70 
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(Continued from page 68) 
If all the architects in America 
should bind themselves by a “gentle¬ 
man’s agreement” not to use a mould¬ 
ing or an inch of ornamentation for 
the space of a year it would be the 
greatest thing that ever happened to 
architecture. 
This would be adequate compensa¬ 
tion for such laudable self-denial, 
and this is the second point I am 
eager to urge. Those who build 
houses in this country have, it would 
seem, learned all but one thing: the 
fundamental importance of good 
workmanship and its actual value as 
art. However truly fine and admir¬ 
able are our houses, big and little, 
in point of design, when they are 
intimately examined many show the 
cloven hoof of poor workmanship. 
This almost fatal aspect shows 
itself in many ways: in false con¬ 
struction, in woodwork (and some¬ 
times carving, horribile dicta) raw 
from the machine, with mouldings 
bradded in rather than run on the 
wood itself, and dressed up with 
filler and shellac: in machine-tooled 
stone and “a good job of plaster;” 
in trick bricks and clean cut slates 
and scientific tiles; in “quarry-faced” 
and “mine stock,” and paint and wall 
paper and varnish: more than all, 
perhaps, in a slavish adherence to 
the formulas and the stereotyped 
methods of construction developed 
during the dark years between 1820 
and 1880, whereby architecture and 
craftsmanship were reduced to the 
ignominious category of a science. 
The Need for Craftsmanship 
As a result of certain economic 
and industrial phenomena, craftsman¬ 
ship has completely and entirely dis¬ 
appeared from the world, and the 
present tendency is rather towards 
keeping it in its century-long se¬ 
clusions than towards bringing it 
hack. And yet, half the virtue of 
every great art at every time has 
lain in craftsmanship, as much in 
painting and architecture as in poe¬ 
try, sculpture and music. To a 
knowledge of past arts, and a sym¬ 
pathy with them, and a power to 
work with them such as we have 
now, is only half the battle if we 
cannot gain true craftsmanship as 
well—and a half-won battle differs 
little from a defeat, if it ends there. 
Georgian mantels are good things, 
but not if their Grinling Gibbens 
carving is moulded in putty, cast in 
compo and stuck on with glue: a 
coffered ceiling of the Early Renais¬ 
sance is a good thing, but not if it 
is made of papier mache, or “stamped 
steel” and grained to look like wood: 
a Tudor wainscot is a good thing, 
but not if its lesion panels are run 
through a pressing mill and its 
mouldings fitted in and fixed with 
brads. You may go even further and 
say that wood is good if it isn’t ma¬ 
chine planed, brick if it isn’t pressed, 
stone if it isn’t mechanically cut. 
Apart from the roughest work, such 
as could be produced by slave labor¬ 
ers, nothing architectural is good if 
it is done by machinery: it is the 
hand of man that converts. 
For this reason the most scholarly 
design fails in execution, and until 
we get back “the touch of a vanished 
hand,” our wood and stone and metal, 
our taste and erudition will avail 
little. 
The Architect and Laborer 
Can we do this ? Probably not, at 
least for a time, because true crafts¬ 
manship cannot exist between capi¬ 
talism on the one hand and unionism 
on the other; still, we can always fall 
back on self-denial, eliminating the 
art that suffers most through modern 
methods. 
Some of us of late have been ex¬ 
perimenting on these lines, trying 
to find how much we can omit rather 
than how much we can obtain, and 
it is surprising how good and con¬ 
vincing and even beautiful are the 
results. Mouldings and ornaments 
of all kinds go by the board and, 
reduced to the raw materials of 
wood, brick, plaster and stone, it is 
amazing how much can be accom¬ 
plished with a little honesty to 
smooth the way. Working thus be¬ 
comes another thing: the least prom¬ 
ising workman has in him a latent 
feeling for good craftsmanship, and 
if he can be made to see that he, by 
his handiwork, is responsible for 
half the artistic result, he rises to his 
opportunity, union or no union, and 
suddenly becomes a craftsman and 
not a machine. 
This statement is not based on 
theory, but on experience. If the 
architect will demand good work 
(and the owner will pay for it) he 
can get it, but it means that his own 
labors and responsibilities will not 
cease in the office, but will really 
begin with the construction: that he 
himself will have to know what sur¬ 
faces he wants on his plasters, what 
joinings in his woodwork, what 
coursing and texture in his stone, and 
be able to show the workmen how to 
get these things. A coat and gloves 
thrown aside on a scaffolding, and a 
trowel or chisel in hand, do more 
for good architecture than does the 
prodigal expenditure of alba paper 
and 2b pencils and sponge rubber. 
The Legend of the Pekinese 
As an ancient story goes, a lion 
fell in love with a marmoset, but 
she was so tiny and he so big she 
was frightened all the time of her 
monstrous wooer, and he was dis¬ 
tressed, so he went to the powers 
who governed and said, “What can I 
do? I am sick with love, but I 
cannot make my voice small or my 
body small.” The god said, “You 
must remain as you are; you are the 
“King of the forest—be content.” 
But the lion grieved and grieved 
and grew thin and sick until he 
was a shadow and he nearly died, and 
the little marmoset felt sorry 
for her kingly lord and the lion felt 
his suit was not entirely lost and 
went back to the gods of the forest. 
“I shall die as I am if you do not 
help me,” he said. “Make me into 
any other shape, that I at least may 
sit beside my love and not fill her 
with terror of me.” 
A congress of all was held, 
and when they saw that the lion 
would die of a broken heart they de¬ 
cided to change him into another 
shape, and they said, “We must hu¬ 
miliate you to a certain extent for 
not being satisfied that you are the 
glorious monarch of the forest, and 
we will give you the shape of a 
dog, small and shapely.” 
The lion said he was happy and 
content and he was changed then 
and there into a small dog with a 
mane and small loins. They said, 
“You will start a new kind of dog— 
you will have a face of a lion and 
a mane and body of a lion and be 
tawny and your color will be of the 
sun, and forever and ever you will 
be known as ‘lion dog.’ ” 
This was the beginning of the 
Pekinese and today though centuries 
old he retains these characteristics 
of the lion, and is called the “lion 
dog.” 
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