The Arts and Crafts Exhibition, London, 
1906 
CASE OK JEWELRY, BY THE SIR JOHN CASS INSTITUTE, WITH VERY GOOD 
CLOISONNE ENAMEL 
the cause of a national 
art by laying continual 
stress on this war of ma¬ 
chinery and handicraft; 
we should try instead 
to relegate to each its 
own functions instead of 
assuming all dealings 
with machinery to be 
sordid and undignified, 
and all practice of hand¬ 
icraft to be enlightened 
and romantic. 
What is romance ? 
Grimm’s story of the 
poor soldier who became 
the possessor of a purse 
that never lacked a gold 
piece is romantic, but 
suppose he had had in¬ 
stead a machine that 
never failed to produce 
something that could be 
sold for a gold piece, is 
his situation no longer 
romantic ? The use of 
machinery in itself is not 
pitiful 
. . “And all unseen 
Romance brought up the 9.15.” 
1 he present position of sweated workmen tied to 
endless machinery is, in all conscience, pitiful enough; 
but so also are the stories of the sweated hand-loom 
weavers, crippled by doubling over the breast beam 
from early to late in dark hovels. Imagine among 
such the possessor of the first power loom, doing his 
work in a fraction of the same time and setting out a 
free man to hoe his peas, to work a silver girdle for 
his sweetheart or to carve a cradle for his baby! 
Where is the romance here ? Is there nothing piti¬ 
ful in the condition of many a handicraftsman kept 
going by the modern subsidized movements ? Such 
workmen are often ignorant fisherfolk tinkering ig¬ 
norantly at a piece of sheet copper under the ignorant 
direction of the vicar’s daughter; the design, the tools, 
the materials thrust into his hand wherewith to pro¬ 
duce something for which he has neither compre¬ 
hension nor sympathy, nor even such a knowledge 
of its value as enables him to prevent its being sold 
sometimes hugely over and sometimes equally under 
a decent price. Of the existence of this sort of thing 
ample proof is found at various exhibitions of sub¬ 
sidized industries all over the country. It keeps the 
“art” worker out of the public house and the vicar’s 
daughter out of other mischief, and if he gets a half- 
crown, and she some eclat, for the work of their win¬ 
ter’s evenings, that is all to the good; but they do 
not form a convincing picture of the dignity and en¬ 
lightenment accruing to the practice of handicraft. 
A further and very difficult question for the senti¬ 
mentalist of labor is where the use of machinery is 
to begin or end even in artistic handicraft. Would 
he, for instance, recommend the sawing by hand of 
the planks of the f urniture he is making ? 
We are still in a coil, artistic and industrial, but 
the sociological question is far too big for sentiment¬ 
al solution, such as throwing all machinery into the 
sea, starting fresh as free and independent crafts¬ 
men; we have got to evolve from it, and it is the hope 
of evolving with the possession of a living democrat¬ 
ic, traditional art, that makes the success or failure 
of such movements as the Arts and Crafts Society 
of vital importance to us. That such an art will be 
manifested in the practice of handicraft is certain. 
Since nature never makes two men exactly alike, no 
two men will ever make two articles exactly alike, 
and here is our justification for the appreciation of 
handicraft, and for the everlasting interest it arouses. 
No craftsman can fail to express his individuality in 
his work, and here is the dignity he gains. 
Mr. H. G. Wells, one of the few social prophets 
who do not ignore the need of expression of the 
artistic temperament in their Utopias, sets forth in 
his “Anticipations” that the art of a nation is shown 
not by the condition of its “Fine Arts” but by the 
way in which it makes things of everyday use. The 
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