Art crafts for amateurs

Front matter

ART CRAFTS FOR AMATEURS.

THE TRAINING OF A CRAFTSMAN.

By Fred Mii^eer. With 161 Illustrations by various workers in the Art Crafts. Contents : The Craftsman and Nature — Design and Craftsmanship — Metal Work — Repousse and Fine Metal Work — Wrought Iron — Jewelry — Enameling — Potters and Painters — Glass Painters — Wood- Carvers— Bookbinders — Women Workers in the Art Crafts — Surface Decoration — Wall Papers and Textiles — The Craftsman of To Day.

Preface

Two visits to the Paris Exhibition, which was, indeed, a microcosm of human endeavour, enabled the author to widen his outlook, and by enlarging the scope of his inquiries make the following pages, therefore, of more interest to the reader, as the newer tendencies stirringcraftsmen abroad have been touched upon.

This work is published three years after the author's " Training of a Craftsman," which might be considered a sequel to the present book, and to which he refers those readers who, having followed the writer with some pleasure and profit to themselves, would like to carry their studies further.

Contents

CHAP, PAGE

I. A Method of Study i

II. Wood Carving 15

Chapter I. The Amateur As Designer: A Method Of Study

o^V^S^ WIDESPREAD and increasing interest is now

^H>y. taken in the art crafts, and the more than

\/J creditable work shown every year at the

Albert Hall, under the auspices of the

Home Arts Association, each exhibition being

an advance upon the previous one, is evidence

that this interest is not a mere abstraction of the T ...

nature of counsels of perfection, but a vital impulse

that finds very capable expression. I have placed here some

specimens of the work executed under the direction of the

Home Arts Association, or at all events the outcome of this

movement to develop the hand-cunning of villagers, and I

think it will be acknowledged that astonishing progress has

been made since the Association began its work. The

painting of flowers and sketching from nature, that were the

accomplishments of the more educated among us half-a-

century ago, have given place to work in which craftsmanship

B

ART CRAFTS FOR AMATEURS.

is brought into play, or where the hand is exercised to a fuller extent than the head and heart. Lest I should be misunderstood in this remark, let us contrast wood carving, a typical craft as well as a favourite one with amateurs, with water-colour sketching. The time occupied in scheming out a design is small in comparison with the time taken in carving it : the finger-skill or hand-cunning is of more importance than the purely mental qualities called into play in designing the work to be wrought, and it is for this reason that there are many more people to be found who can carve a creditable panel than make a sketch of equal excellence in its particular way ; the sketch demanding much delicacy of perception and finesse, which come partly from temperament and partly to very strenuous endeavour and long practice.

It is therefore a wise step to give up trying to paint very poor pictures and to engage in one of the many crafts within the reach and compass of amateurs. In these pages I address myself mainly to those who have started work, but require a helping hand, and that mainly as to what to do and what is best worth doing, though I venture to hope I may be of some helpfulness to the mere beginner.

So many amateurs soon come to pause for the want of a little directing as to what sort of designs they shall carry out. Undoubtedly what every amateur should strive for is to make his own designs, for truly a design should grow under the fingers, evolve as the hands manipulate the tools, and it is a drawback to have a set design before one which has to be literally adhered to. The best work is that which grows under the craftsman's hand, for it is well-nigh impossible for anyone to see what should be done from the beginning ; it must be evolved as the work proceeds. A sketch is much what the heads of a sermon are to the delivered oration.

If the craftsman were in every sense the author of the work, it would gain both in interest and character, and to that end I shall hope to direct particular attention in these

No. r. — Beaten Copper Mirror Frame (Fivemiletown, Co. Tyrone). This and the four following cuts show the excellent work produced in villages and small towns by amateur craftsmen.

pages to the matter of design, and it is a reasonable hope that this book may not only stimulate, but help those workers who peruse it to carry out their own ideas instead of merely executing what some one else has invented. As I am responsible for a proportion of the designs given in

ART CRAFTS FOR AMATEURS.

