The Studio yearbook of decorative art (1920)

DECORATIVE AND APPLIED ART
adopted as one of its guiding principles, and it has set to work in a
thoroughly competent manner, aiming primarily at encouraging skill in
craftsmanship and making the crafts attractive, so as to ensure both quality
and quantity of output.
The programme which the founders of the Institute have set themselves
is a comprehensive one. It includes the organization of exhibitions and of
an information bureau for providing complete technical, artistic, and eco-
nomic records of all topics concerning the Industrial Arts ; a labour ex-
change and a clearing house for the artistic industries; the education of
the producers and the public ; and the close study of markets both at home
and abroad.
At a conference of manufacturers and distributors of house furnishings
held at the Ideal Home Exhibition in February, Sir Auckland Geddes,
President of the Board of Trade, said it was very essential that, if we were
to recapture overseas markets, the whole quality of the goods which we
exported should be better than the goods dispatched by any of our com-
petitors. Clearly the goods would have to be in a large volume, and that
meant quantity production, but we should have to combine with it real
quality in the goods themselves and absolute fitness for the purpose for
which they were intended. We had also, as a nation, to produce goods
which were pleasing in appearance and satisfactory from every point of
view. It was therefore absolutely essential for us at this time to combine