Page 53 - Studio International - April 1968

Connoisseur Series and various 'art books': as well, alas, as three precious He concludes that since 1888 the standard of commercial design has
anthologies. For Gleeson White, too, smells slightly of antiquary and not advanced; that the work shown is far from being a representative
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'bookman'; as do Hind, and also Holme. Such tiresome or distasteful sample of the market of today; that we have many fine things 'the
notes must be taken account of, for, of their age indeed, they affect The work of a few for the few', the classes not the masses. He notes how
Studio, and explain some of the reasons why a young reader, brought expensive the objects are; and halfheartedly accepts Walter Crane's
up by the proper books to think of the early Studio as avant-garde, defence, that only mechanical reproduction can produce cheap work,
herald of the Modern Movement, is apt to retire from it discomfited. and by cheapening life and Jabour. The justification of the exhibition
is that its influence will sooner or later be felt .... Morris is treated
The Studio carried no 'policy statement' except in its subtitle: An with immense respect, but as a fatal example: he is an accidental
Illustrated Magazine ef Fine and Applied Art. English 'Design' is what it re-embodiment of an artist of centuries ago, his work a 'marvellous
was to feed toadvanced g roupsinEurope, Belgium, Holland, Germany; re-creation of actual medieval work'; he does not belong to the
and surely to America. An 'arts and crafts' magazine, Macfall called nineteenth century.
it, dismissively. Those descriptions are muddling, because the English When Pennell introduced Beardsley he insisted that Beardsley had
situation was muddling. Fine and Applied was a distinction present in the not tried to go back to the fifteenth century or away to Japan: 'he
schools, denied in proof-tests from Morris and worrying for The Studio. has recognized that he is Jiving in the last decade of the nineteenth
Design and Arts and Crafts were, and remain, difficult because of their century, and he has availed himself of mechanical reproduction for
involvement in that set of problems about artist/de igner/craftsman/ the publication of his drawings . . .. ' Here The Studio will stand quite
machine production. firm, on the side of the machine. Process reproduction is one of its
Reviewing dispassionately The Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society's main themes, reiterated in articles and competitions. Pollard's work
fourth show (October, 1893), Aymer Vallance recalls the Society's on the early illustrated book will be welcomed, limited edition work­
opening manifesto of 1888: Ricketts and Shannon, for example-will be praised, or special bind­
'a protest against the modern industrial system which has ings-Cobden-Sanderson-but Gleeson White will show and encour­
thrust the personal element further and further into the back­ age design in commercial bindings; and, to the last, welcome the
ground until the production of ornament instead of growing disappearance of the engraver. No magazine can have paid more
out of organic necessities has become a marketable affair attention to the various uses of the camera, as a fine or applied art.
controlled by the salesman and the advertiser, and at the Wallpapers and textiles are predominantly for mechanical, com­
mercy of every passing fashion. To proclaim that the true root merical production. 'Artistic handicrafts' are certainly attended to and
and basis of all art lies in the handicrafts, and to give visible 'Home Arts and Industries' ('I must on no account omit to mention
expression to such a belief were the objects for which the some leather embossing, in one instance executed by the Princess of
Society was started.' vVales herself, from Sandringham . . .. ' - Vallance). But Gleeson White
will write in praise of Heal's suites of bedroom furniture, 'stock pat­
terns ... for people of moderate means', complaining that proper
credit is being denied to manufacturers. 4 Houses illustrated, an
'artistic' Voysey cottage, or, an 'Ideal Suburban House', by M. H.
Baillie Scott, are also, presumably, for persons of moderate means: the
Morris Stanmore Hall is a gloomy exception. But art/industry/the
market are never thoroughly sorted out in The Studio.
The Studio competitions, going on month after month, are an
important clue to much that was intended. Class A is Designs for
Industrial Purposes: Stained Glass, a Five-Frame Brussels carpet,
wall-paper, an Insurance Company's advertisements, a biscuit tin.
This class aims 'to aid Art Students and others desirous of becoming
proficient in Industrial Design, and to introduce them to manu­
facturers who make use of such designs ... '
There is education, and there is circulation. The Studio was trying
to get at the aspiring industrial designer, for worthy purposes, but
also to sell. Competitions, a device of the 'new journalism', involve
the competitor directly and per onally with the paper, and so help
to build a stable readership. Other classes of competitions show The
Studio looking for other, sometimes overlapping, groups. There is
Class B, Drawings for Reproduction by Photographic process: a girl's head,
or a Catalogue Cover. There is C, Designs for Amateur's work: an
embroidered cushion cover, a sermon case, a painted fan ('intelligent
design' would convert 'fancy articles' made for home decoration or
for sale at bazaars into objects of use and real beauty). There is D,
A Special Series ef Photographs from Nature. (The Kodak is heavily
advertised.) For all competitions 'All students at public and private
Art schools and all bona fide amateurs are eligible as competitors'.
There are special features aimed at art schools; great attention is paid
to activities-exhibitions, schools, societies-in the provinces; and to
Scotland. We have an impression (we would rather have printing
orders and know how many copies W. H. Smith bought) of an
audience of students or small professionals and amateurs, in the two
senses of that word. Amateurs of fine printing or Utamaro; or all
those ladies going off with their sketch-books to Cornwall or Bruges
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