these pages, it may not be out of place to say that my chiet object in giving them is that they may do something to elucidate the text and help the reader to tread with somewhat surer footing the slippery pathway of the art he has essayed to follow. I am very conscious of the shortcomings of many of the designs, but no worker is called upon to use them further than they may be of suggestive value to him. Treat these drawings as raw material which every worker can use in his own way : no harm will then befall anyone, and some of my efforts may thus be of value in suggesting ideas and schemes which can be fashioned and shaped by " the tools' true play." All mere drawings of this nature, destined to be carried out by the crafts, suffer from this disadvantage, that they in no sense give the slightest idea of the appearance of the completed work itself. A design for a carved panel and a photograph of the panel when carved, are two very different things, and as there are many examples scattered through these pages engraved from photographs of the actual objects, they, by contrast, make the mere drawings for the same crafts appear exceedingly thin and commonplace. This is not said to excuse deficiencies, but to warn the reader that only the bare facts can be given in a sketch — the charm of workmanship, the beauty of surface, tooling, and all that goes to make craftsmanship is wanting. It is much as though we took the plot of Ivanhoe and gave it to a person, expecting them to judge of the novel by this mere catalogue of names and incidents.

The tendency of all designs for the crafts is to be wanting in simplicity, and this I think comes about through the desire of the designer to make a pretty-looking drawing.

A METHOD OF STUDY.

Just as the synopsis of a story seems very bald and commonplace when printed, so does a sketch made for any craft look thin and empty, and yet if carried out this very poorlooking drawing would in all likelihood be far more effective and suited to the craft than a highly ornate one. Were we just to draw in outline some of the photographs in these pages, which, taken direct from the objects themselves, give t

No. 2. — Oak Chest. Locking Class, under Miss Gimingham.

some slight sense of the beauty of material in which they are wrought and the skill of the hand that fashioned them, we should find that there would be a great want of charm in them. Point can be given to this remark by instancing a line tooled on leather, and one drawn on paper. Draw on paper a choice binding, and it resembles the work itself

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about as much as a phonograph does the song or playing it records.

The publishers have been lavish in the matter of illustrations, and have allowed me to give a very large number of examples. It is only possible to do this and keep the book at a moderate price where a large stock of blocks can be drawn upon. In fact, it is only since blocks have been made by the half-tone process direct from photographs of actual work that a book such as this could be issued. In making the selection of illustrations I have endeavoured to be as eclectic as possible, so that craftsmanship generally can be studied, and not just one phase of it. I would carefully guard against a disposition to put forward certain styles or methods of work as a standard of excellence to which all should conform. In looking at the prize works from the schools of art throughout the country exhibited this summer at South Kensington, one was struck by the fashion there is in designs. A certain likeness was observable in a number of the sketches which one could trace to their source, and though this tendency may be inevitable, it does not appear to me one to be encouraged. Style is individuality, and though this is a well-worn maxim it is nevertheless constantly being ignored by teachers and professors. The contemplation of examples, however excellent they be, if it lead to the exclusion of personality and character, is detrimental to the work of the student. Greek art is perfect in its way, but what a stagnation and dry up of all that makes work interesting and vital ensued from a slavish adherence to what were termed canons of taste, said to be derived from a study of classical examples. There is no longer any art salvation in the acanthus leaf or honeysuckle border j we must go to fresh sources of inspiration ; if need were, track the unknown, for the well-worn pathway has become too polished for us to find foothold. Did not the time come in English painting for a departure from the schools, and hence the pre-Raphaelite movement which led the student to contemplate some earlier masters than Raphael ?

No. 3. — Embossed Copper Work.

By the Yattenden Class, under Mrs. Waterhouse.

I was severely rebuked by one critic who reviewed my former work, The Training of a Craftsman, for my advocacy of individuality in art, making it the expression of one's ego. - " A lot of young men and women doing what they think is right in their own eyes forsooth ! " Would

ART CRAFTS FOR AMATEURS.

these same young men and women be any more interesting if they slavishly conformed to certain canons, the said canons being the learned professor's conception of what art should be? It is obvious enough that genius is a rare thing, but we all have that within us which makes us different in some way from other people, and slight as this personality may be, it should surely find expression and not be sneered out of existence by some superior person who can only move and think by precedent. The Chinese have gone on through the centuries contemplating and studying their nine classics, but what advance do they make ?

We must be constantly breaking fresh ground if our crops are not to deteriorate, and though what is grown on the new soil may at first be a little coarse, that is better surely than the attenuation of over-cultivation and emasculation through loss of virility ; for art, like people, can be bred out of all use.

