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THE STUDIO YEAR-BOOK OF APPLIED ART 1921
Extrait
Premières pages de l'ouvrage, en accès libre.
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“THE STUDIO” YEAR-BOOK OF APPLIED ART, 1921 EDITED BY GEOFFREY HOLME --- “THE STUDIO,” LTH. LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK
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CONTENTS ARTICLES "A Foreword by the Editor" .................................................. 1 "Haddon Hall—An Old English Home." By Sydney R. Jones With illustrations by the Writer. ................. 5 "Additions to 'The Hut,' Cowbeech Hill." By L. Sutton Wood ..................... 33 "Three Bungalows." By Maurice S. R. Adams, A.R.I.B.A. ....................... 39 "Building in Pisé de Terre." .............................................. 42 "Some Country Houses." By M. H. Baillie Scott. ............................ 44 "Two Old Houses adapted to Modern Uses." ................................... 52 "Notes on the Illustrations." ............................................. 55 "Applied Art in Sweden." By Erik Wettergren, Keeper of the National Museum, Stockholm. (Translated by Edward Adams-Ray). ................. 107 ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOURS View of Haddon Hall from the West. From a drawing by Sydney R. Jones . Frontispiece A Row of Cottages. M. H. Baillie Scott, Architect .......................... 45 A Cottage Living-room designed by M. H. Baillie Scott ..................... 49 A Cottage Bedroom designed by M. H. Baillie Scott ........................ 49 Design for a Bedroom by Frederic Towndrow .................................. 65 Painted Furniture designed by Ambrose Heal, executed by Heal and Son .... 71 Painted Furniture designed by Ambrose Heal, executed by Heal and Son .... 77 Linen and Cotton Block Prints by W. Foxton .................................. 87 Machine-printed Cretonnes designed by Minnie McLeish for W. Foxton ....... 87 Shop-fronts designed by Shirley B. Wainwright ............................. 95 ILLUSTRATIONS IN MONOTONE DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE After designs by: Adams, Maurice S. R., A.R.I.B.A. ........................................ 39 to 41 Castle, Sydney E. ....................................................... 54, 59 Crowe, J. ............................................................... 52, 53 Dawber, E. Guy .......................................................... 60 Hamp, Stanley (Collcutt & Hamp) .......................................... 60 to 62 Jones, Sydney R. ....................................................... 52, 53 May, E. J., F.R.I.B.A. .................................................. 63 Scott, M. H. Baillie .................................................... 44, 47, 48, 51 Wood, L. Sutton ........................................................ 33 to 38 DECORATIVE AND APPLIED ART After designs by: Barraclough, Gladys .................................................... 86 Bayes, Jessie .......................................................... 64
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DECORATIVE AND APPLIED ART—Continued. Author --- PAGE --- Brown, F. Gregory --- Brown, Helen Paxton --- Bunney, Gabriel C. --- Carter & Company --- Chase, W. A. --- Cuzner, Bernard --- Cuzner, Ethel --- Derrick, Gladys M. --- Fitch, D. A. --- Garbe, Richard --- Heal, Ambrose --- 70 to 79, 101 --- Hooper, Luther --- Hoppé, E. O. --- Joscelyne’s, of Johannesburg --- 84, 85 --- Kirk, A. N. --- Levett, R. M. --- Liberty & Company --- 80, 81 --- McLeish, Minnie --- 86, 89, 90 --- Mère, Clément --- Miller, Josephine Haswell --- Nance, R. Morton --- Powell, Alfred H. --- 102, 103 --- Powell, Louise --- 102, 103 --- Powell & Sons, James (Whitefriars Glass Works) --- Rice, Bernard --- Roberts, C. A. Llewelyn --- Rowley, A. J. --- Walls, P. --- Wells, Percy A. --- Wolff, Cor de --- Wright, Isabel S. --- APPLIED ART IN SWEDEN After designs by: Designer --- PAGE --- Asplund, E. G. --- 112, 121 --- Bensow, Folke --- Bergsten, Harald --- Brandtberg, Oscar --- Ernberg, Nils --- Forssberg, Petrus --- Gate, Simon --- 118, 119 --- Hald, Edward --- 116 to 119 --- Jonsson, Ivar --- Kage, Wilhelm --- 116, 117 --- Lallerstedt, Erik --- Malmsten, Carl --- 112, 115 --- Norberg, Karl --- Nordiska Kompaniet --- 113, 120 --- Westman, Carl ---
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A FOREWORD BY THE EDITOR T is very necessary at the present time to review the position of affairs in the art world before attempting to arrive at any conclusion about the prospects of the future. A good deal has happened recently to change the conditions of existence in this country and to provide for solution a completely new set of social problems. By this change the progress and development of art have been seriously affected, and in industrial art especially influences have come into operation which are full of dangerous possibilities. Already, indeed, they have had the effect of appreciably crippling most forms of artistic activity; they have created difficulties which limit the opportunities of the art worker and hamper his freedom of action, and they have imposed on him the need to revise and reconsider the whole scope of his practice. These influences call for careful analysis; they are of two classes, temporary and permanent—or at all events so far permanent