Hopes and fears for art

Abstract

narrower sense of those words, since, most unhap- pily as I think, these master-arts, these arts more specially of the intellect, are at the present day divorced from decoration in its narrower sense.Our subject is that great body of art, by means of which men have at all times more or less striven to beautify the familiar matters of every-day life: a wide subject, a great industry ; both a great part of the history of the world, and a most helpful instrument to the study of that history.A very great industry indeed, comprising the crafts of house-building, painting, joinery and carpentry, smiths' work, pottery and glass-making, weaving, and many others: a body of art most important to the public in general, but still more so to us handicraftsmen ; since there is scarce any- thing that they use, and that we fashion, but it has always been thought to be unfinished till it has had some touch or other of decoration about it True it is that in many or most cases we have got so used to this ornament, that we look upon it as if it had grown of itself, and note it no more than the mosses on the dry sticks with which we light our fires.So much the worse ! for there is the decoration, or some pretence of it, and it has, or ought to have, a use and a meaning.For, and this is at the root of the whole matter, everything made by man's hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly ; beautiful if it is in accord with Nature, and helps her ; ugly if it is discordant ' art manufactures ' in India.Dr. Birdwood,

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