Art supplies

“ There is stored up capital represented in the life of a man whose work is a recreation, and expressive of his own personality.
In a book of this size it is not possible to treat of every art or craft which engaged the skill of the mediæval workers. But at some future time I hope to make a separate study of the ceramics, glass in its various forms, the arts of engraving and printing, and some of the many others which have added so much to the pleasure and beauty of the civilized world. ”

“ He began to understand that, first of all, they were self-respecting artisans, practising their trade of making pictures and painting each picture as well as they knew how; that, like other artisans, their pride was in knowing their trade, in a mastery of their tools, and in executing commissions as honestly as they knew how and leaving the "art" to take care of itself. ”

“ But though we may subdue the brilliancy of our decoration, we should try to make it yet a work of art. The design may have as much intention, the work be as refined and individual, and the gold as pure, as in larger works. The precious metals may be confined to small spaces in the parts we desire to accentuate, such as the cross in the centre, or the edges of the orphreys, or they may be entirely replaced with fine silk work. ”

“ And whether our women, with little time and pains, may not make more beautiful carpets than those imported from Turkey? And whether this branch of the woollen manufacture be not open to us?
70 Whether human industry can produce, from such cheap materials, a manufacture of so great value by any other art as by those of sculpture and painting? ”

“ It is not easy in a review of tapestry weaving of to-day to find any great encouragement.
These are times of commerce more than of art. If art can be made profitable commercially, well and good. If not, it starves in a garret along with the artist. ”

“ The manufacturer is quite as much a teacher as the writer or the artist, and he is frequently a much more effectual one. In pottery especially, where the wares of one kind or other are hourly in the hands of every person in the kingdom, it behoves the manufacturers to produce such perfect forms, and to introduce such ornamentation, even in the commonest and coarsest ware, as shall teach the eye, and induce a taste for whatever is beautiful and perfect and lovely in art. The mission of the manufacturer is to create a pure taste, not to perpetuate and pander to a vicious and barbarous one ”

“ To induce each worker thoroughly to master the details of one variety of decoration, and endeavor to make for her work a reputation of commercial value.
The Society meets an actual want in the community by furnishing a place where orders can be given directly to the artist for any kind of art or decorative work on exhibition. ”

“ Other elements in the nineteenth-century expansion in art are seen in the improved productions of the so-called Arts and Crafts which are of inestimable value in cultivating the artistic sense in all classes. Another influence in the same direction is the improved decoration of porcelain, majolica, and pottery, which, while not equal to that of earlier date in the esteem of connoisseurs, brings artistic objects to the sight and knowledge of all, at prices suited to moderate means. ”

“ In porcelain, vases, tazzas, bottles, and other articles of every conceivable form, and decorated in an endless variety of ways both in [177] painting, in alto-relievo figures and flowers, and in massive jewelling, gilding, and enamelling, are produced, and are of the most costly and elegant character. Services, both of the most sumptuous and severely simple character, are also produced in every style of art, and on every scale of cost. ”

“ There is a growing demand for beauty in all its forms; for the adornment of our public buildings;—for galleries of paintings and statuary, for museums containing porcelains, bronzes, textiles, prints and objects of art of all kinds—a demand so insistent that our municipalities and our legislatures are everywhere beginning to respond to the call of the people. ”

“ This was the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society [founded in 1888] , the aims of which were described by one of its members in the following words: “To assert the possibilities of Art in design, applied even to the least pretentious purpose and in every kind of handicraft; to protest against the absolute subjection of Art in its applied form to the interests of that extravagant waste of human energy which is called economic production ”

“ After all, they were all craftsmen—Michael Angelo, Titian, Donatello, Canova—wall-decorators, door-painters, ceiling-colourers, tomb-builders, stone-masons, working to contract and to measure. When our artists are content with the pay of manual labourers and the joy of art, taste may be stimulated in the masses, and original work be going at the price of lithographs. Why shouldn't artists even paint public-house signs? ”

“ W. A. Townsend and Company, at Number 46 Walker-street, a locality where book-men 'most do congregate.' It is but simple justice to say, that no work so profusely and beautifully illustrated, and with such unlimited expenditure for paintings, engravings, paper, printing and binding, has ever been issued in this country. The engravings alone, executed from precious original pictures in the very highest style of the art of celature, we are assured, cost over ten thousand dollars! ”

“ Answer.—If this question had been asked with an eye to business, we might answer that decorative art makes trade brisk, induces people to buy ornaments, and fills the pockets of dealers in curiosities. ”

“ It attempted to disguise itself, to show the craftsman superior to the artist; and then came the Manufacturer and the reign of quantity over quality, the casting in moulds by the gross and the printing by the thousands. Be it understood these remarks only apply to the introduction of porcelain into Europe. In the East where the clay is native, the art is native; the potter's hand and the wheel yet maintain the power of giving the potter his individuality as the creator and the artist, and save him from being but the servant and the slave of a machine. ”

“ Our main and ostensible purpose was to advance the state of the decorative arts by uniting design and handicraft, and by acknowledging the share and artistic responsibility of the individual workmen who co-operated in the production of a work of art, also to give opportunities to designers and craftsmen to exhibit their work and appeal directly to the public, and by holding selected exhibitions of design and handicraft from time to time to maintain a standard of taste and workmanship which hitherto there had been no means of doing. ”

“ The main attention in the manufacture is directed to the finding of colors free from poison and which will not fade, when exposed to light, if they are intended for a wholesale consumption in painting and the graphical art. ”

