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General view of Cambrai. 
professional artist can often make useful suggestions, but before 
they can bear fruit they must be translated into terms of the, 
material by craftsmen who know its "ways" in their very bones. 
In all the handicraft exhibitions that I have seen, the 
products of the loom and the needle struck me as being 
much better than anything else, and I believe that there are 
good reasons for this. For one thing, both weaving and 
needlework compel a close relationship between design and 
execution. In weaving, the design is a matter of warp and 
woof, involved in the very structure of -the piece ; and all 
needlework designs, from embroidery to lace, are an elabora- 
tion of definite stitches. You cannot fudge your design 
into shape as you can in painting, but must commit yourself 
with every stitch. Properly speaking, of course, a painted 
design should be built up of definite brush-marks ; and there 
is an absorbingly interesting little book by Mr. Henry P. 
Bowie, which tells you all about the different strokes 
employed by the Chinese and Japanese painters ; but whereas 
you can paint anyhow without being found out except by 
experts, almost anybody can see bad stitching. Conse- 
quently, granting their comparative lowliness in the scale of 
expression, the arts of the loom and the needle have 
remained purer than most others. 
The bearing is, that what is true of them- ought to be true 
of all the o her arts, including what are called the fine arts ; 
and it is because the procedure of needlework is obvious that 
it makes a good object-lesson in artistic education. It may 
sound extravagant, but I believe that our arts will be 
regenerated from below; that real appreciation of painting 
will begin when everybody understands that granting its 
fuller and subtler capacity for expression, exactly the same 
rules apply to painting as to needlework. The question of 
lepresentation has nothing to do with the use or abuse of 
materials The Bayeux Tapesty is pictorial in every detail, 
but it is all done in terms of needlework. Nobody boggles 
at the stitches in a piece of embroidery, or asks why lace 
flowers are conventional ; and once it is recognised that paint- 
ing is designing in paint all difficulties about degrees of " like- 
ness " to Nature disappear. 
This would seem like going beyond the subject of handi- 
crafts into that of the fine arts if it were not that the future 
of both depends on abolishing the false distinction between 
them. The only true distinctions in the arts are based on 
the materials used in them ; and a man is a painter or a 
carver whether he paints furniture or pictures, or carves 
capitals or portrait busts. It is true that there is in the 
arts a rising scale of expression ; though to go back to needle- 
work, what could be more expressive than a piece of true 
" point " lace — -punto in aria " stitch in the air ? " Nothing 
approaches more nearly to Flaubert's ideal work of art 
" about nothing without external connections held together 
by the internal force of its style." Or, to quote an Italian 
writer, " Needle lace is the classic tongue of Italy, and the 
need to 
wood- 
so on — 
subject 
bobbin maker is its provincial dialect ; clear, vivacious, 
emphatic, sharing the merits and defects of the populace." 
The last eleven words might very well be taken to describe 
the characteristics of all Folk Art. There is no 
make a list of the different varieties of folk art 
carving, stained glass, jewellery, book-binding, and 
but in view of the sociological importance of the 
it would be worth while considering them all from this point 
of view of popularity— in the better meaning of the word. 
Nothing is worth encouraging in art that is not true to the 
habits of the race. This, by the way, is particularly true of 
the subject of toys. Personally, I am inclined to take toys 
very seriously, because they are the world of the race at its 
most impressible age. Anvbody who has had much to do with 
children knows that what may be called folk toys are the 
only toys that please in the long run ; and if you consider 
them carefully, you will find that not only are they very true 
to their materials— the wooden horse, very wooden, the rag 
doll very raggy, and tl e woolly dog very woolly— but that 
they renounce all minor accidents of " likeness " in favour or 
a boldly synthetic treatment of natural forms. This is im- 
mensely significant. The reason why the child prefers the 
home-made doll is not that it is home-made — for children are 
not sentimental— but that with all its defects it is on the whole 
a more effecti\ e summary of the human form than the shop 
article. Fundamental instincts batten upon fundamental 
character and let refinements go hang — and there is one of 
the secrets of art. This truth should be borne in mind in 
designing and making toys, particularly now that disabled 
soldiers and sailors are being turned to the work. 
If Folk Art be not the only real art there is, it is, at any 
rate, the best field for the discovery of artistic principles ; 
because in it you are close up against the two main factors 
in any form of art ! the stuff and the people. 
Northamptonshire Lace 
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