INSIDE THE 
HOUSE 
Timely Suggestions and 
Answers to Correspondents 
Hand-Blocked Prints, a New In¬ 
dustry in America 
H AND-BLOCKED chintz, designed 
in an artist’s studio in this coun¬ 
try and printed for the first time in his 
workshop here in 1915, marks the begin- 
In the chestnut design the leaves are green and yellow, 
the nuts red on black and white 
lung of a new epoch, not alone in the pro¬ 
duction of modern decorative textiles but 
in art as associated with this industry in 
America. 
Always accustomed to look to the 
European studios for designs and to their 
long-established industries for fabrics of 
artistic merit, we may be a bit slow to 
grasp the fact that the United States has 
taken its first step in this field. 
Since America became interested in 
that form of modern art as applied to 
fabrics used in the home, the liking for 
them has grown tremendously. All these 
new drapery stuffs were made abroad and 
could only be had by importation. But 
there are fine artists here; why not have 
them make designs as the artists do 
abroad ? Designing, however, was not so 
difficult as reproducing the design on the 
blocks of hard wood, from which it is 
transferred in properly blended colors on 
to the natural linen. The printing is the 
most difficult of the whole process, and 
only skilled workmen are entrusted with 
the work, which is done entirely by hand. 
All the fabrics which are illustrated 
are designed in one studio, but by different 
artists, and they are printed in the one 
workshop. Virtually the industry has been 
transplanted from the studios and Werk- 
staettcn of Europe, but not literally, 
though it seems to have taken root firmly 
here. The industry is not in an experi¬ 
mental state, for the promoter of it has 
had years of artistic training in the 
ateliers of France and the Werkstaetten 
of Austria. 
There is only one feature of this textile 
development that is really new to this 
country: the indefinable relationship be¬ 
tween a people and the things which are 
a part of their life; which stamps itself 
upon its architecture, its painting; which 
runs through its music, and which is 
manifest in the development and decora¬ 
tion of homes, by all of which we recog¬ 
nize one country or people from another, 
even as we recognize racial characteristics 
and different personality. Such is national 
individuality. 
It is this relationship, this individuality, 
which is subtly struggling for expression 
in American decorative fabrics. It is our 
A pretty conception for the nursery or child’s bed¬ 
room — a girl and rabbit motif in reds and black 
virile, democratic spirit which the artist 
seeks to suggest in these new chintzes — 
to express the intermingling of the spirit 
of the new with the art traditions, the 
ages of training, the inherited feeling and 
invaluable ideals of the old. 
America is inheriting the artistic efforts 
The bell flowers in this print are red, blue and green 
in pronounced tones; the ground black 
of Europe. In this instance it is the 
movement of late years in England, Ger¬ 
many, France, Austria and Flungary to 
establish a high standard of decoration 
independent of the much-overworked 
“period styles," to create a style which is 
of our own time and which shall in some 
degree embody the artistic ideals of the 
present. The result has been to form an 
association which includes all the indus¬ 
trial undertakings that co-operate with 
artists in the elaboration of their products, 
whether the member be the architect of 
a palace, the builder of an automobile or 
the designer of printed linens or silks. 
Only those manufacturers are eligible to 
membership in these associations who 
work hand in hand with trained artists, 
and every artist's work is signed, whether 
he designs printed fabrics or the abode 
of royalty. 
Because of the high standard required 
of designers the artists have largely taken 
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