1 of

You are browsing the full text of the article: Industrial Art at the Academy

 

 

Click here to go back to the list of articles for Issue: Volume: 3 of Design For Today

 

Design For Today   3   1935  Page: 5
 
 Industrial Art at the Academy
Profiles: click on name to see profile
 
Adams, Maurice S.R. [1887-1941. UK. Architect/Furniture Designer]
Footnotes:
Working drawing of design for glass end-piece by Maurice Adams
Zoom:
 100% 200% Full Size
Brightness:
Contrast:
Saturation:
 
INDUSTRIAL ART AT THE ACADEMY

By Christian Barman, F.R.I.B.A.

Everybody in this country who is intelligently interested in the future of our industries now realises that unless the co-operation of our best designers can somehow be secured the prospect is cheerless indeed. And, to these people, no single event since 1918 has done as much to bring this cooperation nearer as is likely to be done by the Exhibition of Art in Industry which opens at Burlington House on January 4th next. Will this important event live up to our expectations ? Will it send, as the promoters doubtless mean that it should, the thoughts of a whole nation travelling rapidly along new, adventurous paths ? As these lines will appear in print a day or two before the opening of the Exhibition, it would be foolish to ponder on such questions in too great detail. A few words of speculative enquiry may, however, not be out of place.

First, as to the physical fact : the exhibition itself. Everybody knows those gloomy galleries with their cliff-like, top-lighted walls and beetling over-doors : it would be difficult to think of more unsuitable or more uncongenial quarters. Was it worth while to put up with these depressing rooms in order to secure the glamour and the prestige that hang about the name of Burlington House ? That is a question to which we must presently return : meanwhile it is safe to prophesy that the majority of visitors will be greatly surprised when they see what Mr. Maufe, Mr. Oliver Hill, Mr. Lawrence Irving and the others have done to cover up the most obnoxious features of the building and to brighten the atmosphere generally. Yet, starting with such a heavy handicap as this, it would have been reassuring to know that the utmost possible had been done to produce a lively and varied layout for the designers to work upon. But this is where someone appears to have blundered badly at the beginning. To arrange the exhibits round the walls in showcase fashion is hardly to make the most of your possibilities, even if in some places the showcases take the form of a small room interior measuring seven feet from front to back. In the smaller rooms this kind of plan was probably unavoidable, but the large centre galleries are big enough to leave the designer fairly free. Once more then, on passing through those great axial portals, we shall be faced by a line of exhibits on the right hand wall and another line on the left. Did the Academy insist on the familiar arrangement being retained with its settees down the centre of the galleries on which exhausted dowagers may take their rest ? We must be content with the thought that, by putting each individual room in the charge of a first rate designer, the organisers have shown their eagerness to make the display as fine and expressive as, with this one limitation, it can possibly be made.

About the exhibits themselves, one or two things are now tolerably well known. Individual roomcubicles such as Mr. Howard Robertson’s Diningroom and Mr. McGrath’s Office will be full of interest. Even the Bathroom by Mr. Oliver Hill, traditional exhibition feature as it now has become, will doubtless be seen in better form than ever. Large decorative pieces like Mr. Maurice Lambert’s and Mr. Juta’s in glass and John and Elsie Farleigh’s in tiles are causing a pleasant stir of anticipation. We know that these things will be good and that we shall enjoy them. What is not so clear is the precise place that will be occupied in the exhibition by the cheap mass-produced articles that really constitute industrial art in the twentieth century sense. And here we touch a question of daily growing magnitude. It is notorious that an
Design For Today   3   1935  Page: 6
 
