Vol- XIX, No. n. 
SYRACUSE, NEW YORK 
March 1918 
UR editorial of last month asking 
subscribers who would be interested 
in the reopening of our Summer 
School in the old Robineau Pottery 
to notify us, so that we would know 
what kind of support we could 
depend on, has brought so few 
answers that it is impossible for us 
to make a decision on the subject 
for the present. The teachers also, 
as is natural and right, ask us what guarantee we would give 
them that their trip here would not be profitless and of course 
we cannot give any guarantee unless we are assured in ad- 
vance of a substantial support. Let us hope that the war 
will soon be over and that we can again plan and do things as 
we did when conditions were normal. That there will be an 
art revival after the war there is no doubt. Let us prepare 
for it by keeping the fires alive as much and as well as we 
can during the difficult times of the present, and for our part 
we are ready to open our building of the old pottery to a 
summer school as soon as we see a demand for it. 
K » 
The treatment for last month's supplement, plate by 
May B. Hoelscher, was by mistake left out of tne February 
issue. It will be found in this number. 
» » 
Lack of space prevents us from giving in this issue an 
interesting lot of photographs of the last exhibition of the 
Chicago Society. We reserve them for April number. 
K M 
The term Applied Art has so long borne the good natured 
but rather snobbish attitude of the pictorial art class that 
every once in a while we have to pull ourselves together and 
remember the larger significance of the term. Instead of 
the narrow concept of applying decoration to an object we 
should remember that art applied is art made practical — a part 
of our lives. Art is the result of the power to perceive and 
express the truths of nature. Art expressions may be of an 
emotional, an intellectual or spiritual nature. 
The function of art is to transform the daily routine of 
living from the material— the laborious — to the plane of pure 
enjoyment. It should reveal to us the purpose back of all 
activity. 
The arts which contribute most to this realization must 
be those which may be most closely woven into the lives of a 
people. Applied art in its broader sense then includes all of 
the industrial — the useful arts'. 
Under this classification we have the important branch — 
mural painting or mural decoration. Mural painting, while 
pictorial in essence, is decorative in treatment and subject to 
the laws and limitations of decorative art. It is art applied 
to a specific purpose and limited to a given shape and space. 
It is symbolic in concept— it preaches while it delights and 
charms the senses. It combines the aesthetic (the imaginative) 
and the practical; aristocracy and democracy; it is essentially 
the art of service, it is art applied. 
Reinforced by this big brother the lesser decorative arts 
take on an added dignity and importance. 
Without enumerating all of the useful arts, we can in our 
minds run over the many ways in which art, applied to the 
ordinary things of life, contributes to our pleasure and educa- 
tion and lifts us consciously or sub-consciously above the purely 
physical aspects of labor. If the art of living is the consum- 
mation of the application to our daily lives of the principles 
underlying all art and (what artist can doubt this) surely the 
arts which enter most intimately into this process of evolution 
are the ones by which we expand mentally and spiritually and 
which transform our physical acts into purposeful processes. 
So let us not be unduly alarmed because the demand for 
art craftwork is temporarily suspended. The world cannot 
evolve without the stimulus of the beautiful. The desire to 
beautify is the creative instinct; the appreciation for the beau- 
tiful is the sign of sanity and progress. There is a force at 
work now which is trying to preserve to the world the ideals 
which this generation as a whole has attained. This force 
is the concrete expression of ideals for which art in all its forms 
is responsible. (For is not art in its highest and fullest sense 
synonymous with religion?) When this victory is won and 
sanity and good will restored — evolution will resume its normal 
processes and the demand for the beautiful combined with 
the useful will reappear. The very necessity for the preserva- 
tion of the ideals we had gained,. has resulted in a spiritual 
growth in those actively contending, which we as yet hardly 
comprehend. This spiritual exaltation infused into the next 
generation must result in larger appreciation and a greater 
desire for artistic surroundings. We are only a few degrees 
less shocked at the wanton destruction of the art expressions 
of the past centuries, than at the terrible sacrifice of life. This 
is because these things destroyed are more to us than the 
physical structure. They represent the creative impulse of 
the generation past. They are concrete evidences of spiritual 
forces which impelled those workmen to put- their ideals into 
form. 
To come back to our own craft — it has been said recently 
that keramic art is a thing of the past and has no future. A 
thing of the past it surely is — for it stands as the most complete 
and conclusive evidence we have of past civilization. Through 
it we retrace our steps from the present back to races so re- 
mote that it constitutes the only records extant. 
As an art of the future, so long as the creative impulse 
persists in human nature, we will embellish those most useful 
and intimate objects of daily life, and with the added inspira- 
tion and knowledge gained through close association with the 
other arts of the period, we will some day cease running to and 
fro and settle down to the business of expressing our own 
impulses and ideals in a way which will establish evidence of 
this period for the Museums of the future. 
No other branch of decorative art has ever gained such a 
grip on the people of this generation as keramic art. It may 
not for a long period regain the immense popularity it has enjoyed 
in the past, but it is for us to say whether or not it shall die out 
for want of sincere devotees. 
Human nature is easily swayed and we are still much like 
sheep to follow a leader blindly, but we do not have to do this, 
it is "up to us." There are some, who, having exhausted the 
commercial possibilities of some one phase of an art will aban- 
don it for something more profitable: anyone is free to do so, 
