Artificer

“ The revived demand for works of this nature renders it highly desirable that the artificer should have ready access to a series of examples, the practical utility of which would not be less fully appreciated, than their interest in connexion with the history of art. ”

“ If the works of art of a perishable nature become recognised as more and more valuable during the onward march of time, they receive proportional attention from upper-class or highly skilled workmen. A costly work of art in need of repair or restoration is placed in the hands of an artificer whose reputation warrants the confidence of the owner. ”

“ Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate. ”

“ He was always discovering new possibilities that opened the door for fresh improvements, and his knowledge of the details of every craft employed in his service was so exacting and complete that the skilled artificers who laboured for him knew well that they were under the trained eye of a master as well as of an employer. ”

“ The artificer must know how to grind colours, to use glue, to fasten the linen on the panel, to prime with gesso, to scrape and smooth the gesso, to make reliefs in gesso, to put on bole, to gild, to burnish, to mix temperas, to lay on grounding colours, to transfer by pouncing through pricked lines, to sharpen lines with the stylus, to indent with little patterns, to carve, to colour, to ornament the panel, and finally to varnish it! ”

“ The artificer next seats himself on a stool with elevated arms, upon which he rests the pontil, which he grasps and twirls with his left hand, having thus a command over the red-hot glass with his right hand, in which he holds a small iron instrument called a procello, consisting of two blades with an elastic bow, similar to a sugar-tongs. With this little instrument the whole work of fashioning is performed, and as it must be completed while the glass is yet ductile (having always, however, the power of reheating it when necessary) , the process is effected with wondrous celerity. ”

“ There have also been different kinds of artificers, who have practised the arts according to the world. Some have carved in wood all kinds of birds and fishes, and figures of men, and in those have endeavoured to display their excellence. ”

“ III. Engineer artificers are a class of men employed in the practical operations of constructing forts and other military defences, and in making and repairing all the implements used by the engineer troops in the operations of sapping and mining, in crossing rivers, in constructing field-defences, and in the attack and defence of field-works. ”

“ Among the French, is understood as comprehending everything which [33] enters the composition of fire-works, as the sulphur, saltpetre, charcoal, etc. See Pyrotechnics.
Artificer. One who makes fire works, or works in the artillery laboratory, and prepares the shells, fuzes, grenades, etc. It is also applied to military mechanics, such as carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, etc.
Artificial Line of Sight. Is the right line from the eye to the object to be hit, passing through the front and rear sights. See Pointing. ”

“ And in truth it does seem to me absurd that statuaries and carvers, or painters, or moulders, should both design and paint, and carve, and mould, and prepare gods, who, when they are produced by the artificers, are reckoned of no value ”

“ In our day stone of this sort is never wrought to perfection, [15] because our artificers have lost the art of tempering the chisels and other instruments for working them. It is true that they can still, with the help of emery, saw drums of columns into slices, and cut other pieces to be arranged in patterns for floors, and make various other ornaments for buildings. ”

“ The weaver, the joiner, the potter, the smith, the goldsmith, Other and minor arts of service subordinate to architecture. the glass-maker, these and a hundred artificers who produce wares primarily for use, produce them in a form or with embellishments that have the secondary virtue of giving pleasure both to the producer and the user. ”

“ Whatever may have been the purpose of the stone—religious, sacrificial, or tribal—the work must have occupied many men for a long period, and the skill, both of design and execution, prove that the artificers must have 86reached a relatively high stage of artistic development. ”

“ When the pointer has reached, as it were, the rough outline of the figure, he is followed by a carver, who carries the work a stage further, coming, perhaps, to within an eighth of an inch of what will be the actual surface of the figure or bust, if such it be, when finished, thus greatly lessening the mere mechanical part of the labour, while leaving the artist with ample material and scope for alterations. It is now that the actual work of the sculptor begins, and that those final and finishing touches are given that invest the stone, as it were, with the breath and vigour of life. ”

“ In the fourteenth century, the painter was a craftsman and as rigidly bound by the laws of his guild as any carpenter or mason. He was apprenticed to a master for perhaps five years, during which he was taught the secrets of the craft. He learned to choose the wood for his panel and make it ready for use. He mixed the fine plaster with which to cover the wood, and [181] the durability of his picture depended on the care he used in this and the evenness of the coating. For every implement with which he worked, every colour that entered into his picture, he must depend upon himself. ”

“ Then there were certainly ironworkers and masters in metal, and fresco-painters, who also attained to the rank of Master. But no one branch was entirely separate from the others, until the fourteenth century, when the painters' companies were founded. We find the same man building, designing, sculpturing, painting, and even working in gold or iron, and seeming equally good in all styles, so that the training of the laborerium must have been especially comprehensive. ”

“ The modern revival of wood-engraving, which came just after the war, is quite different in style from any that preceded it. The artist and engraver are now one, as they should be where original work is to be done, and every exponent of the craft expresses his or her own individuality. ”

“ Whether we look at a little book-end bear in bronze, or at a heroic equestrian statue in bronze and stone, or at a colossal monument in granite or marble, the importance of fine craftsmanship is evident. The artist is the last person in the world who can afford to underrate the craftsman. ”

“ He sees the ordinary processes of everyday life—weaving, carpentry, metal-working, even such specialised forms of manual art as the polishing of the surface of marble—with the fresh eye of one who sees them all for the first time. ”

“ I have no objection to Engraving after another Artist. Engraving is the profession I was apprenticed to, and I should never have attempted to live by any thing else If orders had not come in for my Designs and Paintings, which I have the pleasure to tell you are Increasing Every Day. Thus If I am a Painter it is not to be attributed to Seeking after. But I am contented whether I live by Painting or Engraving.
I am, Revd. Sir, your very obedient Servant,
William Blake. ”