 Industrial Art at the Academy
Profiles: click on name to see profile
 
Thomas Webb & Corbett Ltd. (Webb Corbett) [1897-1986. UK. Glassworks]
Footnotes:
Two flower vases designed by A. H. Hall and made by Thos. Webb and Corbett
Zoom:
 100% 200% Full Size
Brightness:
Contrast:
Saturation:
 
exhibition which will put the machine-made, multiple store type of article at the head of its programme has for some time been vehemently desired by many of the younger architects and designers. A strenuous effort was made at the 1933 Exhibition at Dorland Hall to give greater prominence to this aspect of industrial art. The effect was only partly successful. In the summer of last year an exhibition was held at Stockholm under the uncompromising title of Standard 1934,” and this exhibition will long be remembered because it did concern itself almost exclusively with those objects that go to make up the home surroundings of the large bulk of the population. Suddenly, here in England, a more powerful plea than any in this cause has come from the Royal House itself. “You must,” said the Prince of Wales to the architects with whom he dined at the Guildhall on November 22nd, “ give consideration to another, a greater and far more important ideal : designing and working for the great majority instead of studying the needs of the minority You are charged with the great and honourable duty of educating the people of your country to better living. . . .” Here is a lead for which all designers, on whatever scale, will be profoundly grateful. Will the Royal Academy Exhibition obey the call ? The question is one that everybody is now asking.
Design For Today   3   1935  Page: 7
 
 Industrial Art at the Academy
Profiles: click on name to see profile
 
Carter Stabler & Adams (Poole Pottery) [1921-. UK. Pottery]
Zoom:
 100% 200% Full Size
Brightness:
Contrast:
Saturation:
 
Design for a tile mosaic by John and Elsie Farleigh executed by Carter Stabler and Adams
Design For Today   3   1935  Page: 8
 
 Industrial Art at the Academy
Profiles: click on name to see profile
 
Grierson, Ronald [1901-1992. UK. Textile/Carpet/Wallpaper Designer/Embroiderer/Linocut Artist]
Footnotes:
Hand-tufted rug for music room designed by Ronald Grierson
Zoom:
 100% 200% Full Size
Brightness:
Contrast:
Saturation:
 
Much as one may desire the exhibition to follow some such policy as this, I believe most people on reflection will agree that the policy would be premature. An exhibition is, by its nature, a demonstration of things accomplished rather than a forecast of things to come. It is hard enough to-day to bring about a well- designed Mayfair dining-room having true modernity ; it is very much harder to cause ten thousand well-designed dining-rooms to find their appointed way into the homes of as many of our wage-earners in different parts of England. And we are not yet sufficiently adept at the first job to give a public exhibition of our skill at the second. Perhaps in 1940 or thereabouts Mr. De la Valette will give us another exhibition, in which twentieth century industry will take the place of the West-end upholsterers and cabinetmakers who must necessarily provide the greater part of the entertainment to-day. This is by no means to say that cheap machine goods are likely to be neglected on the present occasion. They will be there indeed, and we may expect that some of them, more especially in Gallery 7 of which Mr. Wornum has charge, will have notable lessons to teach. The “ luxury ” surroundings in which they will inevitably be seen are not, however, the best in which to form a sober judgment of their merits.

And the consequences of the Exhibition ? It is here that, as I believe, the prospects are most encouraging. We have got the one thing that we have always envied the Swedes : the active support of a Royal Prince ; in fact with the Heir himself at our head we now have a patronage twice as good as Sweden’s. The keen personal co-operation of the Prince of Wales is our first and greatest asset. Another is the series of events that have led up to this exhibition. It really is a thousand pities that the promoters should have begun with a conspiracy of silence about the two things that have contributed most to the cause they serve. In a campaign of public persuasion, continuity of effort is enormously important. Both the Royal Society and the Academy are, one would have thought, big enough to look without jealousy upon the Gorell Commission Report and the 1933 Exhibition at Dorland Hall. The likeliest explanation of their attitude is also the most charitable : no doubt these two august bodies had never heard of either. If that is true, some might say, then why should organizations so ill-informed and so generally remote have undertaken to hold an exhibition of this kind ? Various answers to this question are possible, and no doubt many people will provide their own. One answer, for what it is worth, is Mr. John De la Valette himself.

