DOI issue:
A foreword by the editor
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19430#0011
A FOREWORD BY THE EDITOR
that added ornament is more often than not wholly unnecessary, or even
a positive defect? To these questions the answer is obvious.
However, to be strictly just, the artist must be saddled with some part of
the blame and must be accounted to a not inconsiderable extent respon-
sible for the lack of co-ordination between himself, the manufacturer, and
the salesman. Does he take pains to master completely and never to lose
touch with commercial requirements? Does he make it his business to
know all about methods and costs of production, choice of suitable
materials, and all the other practical details which contribute to commercial
success, before he sets himself to work out his own particular problem?
So long as he is content with merely setting down a rough idea without
any technical understanding of the way in which it should be applied-
even without seeing that as a practical thing it is entirely useless—he can-
not complain if the manufacturer, rightly enough, regards him simply as
a nuisance and refuses to take him seriously.
The artist will have to shed the old conceit that contact with commercial
ideas and association with the apparently trivial must result in loss of dig-
nity, if he is to do efficiently the work that will be required of him in the
future. He might well lose dignity by trying to accomplish what through
imperfect knowledge would be beyond his reach, but there is nothing un-
dignified in learning everything, no matter how small it may be, that will
help him to more effective achievement—the better equipped he is the
greater the credit he will do to himself and his art. The restricted
spending power of the public under present conditions imposes limita-
tions upon ambitious effort, but in the apparently trivial things, which
must be counted as simple necessaries of life, there is a vast scope for the
activity of the artist who is determined to grasp the possibilities of the
moment and who has the intelligence and the ability to deal with them in
the right way. If price has to be a deciding factor—as seems to be inevit-
able-then how to cheapen production must be one of the artist’s con-
cerns, and he must study methods of machine manufacture so thoroughly
that he will be able to suggest practical improvements in them and to
offer to the manufacturer designs which will make an immediate and a
convincing appeal as working propositions likely to show a profit. Only
in that way can the artist and the business man hope to come together to
their joint advantage.
The foundation of this combination should be laid in the Art and Techni-
cal Schools, where the association of design and production should be
one of the first considerations, and where the designer and the producer
should work in intimate conjunction ; to extend it and make it more effec-
tive the British Institute of Industrial Art has been brought into existence.
But when by these means the artist has been put in closer touch with the
3
that added ornament is more often than not wholly unnecessary, or even
a positive defect? To these questions the answer is obvious.
However, to be strictly just, the artist must be saddled with some part of
the blame and must be accounted to a not inconsiderable extent respon-
sible for the lack of co-ordination between himself, the manufacturer, and
the salesman. Does he take pains to master completely and never to lose
touch with commercial requirements? Does he make it his business to
know all about methods and costs of production, choice of suitable
materials, and all the other practical details which contribute to commercial
success, before he sets himself to work out his own particular problem?
So long as he is content with merely setting down a rough idea without
any technical understanding of the way in which it should be applied-
even without seeing that as a practical thing it is entirely useless—he can-
not complain if the manufacturer, rightly enough, regards him simply as
a nuisance and refuses to take him seriously.
The artist will have to shed the old conceit that contact with commercial
ideas and association with the apparently trivial must result in loss of dig-
nity, if he is to do efficiently the work that will be required of him in the
future. He might well lose dignity by trying to accomplish what through
imperfect knowledge would be beyond his reach, but there is nothing un-
dignified in learning everything, no matter how small it may be, that will
help him to more effective achievement—the better equipped he is the
greater the credit he will do to himself and his art. The restricted
spending power of the public under present conditions imposes limita-
tions upon ambitious effort, but in the apparently trivial things, which
must be counted as simple necessaries of life, there is a vast scope for the
activity of the artist who is determined to grasp the possibilities of the
moment and who has the intelligence and the ability to deal with them in
the right way. If price has to be a deciding factor—as seems to be inevit-
able-then how to cheapen production must be one of the artist’s con-
cerns, and he must study methods of machine manufacture so thoroughly
that he will be able to suggest practical improvements in them and to
offer to the manufacturer designs which will make an immediate and a
convincing appeal as working propositions likely to show a profit. Only
in that way can the artist and the business man hope to come together to
their joint advantage.
The foundation of this combination should be laid in the Art and Techni-
cal Schools, where the association of design and production should be
one of the first considerations, and where the designer and the producer
should work in intimate conjunction ; to extend it and make it more effec-
tive the British Institute of Industrial Art has been brought into existence.
But when by these means the artist has been put in closer touch with the
3