Date of issue June 1, 1923. 
Canada 
Victoria Memorial Museum 
Bulletin No. 37 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL SERIES, No. 8 
AN ALBUM OF PREHISTORIC CANADIAN ART 
By Harlan I. Smith 
INTRODUCTION 
Motives for Canadian manufactures are now urgently needed by the 
many industries that are obliged to use designs and trade-marks in producing 
manufactured articles. In some cases the conditions brought about by 
the war have cut off the sole supply of industrial designs. The designs 
for many industries, such as the textile trades, were almost wholly of 
foreign origin. Consequently, Canada relied on foreigners for them and the 
war having exhausted the energies of many of the European designers, the 
supply has been inadequate. New designs are constantly required and 
manufacturers have been compelled to turn to other sources for them. 
American designers as a result realize, more than ever before, the wealth 
of motives for designs to be found in North American museums among the 
prehistoric and historic collections of the handiwork of the peoples of various 
countries. Prehistoric Canadian art has been so little applied to modern 
commercial uses that almost all of it is new to the trades and useful to 
commercial artists. 
The designs that have been used are almost all based upon motives 
from Greek, Roman, and other European art, and consequently are not 
distinctively Canadian. Owing to the war and the great debt that all 
the nations have been obliged to assume, the competition in manufactured 
articles with which to pay those debts will be intense, and Canada, with 
its small population and relatively high cost of production, cannot success- 
fully compete by duplicating European articles; but must offer for export 
products of purely Canadian design, somewhat after the French idea of 
distinctive styles. 
It would seem that the early Indian art of Canada might well serve as 
a suitable starting point for manufacturers in the production of distinctively 
Canadian designs. Not only practical commercial designers, but psychol- 
ogists also, agree that designs cannot be developed without a suitable 
motive, and that such motive is a most difficult thing to get. 