Now, in Mr. John De la Valette, it seems to me, we have a truly remarkable person. A successful business man with a warm yet discriminating affection for the arts, no doubt he has for some time been pondering the present estrangement between the lords of industry and the designers without whom industry must always mean beastliness. A really important exhibition seemed to contain possibilities for bringing the two together with some result. Other countries had done it : why not we ? Mr. De la Valette’s first step already shows a strategic skill which may, if it has not since deserted him, make all the difference between ultimate success and failure. Unquestionably a Swede or a German would have done the simple, the obvious thing. When any of these Continental countries want to hold an Exhibition of Art in Industry, the procedure is direct and full of logic. An organisation functions with the one avowed object of popularising Art in Industry. This, the most appropriate organization extant, puts down an exhibition on its agenda, and in due course an exhibition results. The relation between cause and effect is so plain that no one could miss it. It is true that Mr.
Design For Today   3   1935  Page: 9
 
 Industrial Art at the Academy
Zoom:
 100% 200% Full Size
Brightness:
Contrast:
Saturation:
 
Group of Furnishing Textiles
Design For Today   3   1935  Page: 10
 
 Industrial Art at the Academy
Footnotes:
Mass Production in Kitchenware
Zoom:
 100% 200% Full Size
Brightness:
Contrast:
Saturation:
 
De la Valette’s first object was not to hold an exhibition. It was — or so I read it — to bring about a reunion between two elements violently opposed to one another. Now in an attempt to patch up a breach between, say, A and B, the continental method would mean that the friendly intermediary must openly ally himself with either A or B, and from that stronghold beckon to the other side with inviting gestures. Such measures may be all very well in countries where A and B are still on speaking terms and, with smaller populations, are probably related to one another anyhow. They are not so likely to prove useful in a country where the hatred and loathing A feels for B is only equalled by the loathing and hatred of B for A. Mr. De la Valette, realizing this, has done the only thing that could possibly bring success. Either history or his own experience in business may have taught him that if you want to save a human group threatened with internal disruption, your best course is to find them a common enemy on which to concentrate their attention. And a common enemy (or rather a pair of enemies) is just what Mr. De la Valette has so cleverly provided in the shape of the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of Arts. To the manufacturer both these bodies stand for art, and that is why he fears and despises them. To the artist they stand for all that makes art feeble and unimportant in life to-day, and that is the reason for his dislike. And so, their minds completely absorbed in the contemplation of this third partner whom both detest, artist and manufacturer may yet form an alliance that will grow closer with the years

This, I repeat, is my theory, and it is a theory that will no doubt be violently repudiated by Mr. De la Valette himself. I am fully prepared to be told that it is without the smallest foundation. But there is one important fact that Mr. De la Valette will never be able to deny. Previous exhibitions of this kind in our country and elsewhere have invariably been organised by people associated with some artistic organization: people
Design For Today   3   1935  Page: 11
 
 Industrial Art at the Academy
Profiles: click on name to see profile
 
Wedgwood (Josiah Wedgwood & Sons) [1759-. UK. Pottery]
Footnotes:
Blotter, stationery case and satchel in English calf by Bambaron Ltd.
Mugs from Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Ltd., designed by Keith Murray
Zoom:
 100% 200% Full Size
Brightness:
Contrast:
Saturation:
 
having some "cultural” axe, however impersonal, to grind. Members of Council and officials of bodies, public directors or curators of art museums; creative workers in one or other of the arts: such, as a general rule, have been the people in charge of the attack. Mr. De la Valette has gained untold strength for the movement by addressing manufacturers from the point of view of a business man who has proved himself amply capable of achieving ordinary commercial success.

So much for the main effects of the Exhibition: its effects upon industry itself. There remains its influence upon the important bodies who are responsible for holding it. Need one amplify the description of enemy that has been applied to these bodies? To the artist, at any rate, their past record is painfully clear. Merely to be called The Society of Arts, and to have remained inactive and unheard of since 1851, is to suggest that art for all practical purposes does not exist in our country. As for the Royal Academy, its attitude to art has relented a little of late years, but not its attitude to industry whose products have so far been admitted to its galleries only provided they belonged to an extinct civilization. It is to be presumed that when the exhibition closes its doors Mr. De la Valette will know these great bodies no longer. What they will do with themselves and with art and industry once he has passed out of their ken is a matter on which a good many will be speculating during the coming weeks.