LAND AND WATER 
January 20, 1916. 
the crafts revival in America and German\', always 
committed the fault of holding aloof fpom the 
machine. They always assumed that the machine- 
made article was radicalh^ bad ; when the fact is 
that it may be either good or bad. It is the 
planning and the treatment that matter. When 
they might have designed, advised, controlled, 
our craftsmen maintained a detached superiority. 
They might have saved our manufacturers from 
producing shopfuls of " artistic" horrors. 
Which leads me to the second indictment of 
my correspondent— perhaps I may be allowed for 
the occasion to put aside the formal solemnity of 
impersonality — namely that I claim that the 
(iermans have honoured the prophets of our house- 
hold whom we ha\'e preferred to leave unrecog- 
nised. Well, it is simply true. The doctrine 
preached by Morris and developed by Professor 
Lethabv of honest intention in manufacture, 
has been seized upon in Germany and put to 
excellent use. Perhaps I may be allowed in 
explanation to quote what I have written else- 
where. This doctrine "steers us'past alfsuch mistakes 
as making wall-paper to represent tiles, or linoleum 
to simulate parquet work ; plaster pilasters or 
iron mantel-shelves to look like marble ; deal doors 
grained like — well, like nothing actually on earth, 
but alleged to be like oak ; transparent paper to 
imitate stained glass, and a score of other such 
imbecihties. 
" If you want a biscuit box yott really ought 
not to make it look like a bag of golf clubs, or six 
volumes of Shakespeare, or a Chippendale cabinet 
— all current examples. vSuch monstrosities make 
thoroughly bad boxes. Design your box frankly 
for what it is meant to be, a receptacle to hold 
sweets or biscuits ; decorate it gaily with an 
amusing pattern, bold or delicate as your fancy 
dictates, and your biscuit box may become really 
a thing of beauty, and long after its contents are 
consumed may serve as a work-box or tea-caddy 
that a princess might be content to use. You will 
find, as is common in such returns to sanity, you 
have also decreased the cost of manufacture." 
The Germans have had the imagination to 
apply on these lines the admirable maxims which 
were made in England by the Arts and Crafts fellow- 
ship. On the other hand, as I wrote. " the history of 
modem British commerce is largely the history of 
lost opportunity and lack of imagination." To make 
his point that the German passion for organisation 
and efficiency has run amok with disastrous 
re.sults, my correspondent has added the gloss of 
" and art " after the word " commerce." But I 
deliberately refrained in this connection from 
speaking of art, that desperately controversial 
thing. Art certainly cannot be organised ! But 
I see no serious danger in a wide application or 
adaptation of tW principles of honest crafts- 
manship to manufacture. 
" The history of modern German commerce 
and art is largely the history of opportunities 
seized and exploited with an even greater lack of 
imagination," retorts the critic. Yet I think we 
need to concern ourselves less with these Teutonic 
excesses than with our own defects in this matter. 
It may show lack of imagination to run the whole 
business to death by the feverish application of 
principles, but it surely shows less to make no 
attempt to apply them at all. 
But let me be fair to my critic, who is not :i 
mere iminstructed grumbler, but a recognised 
authority in his craft. " Itis one of the greatest 
difficulties — -the difficulty of contending with those 
who imagine that because the Germans take up 
everything with such astonishing voracity and 
thoroughness, that therefore they do it well. 
Now the particular case of Morris and the 
English attempt to revive good printing and calli- 
graphy is an excellent example to the contrary. 
The Germans' exploitation of the distinguished 
scribe to whom your contributor refers, their 
translations of his books, *the institution of classes 
for the study and imitation of his ' style,' the 
foundation of factories for the production of 
special pens to make special lettering (just like 
the American screw-driver) — all these have re- 
sulted in a flood of the most abominable, sham- 
artistic, quasi-mediaeval and utterly German letter- 
ing, which no one but a modest English journalist 
viewing it with eyes blurred by tears and com- 
paring it with the smaller and wavering stream of 
English work, could regard as anything but a 
nightmare." 
As, to which it seems pertinent to distin- 
guish as follows : If the books are well-written 
the translation can be no. crime; if the classes 
are less for the study of the calligrapher's 
style than for the study of his craft through 
examples, which surely is a reading the facts 
will bear, that is well enough ; if, in fact, 
the chief discovery of the modern English calli- 
graphers was the old method of working with a 
blunt " point," and getting thicks and thins by 
a turn of the pen, not by pressure, then I see no 
fault in the manufacture of special pens capable 
of being used in that effective way. Nor is this 
of course in the very least degree ' like the Ameri- 
can screw-driver ! ' From my own observation in 
this field, I can assert that far from merely imitating, 
these aggressive German traders had produced, to- 
gether with much that was good, a good deal more 
of the rather deplorable, clumsy, "utterly German" 
lettering. But let me repeat, we need not be 
concerned with their failures. Their general atti- 
tude shows a willingness to learn, to exploit if 
you will. If my eyes are blurred by tears, it if^ 
because (in general, and) in particular with regard 
to the honourable craft of printing, with which I 
have some special acquaintance, it is rare in 
England to find a master printer who knows ov 
cares an^'thing about the history or high tradition 
of his manufacture, which is still so nearly a craft. 
Natm-a,lly all this has more significance 
to those practical men who are quite reasonably 
intent upon " capturing German trade " 
than to artist-craftsmen, whose detachment is, as 
one is glad to cotifess with respect, one of their 
fine qualities. But I will hazard this conclusion : 
avoid the German excesses in this matter ; recog- 
nise that there are limits to the exploitation of 
craftsmen in manufacture: but recognise also 
that there is a distinct and important function 
that they should be allowed or induced to fulfil, 
and that there are definite principles by which 
the course of manufacture, the reproduction of 
articles in bulk according to pattern, should be 
controlled. In general the English craftsmen ha\-e 
failed by undue. detachment as the manufacturers 
have failed, by indifference. The matter of the 
Devil's Devices, and tiie more general case against 
efficiency and organisation must be held over 
til! the next issue. 