Vigour, character, even barbarity and crudity, are better qualities in art than a suave conventional perfection, the hard polish, the splendidly null. The art that is most stimulating to study is the art of savages, or at all events of primitive peoples. The more civilised nations become the more conventional becomes the expression of their emotions, and we need to get down to the bed-rock of human nature if we are to receive the most vital stimulus that the study of other work can give. The art turned out by schools is generally speaking deadening in its regulated, codified perfection ; it just lacks the " savageness " which lays hold of one as the tiger's paw does its prey.

Let us reverence and love old work. Having spent a good deal of time in museums I may claim to have some

A METHOD OF STUDY.

slight acquaintance with much that is good : my advice to my readers is by all means study old work ; go where it is to be seen, draw specimens that appeal to you, but avoid imitating it. Try and do something on your own, and to

No. 4. — Tooled Bookbinding.

By the Leighton Buzzard Class, under Miss Bassett.

keep your soul sweet, never cease going to the fountain head, Nature, for she, after all, is the source of all inspiration. You can exhaust everything else but her. Always be on the look out for agreeable lines, pleasant shapes ; keep on

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the alert for striking combinations ; ideas may come to one at any moment, suggested by the most unlikely material. It is true that the basis of ornament is plant-form, and more ideas may come to one through that source than any other, but a suggestion for the planning and arranging of your material may come from a fish's bone, a bird's wing, the markings on a moth, as I have endeavoured to show in my Training of a Craftsman. Therefore the worker should make a practice of sketching from nature — not merely plant form, but any form. A note should at once be made when an idea or suggestion comes to one, so treacherous is the memory; and remember this, that by cultivating a faculty you not only increase its receptiveness, but also its activity. You may start by having no ideas, and yet by degrees, by getting the mind travelling that way, astonish yourself by your fertility of resource. It is another instance of a waste place blossoming as the rose. The great difficulty we all experience is to start the mind, to overcome the inertia due to inactivity. It is something like getting a gas engine to move which has been cold for a long time ; overcome the initial difficulty and it will work away right well.

It is easy to adapt a design drawn for one kind of work to fit it for some other, but where this is done the alterations must be made with circumspection, for nothing is in worse taste than to see, say, the effect of tooled leather, produced by inlaying. Those who work in leather soon learn to know what can best be done by tooling just as those who inlay learn to appreciate the effects given by letting in coloured woods in a panel; and that brings us back once more to our former position, the desirability of each worker being the designer of his own handiwork instead of working

With regard to fashion in design which I touched upon in a former paragraph, no one can help being influenced by

ART CRAFTS FOR AMATEURS.

the work one admires around him ; but there gets to be a feeling abroad that, because a very dominating personality works in a particular way, that is the only excellent way of working. What so often happens is that the followers of a strong personality imitate their master's weaknesses and leave out the qualities that make him a master mind. It is as unfortunate as it is true that the affectations and conventionalities are the qualities seized upon and perpetuated by pupils, while the spirit denominating the whole is lost sight of. Just as we quicker see the faults and failings of our friends than their excellencies, so we lay hold of the mere surface trickery of artists and think that, because we get the knack of reproducing that side of the man, we must be making progress. Set no one up as a master, be no man's pupil, but a student of the world with all that is of good report under one's purview. One's equilibrium is thus preserved when many influences are pulling at one. Study what you most affect is well-worn but very excellent advice, for there are always those who wish to force upon one sets of principles, and who at once enunciate canons which they would have us receive as infallible dogmas just because they have a penchant for certain old work. Think of the books that in one's youth came to one with an overwhelming recommendation which our own feelings did not endorse, so that much of one's time was spent in trying to like that which one's ego rebelled at. My own experience is that it is only after years of study one learns to see the transcendent qualities in the very work one is expected to venerate at the outset of one's career : those classical examples which it was more the custom in the past than it is now to force upon the tyro's attention. Were I to be

A METHOD OF STUDY.

T3 planning out the training of a student in the crafts I should devote much more time to work direct from nature than

No. 6. — Carved Wood Panel.

Welbeck Class ; designed by Joseph Phillips.

seeing nature through the eyes of other folk, which is what r4

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we do when we accept others' rendering of what is seen. And for the amateur who follows a craft as a pleasant recreation, a hobby in which he can forget some of the miseries and disappointments of life, man being a tool-using animal who should rejoice in his labour, that being his portion, he should certainly be influenced from within rather than from without, and do that which he feels rather than what someone else tells him he should feel. While any work is in progress try and visit a museum where good examples in that particular craft are to be seen. It is wonderful how helpful a museum is when one visits it for a definite purpose ; so different to the feeling one experiences when one walks around with no motive to direct one's gaze to anything in particular.

