had " tended more and more in
the direction of the wealthy collector,"
and failed to justify one of the principal
reasons for their existence—" to help
creative people and the manufacturers
throughout the country to solve their own
difficult problems." Turning to the
position of the craftsman of to-day, he
insisted that we are not making full use of
the human material of this country, and
that neither our museums nor our uni-
versities and schools, including art schools,
are helping us to make use of it, and
speaking of the ever increasing temptation
of craftsmen to become teachers, he
mentioned that during the few months
he had served in a College of Art he had
forty or fifty applications from every part
of the country for teachers, and not a
single application for a designer or crafts-
man. What will happen, he asked, if this
sort of thing goes on. " In the end we
shall have teachers teaching teachers, and
a circle of teachers—for what end i " As
to the oft repeated excuse for not giving
artists and craftsmen a chance—that public
taste is too bad to allow manufacturers to
risk their own capital and other people's
on making good things—he suggested that
public taste had perhaps been under-
rated. We ourselves have urged that this
is so—that as regards all or most of the
things in daily use the public have to buy
inferior things because better things which
might be produced at no greater expense
—and even less expense in many cases—
are not available. But be that as it may,
we cannot, as Professor Rothenstein pointed
out in his lecture, lay claim to the name of
a great nation if we are content to use
shoddy things in our daily life instead of
well-made things. And as to the short-
comings of our art-school students of
design which manufacturers allege as the
reason for not making use of them, we
agree with him that these young crafts-
men deserve to have a little more patience
shown to them, and that unless they can
be given " a position in which they are
treated as extremely human beings, so
that they slowly gain self-confidence in
hockey challenge shield
in beaten copper. designed
and executed by gertrude
m. hector, aberdeen
195
"lorenzo de' medici"
woodcut by ettore cosomati
months ago became Principal of the Royal
College of Arts, ought to be widely read.
The subject of the lecture was " Possi-
bilities for the Improvement of Industrial
Art in England," and at the outset the
Professor complained that our museums
—and more especially those of the pro-
vinces—had " tended more and more in
the direction of the wealthy collector,"
and failed to justify one of the principal
reasons for their existence—" to help
creative people and the manufacturers
throughout the country to solve their own
difficult problems." Turning to the
position of the craftsman of to-day, he
insisted that we are not making full use of
the human material of this country, and
that neither our museums nor our uni-
versities and schools, including art schools,
are helping us to make use of it, and
speaking of the ever increasing temptation
of craftsmen to become teachers, he
mentioned that during the few months
he had served in a College of Art he had
forty or fifty applications from every part
of the country for teachers, and not a
single application for a designer or crafts-
man. What will happen, he asked, if this
sort of thing goes on. " In the end we
shall have teachers teaching teachers, and
a circle of teachers—for what end i " As
to the oft repeated excuse for not giving
artists and craftsmen a chance—that public
taste is too bad to allow manufacturers to
risk their own capital and other people's
on making good things—he suggested that
public taste had perhaps been under-
rated. We ourselves have urged that this
is so—that as regards all or most of the
things in daily use the public have to buy
inferior things because better things which
might be produced at no greater expense
—and even less expense in many cases—
are not available. But be that as it may,
we cannot, as Professor Rothenstein pointed
out in his lecture, lay claim to the name of
a great nation if we are content to use
shoddy things in our daily life instead of
well-made things. And as to the short-
comings of our art-school students of
design which manufacturers allege as the
reason for not making use of them, we
agree with him that these young crafts-
men deserve to have a little more patience
shown to them, and that unless they can
be given " a position in which they are
treated as extremely human beings, so
that they slowly gain self-confidence in
hockey challenge shield
in beaten copper. designed
and executed by gertrude
m. hector, aberdeen
195