“ Painting remained to us,{266} arrogating to herself the rôle which hitherto the whole company had combined to make successful. In her struggle to fill the giant's robe, she has run unresistingly in the ruts of the age. She has crowded her portable canvases, side by side, into exhibitions and galleries, and claimed the title of art for literary rather than æsthetic suggestions. The minor coquetries of craftsmanship, from which once was nourished the burly strength of art, have felt out of place in such illustrious company. ”

“ To establish rooms for the exhibition and sale of Sculptures, Paintings, Wood Carvings, Paintings upon Slate, Porcelain and Pottery, Lacework, Art and Ecclesiastical Needlework, Tapestries and Hangings, and, in short, decorative work of any description, done by women, and of sufficient excellence to meet the recently stimulated demand for such work. ”

“ The artist colour-man, with his prepared canvas at so much per yard, coated with whiting and size, and his tube colours, and megilph, so neatly put up, but which will not bear the action of light of a few years, was unknown in these early days; and it was not until the productions of this particular branch of trade were made competitive in price, and cheapness became the order of the day, that decay commenced its ravages, and the durability of paintings could no longer be relied upon. ”

“ “There ought to be only one large art warehouse in the world, to which the artist could carry his art-works and from which he could carry away whatever he needed. As it is one must be half a tradesman.” ”

“ Real, genuine, helpful, beautiful art is now brought within reach of the million. The arts of chromo-lithography and half-tone engraving are putting exquisite pictures, at low cost, wherever there is taste to appreciate and enjoy them. In our homes they are everywhere. ”

“ The plan had the merit of cheapness, at any rate, involving little outlay or risk; the artist, in fact, not having money to venture. The Exhibition comprised sixteen 'Poetical and Historical Inventions,' as he designated them,—eleven 'frescos,' seven drawings: a collection singularly remote from ordinary sympathies, or even ordinary apprehension. Bent on a violent effort towards justifying his ways to men and critics, he drew up and had printed a Descriptive Catalogue of these works, in which he interprets them, and expounds at large his own canons of art. ”

“ When the artisan was an artist and the designer a craftsman, there was but a limited production of industrial art. The articles made were expensive and for the wealthy alone. The common utensils necessary to the household were made on the farm and were of the rudest possible character. ”

“ After all, the sentiment, or what not, which people ask for in glass, and which compels figure work, is not, in the majority of instances, by any means so important, even in their eyes, but that they would sacrifice it readily enough if they knew the price in art at which they would have to pay for it. Let patrons of stained glass, if they care for art, ponder this statement ”

“ She developed artistic talents at an early age, and after learning to draw and paint she turned her attention to plastic art. She invented a method of manufacturing imitation Limoges ware, which is utilized in the making of advertising signs, plaques and other forms. ”

“ It is a common belief that high art and commercial success cannot go hand in hand,—that to make things sell you must sink art—or that, if you produce high art examples, you must give up all expectations of a remunerative trade. This theory I do not [251] believe in. I hold it to be the mission of the manufacturer, in whatever branch he may be engaged, to produce such goods as shall tend to educate the public taste, and to lead it gradually upwards to a full appreciation of the beautiful. ”

“ This habit of manipulating the precious metals gave neatness and precision of touch to the painter, and in the art of illuminating manuscripts taught the artist to use his gold so as to produce the richest and most decorative effect. ”

“ But the most active of all causes was that the younger generation of collectors did not show the same inclination that had swayed their predecessors to limit their attention to modern pictorial art. They turned more and more from pictures to other forms of artistic effort. They built themselves houses in which the possibility of hanging large canvases was not contemplated, and they began to call upon the craftsman and the decorator to supply them with what was necessary for the adornment of their homes. ”

“ The delicate tools used by the wood-carvers are made from European umbrella spokes, ramrods, and country steel. The main stimulus, which the art receives from time to time at the present day, is from orders from the Government, corporate public bodies, or Mahārājas, for address boxes, cabinets, and other articles specially ordered for presentations, or for the various fine-art exhibition, for which high prices are paid. ”

“ It may be said that ivory carving is sculpture, and illuminated manuscripts and coloured glass windows are painting. But for metal work, whether in iron or gold, a place must be kept apart; and the same privileges are due to embroidery and to metallurgy. All arts must of necessity have their own laws and rules, which ensure their beauty of execution and their special forms of design; these two last, from the nature of their materials, and the modes of working them, must be studied independently of any connection with painting, architecture, or sculpture. ”

“ But in one direction richness and artistic fancy seems to have found a new field, and it is a province which in our earlier exhibitions had hardly any representation at all, I mean jewellery and gold and silversmith’s work and the art of enamelling, which show an extraordinary development, and may be claimed as a distinct and direct result of the new artistic27 impulse in the handicrafts. ”

“ Nothing is genuine in the entire shop. Water colours are imitated in chromo, oils are imitated in lithograph, white carved wood frames are imitated in applications of pressed brass. Great works of art are belittled by processes cheap enough to be within reach of the poorest pocket. Framed pictures are turned out by the thousand dozens, every size, from the smallest domestic scene, which hangs over the baby's crib in a Harlem flat, to the large wedding-present size placed over the piano in the front parlour. ”

“ The time employed is richly repaid; the results produced are of actual value; articles of ornament and domestic utility being produced, in perfect imitation of the most beautiful Chinese and Japanese porcelain, of Sèvres and Dresden china, and of every form that is usual in the productions of the Ceramic Art. ”

“ The largest group of material available for exhibition in an art museum and one which in this country is, alas, often neglected is that which may be classified as Industrial Art, and which includes furniture, textiles, glass, porcelain, iron work, wood carving and all the other objects of artistic workmanship which surround us in our daily life. ”