In the following pages we will give some individual attention to the leading art-crafts, and the best way, it seems to me, to set about imparting knowledge is to treat the reader as an apprentice, and let him pick up the dodges, wrinkles, or whatever you like to term the helps the professional worker resorts to, and for the want of which the amateur is so severely handicapped.

Chapter II. Wood Carving

HAVE chosen Wood Carving for our first practical lesson owing to its undoubted popularity among nonprofessional workers ; and the reason for this is not far to seek. It is a craft calling into play the utmost amount of resource and hand-cunning, as well as dexterity in the use of tools, while it does not leave out the higher attributes of fancy, ingenuity, and even imagination itself, wherewith to direct the fingers, and the " trick of the tools' true play." Casaubon in " Middlemarch " was recommended to take up turning as a relaxation to his serious and brain-wearing pursuit of discovering the " key to all the mythologies": wood carving would probably have suited him better as being more " brainy " than turning, without being too serious a strain upon the nerves.

I assume that most of my readers are craftsmen, for it is not the intention of this work to give preliminary instruction so much as to direct their work, to suggest various methods of treating the material, how the amateur can best utilise his energy, and turn his labour to advantage, though at the end of the chapter will be found a few hints useful to those starting work for the first time. Above all I wish to help him to original efforts by essaying to show him how nature may be adapted to the requirements of each craft, to the end that all workers may be able to express their individuality instead of being content to be copyists or reproducers of the work of other minds and hands. For

No. 7. — Sketch design for carved table-top in which the Vine is used as the motif. The work is kept entirely flat, the effect being obtained chiefly by the " grounding out," for beyond the veining of the leaves, and the slight cutting away of one form to give relief to another coming against it, the actual carving ends there. It would be possible to treat this design as a carving in low relief. By planning the design geometrically it matters not from which side it is seen.

surely every one desires to be original, to express the ideas which are born in his brain — his ego, as it is termed. But to originate one's own designs is for most amateurs the

WOOD CARVING.

difficulty, and comparatively few attempt it because they are not directed how to set about it ; yet it is by no means easy to obtain designs. The few that are to be purchased are too often quite unworthy the labour involved in carrying them out, and it always seems to me a grievous waste of time to merely employ the fingers, to lavish a high degree of skill upon a poor or unsuitable design.

We know that there is nothing new under the sun, and it is given to very few to make a fresh departure in any branch of work. But it is possible to see old things in a new way, and by colouring them with our personality to give them new life. Old work, so powerful a source of inspiration and stimulus to most of us, instead of being servilely reproduced can be adapted and altered, and by passing through our brain and receiving the impress of ourselves, comes out of our minds' mint with a new superscription : we hall mark it, in fact.

The vine design, for instance, No. 7, was suggested by a panel of old German carving ; yet the departures made are sufficiently important to enable men to claim it as original. One engineer friend who has made wood carving his hobby, and has obtained considerable skill in the use of tools, gets his designs by taking rubbings of old carving he meets with in churches ; but unless one exercises some skill in the selection and arrangement of such material, it is apt to look scrappy and wanting in unity of design. It is essential in planning out an idea to have some notion of how the work will look as a whole, some central scheme which ties the work together and gives it a one-ness. It is no use thinking of details until the main lines of the work are securely laid, ,and this plan of carving bits and then putting them

c l8

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all together later on cannot lead to the best results. Take the examples of seventeenth-century carving in Nos. 8 and 9

No. 8. — These two fragments from the Pulpit in the no-longer-existing Church of St. Mildred, in the Poultry, London, are very characteristic of the time. The carving is in considerable relief, so that it can be undercut. The " frame," which was the border to each panel, would make a very good pictureframe, as the design is admirably adapted to wood carving. The fruit festoons are met with in all work which has been classed as "Grinling Gibbons."

from the pulpit of St. Mildred's Church (now no more), and it

ART CRAFTS FOR AMATEURS.

