14 
HO USE & GARDEN 
“Vanity” is a beautifully balanced panel. The foreground figure is deep flesh, the 
peacocks blues and greens, the four smaller figures yellow against a salmon sky 
P ERHAPS more than at any other time we are 
living in the day of the individual, when indi¬ 
vidual expression is welcomed and encouraged, 
unfettered and unhampered. 
This movement toward freedom of thought and 
its fearless expression has been given a general 
name — “Modern” Art, but already the term has 
been so abused and misused that we have almost 
ceased to realize what it stands for. It has been 
called a Viennese movement, a German movement, 
a French movement—yet it is each of these, and 
all of them, combined with still more; for the un¬ 
derlying feeling throbs throughout the world, and 
we must recognize it as a world movement, though 
naturally varying in degrees and forms of expres¬ 
sion. 
To a great number of persons Art has always 
meant just pictures, paintings on canvas; and this 
feeling has existed partly because those artists 
whose names have come down to us since artists 
have been known, used that as the medium of ex¬ 
pression. Elowever, we find to-day, the world 
over, our big men and women artists using other 
materials and methods for their mediums of ex¬ 
pression, and putting their best selves into it with 
such earnestness as they have bestowed heretofore 
only in their pictures. 
The methods and materials themselves are most 
assuredly not new — the newness lies not in the 
physical rendering of the art or craft, but in the 
spirit which is back of it; in the recognition of 
the artist that he can express himself just as truly, 
and in as wholly dignified a manner, through an¬ 
other medium, as he could with his paints and 
canvas. 
Batik, a method of dyeing materials, is new to 
a great many people, yet batik has been for the 
last several hundred years, and still continues to 
be, the customary way of dyeing employed by the 
natives of Java. The designs are obtained by a 
process of dipping in dye again and again, as many 
times as the complexity of the pattern requires, 
with the aid of wax to cover the parts not wished 
to be dyed. The Javanese natives have acquired 
proficiency and skill in the execution of the work, 
applying it mostly to very coarse materials for 
costumes or dresses, but their designs, though for 
the most part interesting, and often intricate, are 
very crude. 
Shown here are three examples of batik, de¬ 
signed and executed by C. Bertram Hartman. He 
is no native of Java, yet he has combined the 
skill of the native workman with his own inimi¬ 
table expressions of humor and seriousness, 
dreams and realities; and in so doing, is opening 
our eyes to the almost unlimited possibilities of 
this interesting work. We must all of us feel with 
Mr. Hartman that these panels are in every way 
as dignified as paintings — just as beautiful, and 
just as durable. 
For interior decorations of almost every kind 
where a textile can be used, batik is appropriate 
and offers endless advantages over stencilling and 
block-printing; any color effects can be gotten, 
and while with a stencil or a block-print it is al¬ 
ways evident that the design is something put on 
the textile, with batik the design becomes a part 
of the material itself. 
The panels reproduced here are for wall deco¬ 
rations, and well they might beautify any wall, 
k rom the effects of these we can imagine with 
delight batik applied to rich portieres for instance, 
on thin silk curtains, or in fact on any kind of 
drapery, and in designs and coloring to fit in any 
kind of a room. With the help of batik we may 
cover our cushions with delicate soft lined crea¬ 
tions, or make of them stunning rainbows of 
colorings, and for lighting purposes we may have 
most unusual lamp shades, the effect of which 
could be obtained in no other way. Batik also 
will come to be used more and more for women’s 
wearing apparel, for instance on gowns or cloaks, 