“ In the Eighteenth Century original Etching falls into the background, and the skill of the engraver, in those lands where, in the Eighteenth Century, it was chiefly exercised—in France, that is, and England—is devoted in the main to no spontaneous creation, but to the translation of the work of painters. In two mediums, thoroughly opposed or thoroughly contrasted, yet each with its own value, the engraver’s labour is executed; there flourished, side by side, the delicate School of Line Engraving and the noble School of Mezzotint. ”

“ The relation between them is strictly typical of the constant aspects to each other of the Northern and Southern schools.
142. Their point of closest contact is in the art of engraving, and this art is developed entirely as the servant of the great passions which perturbed or polluted Europe in the fifteenth century. The impulses which it obeys are all new; and it obeys them with its own nascent plasticity of temper. Painting and sculpture are only modified by them; but engraving is educated. ”

“ Many regard this plate as the greatest engraving of the century. In a manner typical of those pomp-loving times, the eminent churchman is represented amidst columns and sweeping draperies. Here, indeed, we have the last word of technical resourcefulness in expanses of gorgeous silks and delicate laces, and many other textures and substances. If one should feel that all this elaboration of the setting distracts the attention from the portrait itself, he must blame the epoch and the painter whose design the engraver needs must follow. ”

“ He became in turn a metal-chaser, a decorator of leathers, a ceramist, an etcher, a wood-engraver and a painter. If we consider him chiefly as an etcher, it must be with the full appreciation that any craft mastered by him is made subsidiary to the larger principles upon which all works of art are based, whatever the medium or process. ”

“ The engraver on metal habitually cut his own designs, and between the arts of the goldsmith and the painter there had always been a close alliance, both being habitually exercised by persons of the same family and sometimes by one and the same person; so that there was no lack of hands ready-trained for the new craft which required of the man who practised it that he should design like a painter and cut metal like a goldsmith. ”

“ Sculpture in stone, whether granite, gem, or marble, while we accurately use the general term 'glyptic' for it, may be thought of with, perhaps, the most clear force under the English word 'engraving.' For, from the mere angular incision which the Greek consecrated in the triglyphs of his greatest order of architecture, grow forth all the arts of bas-relief, and methods of localized groups of sculpture connected with each other and with architecture: as, in another direction, the arts of engraving and wood-cutting themselves. ”

“ This Italian engraver, however, is not a painter-engraver as in Germany, an artist, namely, engraving his own designs. We know that the Italian artist continues intent on grander tasks and50 indifferent to the charms of the graver, hence a division of labor: the busy painter jots down the sketch or cartoon and the professional engraver undertakes the lengthy task of transferring, of interpreting the artist’s drawing by means of the graver. ”

“ In the potter's art devices for holding and turning the vessel under manipulation produce peculiar results.
In applying a given idea to clay much depends upon the method of executing it. It will take widely differing forms when executed by incising, by modeling, by painting, and by stamping.
Intimately associated with methods of execution are peculiarities of construction, the two agencies working together in the processes of modification and development of ornament. ”

“ The Development of Art.—Utility was the great purpose underlying the foundation of the industrial arts. The stone axe, or celt, was first made for a distinct service, but, in order to perfect its usefulness, its lines became more perfect and its surface more highly polished. So we might say for the spear-head, the knife, or the olla. Artistic lines and decorative beauty always followed the purpose of use. This could be applied to all of the products of man's invention to transform parts of nature to his use. ”

“ Carving in wood, in all countries where it has been practised, has ever preceded sculpture, or carving in stone. It is, therefore, an art of the highest antiquity; and, although the same with sculpture in some of its applications, yet it differs from it somewhat in the mode of execution, according with the nature of the material.
3. The art of carving is very extensive in its application, [154] being used in the decorative parts of architecture, both civil and naval, and likewise in ornamenting cabinet-ware, as well as in forming patterns for casting in metals, particularly in iron and brass. ”

“ The sculptor, the modeller, the chaser, the enameller, and even the painter, were associated with the goldsmith in producing most{35} exquisite works of this kind. The art of the wood-carver and that of the worker in iron, which we have seen executing such marvels for household furniture, could not fail to find scope in the manufacture of objects used for religious purposes. ”

“ Modern facilities have greatly abridged the personal labor of the sculptor in marble or bronze. The present method of casting in plaster, which was then unknown, or at least unpracticed, enables the sculptor of our days to elaborate his work to the utmost finish, in its full size, in the clay model; and when this is completed and cast in such a permanent material as plaster, the workman has an absolute model, which he may, to a certain extent, copy with almost mathematical accuracy. ”

“ Under such fortunate encouragement the goldsmiths of the fourteenth century reached a knowledge of design and a finish in execution that justified the claim of their art to the first place among the fine arts, and made their workshops the apprentice-home of many great masters of art in Italy as well as in the North. ”

“ The weaver and embroiderer, The ironsmith and armourer, The goldsmith and jeweller, The carpenter and engineer, The stonecutter and painter.
You have only once to turn over the leaves of Lionardo's sketch book, in the Ambrosian Library, to see how carpentry is connected with engineering,—the architect was always a stonecutter, and the stonecutter not often practically separate, as yet, from the painter, and never so in general conception of function. ”

“ You find in their attitude a dignity and stern nobility which our sculptors would find it not so very easy to emulate, while the chain armour, with its rigid lines, and the linen surcoat, with its more delicate foldings, are executed with a truthfulness and feeling which show that the man who worked them possessed both the soul and the hand of an artist. These are worthy of being carefully drawn, though to do this well demands much time. ”