I must be pardoned for referring to my own work as a designer, but illustrations in such a work being as important as the letterpress, feeble as one's efforts may be, one can better illustrate one's own ideas, than find them illustrated for one. Moreover I do not give them as showing the only way, but merely one way of treating wood, leaving each reader to take and reject what he will. He can adapt me just as I adapt material I come across. Wood carving has been so trammelled by the past that few carvers have had the courage to seek to get out of the groove of precedent. This bondage of the past is sadly hampering to anything like originality. What we want now is work of to-day, the style of the nineteenth century instead of thirteenth century Gothic, Cinquecento, Francois I. and the rest of the " Schools." In my Training of a Craftsman (H. Virtue and Company, Limited, 1897), I have exalted the ego above all tradition and that adherence to precedent which so checks all original impulse, and to the amateur I say emphatically, let your work be yourself : it is better that it should be that, and even rococ o, than very chaste and in " perfect style," but a shadow of some one else.

I am no purist in the matter of style. ' Learn of every one, study in all schools, but copy no one. We are constantly having a critic starting up and claiming his one way of looking at nature and rendering his impressions as the way. There is no one way : there are at least, according to Rudyard Kipling, nine-and-sixty. I am Gothic in sentiment, and for many years was blinded to the work which for convenience is grouped under the head of Renaissance. Yet the three old examples of wood carving I give are all of the latter school, and I have done this with intention, for so

WOOD CARVING.

2 I much amateur carving is merely a servile copy of Gothic work wherein the letter is seen, the spirit having escaped,

No. 10. — Tnis is a rough sketch of a portion of the carved panels forming the Screen in Trinity College, Oxford. The workmanship is as fine as anything I know, and the whole being pierced, has a light and elegant appearance which is delightful. The design is very intricate, but the ingenuity with which the curves play into each other evinces much skill and resource. The wreaths and festoons are good instances of the seventeenth-century " conceits " so often met with in the decoration of the time. The introduction of angels' heads gives a human interest to the work.

that it appeared likely to lead to more useful ends to examine the work which is considered to be opposed to the Gothic

No. ii. — Nature Notes used in making Designs 6 and 7. It will be noticed that apples are anything but round, and their angular nature should be made a feature of in a carving based on the apple. '•Truth to nature" is being true to the growth of the plant you base your design upon, however much you may ornamentalise certain features of the plant. If you depart from nature, be sure that you gain thereby.

WOOD CARVING.

tradition. The examples are so characteristic as well as excellent in themselves that that was quite sufficient reason to warrant me giving them had I no other. While a study of Gothic will give our work robustness, virility, and a feeling for nature, a study say of the screen by Grinling Gibbons— a fragment of which I give a sketch of in No. 10 — will teach us grace and balance, a feeling for curves and ingenuity in the interweaving of scrolls; while the original at Oxford will reveal to us the possibilities of wood under the hands of a craftsman who could hold a gouge with a skill and unhesitating assurance — a contemptuous indifference — which makes him one of the greatest of English carvers. Yet because much of Gibbons' work is of the " papery" finicking order, best styled rococo, some present-day craftsmen pretend to see nothing but what is bad in it. There may be

Nc. 12.— Carved Lamp Bracket, treated with decorative adaptation of the apple in low relief. The stems are highly ornamentalised, but in other respects nature is followed.

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no further any artistic salvation in the acanthus leaf in design, all that that mine could yield having been worked out until no ore remains for us, but it is a wilful narrowing of our sympathies to shut out from our purview the work of such a genius as this great seventeenth-century carver. The two fragments, No. 8, from the pulpit in the no-

No. 13. — Clock Bracket. The introduction of the flowers in the bracket portion is a decorative " conceit," though it is often possible to find an apple tree flowering and fruiting at the same time, while in such plants as the blackberry and orange it is the usual course : it is left to the designer to select his example, as well as his point of view.

longer-existing Church of St. Mildred's, show the festoon conceit adapted to a pilaster. A central rod supports the flowers and fruit, which are attached to it by ribbons, while an undulating scroll of foliage twists around it. The frame is one which has often been worked, and will continue to

WOOD CARVING.

be carved, as it is so thoroughly adapted to the needs of the carver, as the designs seem to swell out of the moulding. Many modifications of it are possible.

No. 14.— Design for Carved Oak Mantelpiece. The shelf is intended to be supported by the projecting capitals on either side, while these in turn are supported by the tree. No individual tree is referred to, as being architectural in position, a too naturalistic rendering would be out of place. The smaller " trees " also lend support to the shelf as well as dividing the length into panels. The flowers occupying these spaces are more naturalistic.

The study of old work should run parallel with a study of nature, and I would say that one is of no use without the other. Nature alone might suffice, but there is this danger to guard against, viz., a tendency to imitate nature in wood.