The Studio yearbook of decorative art (1914)

GERMAN ARCHITECTURE AND DECORATION
simple utility, which does not lose sight either of comfort or
elegance, of good taste or refinement, and yet duly responds to the
needs of the technical age with its rational trend of thought.
What could have been a more natural or indeed more self-
evident course than that of setting in motion the best talent that
our world of artists can furnish, in order that such a wonder of work
as the Imperator should have been within as without, not a rechauffe
of the past or an importation from alien lands, but equipped and in
a manner so confident and individual as to be from stem to stern,
from keel to topmast, a child of the times, a vital testimony of
German labour, and the independent position it has wrung for itself
in every field of productive activity ?
When writing of the “ Deutscher Werkbund ” in this publication
a few years ago I was able to speak only of its aims and intentions and
not of its achievements, which even now have hardly reached the
stage of statistical demonstration. It has now, however, become an
extensive association, with a membership of far more than a thousand,
including practically all the industrial undertakings that avail them-
selves of the co-operation of artists in the elaboration of their products,
and with this expansion it has of course outgrown its original objects
and range of activities. In ever-increasing circles the future possi-
bilities with which this co-operation of artist and manufacturer is
fraught are recognised ; to the latter an opportunity is provided for
making himself conversant with all the technical details and con-
ditions incidental to the working up of the various materials ; while
the artist makes himself acquainted not only with the experiences ot
the manufacturer but also the conditions under which he is trading,
and is able to adapt his designs alike to the material and to those
market possibilities which he must reckon with. If this policy has
led, as was only natural it should and as many prefer, to compromises
remote from the original ideals, it has nevertheless kept free from
those eccentricities with which ten years ago the revival of industrial
art was sought to be accomplished, and at the same time from those
delusions which have brought severe material losses to many manu-
facturers. We have become less idealistic and more rationalistic in
our way of thinking.
What will give the forthcoming Cologne exhibition its distinc-
tive character and its significance in the history of German exhibi-
tions of applied art will be the prominence given to the industrial
product of superior taste, in which the influence of the artist-designer
is conspicuously revealed, instead of to the hand-made article lovingly
and tenderly fashioned out of costly materials by the artist-craftsman
as a work of art. None of the men to whom our art-industry is
indebted for encouragement and exemplary achievement will be
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