that they are likely to persist for a generation or longer. The temporary ones, caused immediately by the war, were shortage of raw materials, lack of unskilled labour, diversion of skilled labour to other than artistic purposes, and increase of expenditure by the thriftless; the permanent ones are the reduction—due to the great growth in taxation—in the spending power of the people, redistribution of income with, as a result, an alteration in the character of the public demand, and, lastly, a great addition to the cost of production. The temporary influences have by now waned so much that they hardly need to be considered; while they persisted they produced a general shortage, with a supply unequal to the demand, and then a feverish effort to provide, at the extravagant prices which the thriftless were prepared to pay, quantity rather than quality. But the permanent influences cannot be disregarded if the architect, the designer, and the other workers in the applied arts are to avoid disaster. The extravagant and undiscriminating demand which required quantity and took no account of quality seems, on the whole, to have been satisfied, and there are signs that from now onwards the selective sense of the public is likely to make itself definitely felt, with, it may fairly be expected, a better appreciation of the efforts of the artist and the designer. This inclination towards better things will not, however, be enough by itself; the artist will have to guide it, and to do this properly he will himself have to look ahead and not only to foresee what are going to be the requirements of the public, but also to provide in advance what will be in request. Therefore, it is plainly a matter of urgent importance for him to study the
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A FOREWORD BY THE EDITOR character of these permanent influences, and, if they are not to reduce him to hopeless incompetence, to understand the way in which they must affect his aims and his methods. The increased burden of taxation, by which the spending power of the public is reduced, presses most heavily upon the hitherto wealthy people who were in the past the art patrons most considered and catered for, the redistribution of income gives a larger proportion to the wage-earning section of the community, and the enhanced cost of production necessitates many practical economies. The reduction in the surplus funds remaining to the wealthy people of the older type after the necessaries of life have been purchased must bring about a corresponding reduction in their demand for high-priced works of art, and if in course of time a new kind of wealthy class grows up, it will be with another sort of taste which will have to be educated and developed. Really, for some time to come, art will have to be for the multitude and it must be put on the market at a price which will be within the reach of the majority. It will have to take a form which will not be beyond the comprehension of the ordinary person and which, through the medium of everyday things, will appeal to the man in the street. That this will involve a degradation of art to a permanently popular level need not be feared; the man in the street is not the brainless and inartistic creature which the shopkeepers, with their dangerous half-knowledge, apparently assume him to be. More often than not he has a quite clear appreciation of what is really artistic, and he has a sound instinct for things that are correct in design and construction and that show a harmonious blending together of intention, materials, and methods of production. Most certainly he is worth cultivating; there are in him important possibilities which no sane artist can ignore. That, hitherto, he has been wrongly educated can be frankly admitted, but for this the bulk of the blame must be laid upon the salesman who is only too ready to accuse the public of want of taste. The idea that florid and superfluous ornament, plastered over bad work and unsuitable materials to hide structural defects, has any claim to be accounted artistic would never have arisen if it had not been for the abysmal ignorance and the wilful misrepresentation of the salesman. Has he ever troubled himself to learn how to distinguish between the freak things which are extravagant, “quaint,” and pseudo-artistic, and those which are worthy productions of the real artist? Has he ever studied the first principles of art and discovered that they prescribe fitness for its purpose as a fundamental essential in every artistic thing? Has he ever realised that in all art work soundness of construction and recognition of the possibilities and limitations of the materials are matters of supreme importance, and
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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 responsible 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 cannot 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 dignity, 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 undignified 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 limitations 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 inevitable—then how to cheapen production must be one of the artist’s concerns, 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 Technical 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 effective 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
