With a deserved flourish of trumpets the R.I.B.A. Centenary has been celebrated and its new building royally opened. For a few days the architect became “ news.” We hope that this will have stimulated public consciousness of his position and function. The new building has been so very fully illustrated and described in the architectural papers this month that we have foreborne from repetition : but our congratulations to the august body that grows livelier with age, and to those, from the lowest paid worker to G. Grey Wornum, the architect, who has made the new building possible are none the less sincere.
BUILDING CENTRE AT STOCKHOLM
The Architectural Association in conjunction with the Builders’ Association of Stockholm have organised a building centre to be known as the Byggtjnast, based on the English Building Centre. Close co-operation between the two centres is anticipated and as a preliminary compliment F. R. Yerbury, the Director of the English centre, delivered a lecture on the occasion of the opening. It is hoped that there will be an interchange of exhibitions between the two centres. We feel that this is a piece of news so obviously to be welcomed that it needs no further commentary.
AN EXHIBITION OF LABEL DESIGNS
On the advice of the Council for Art and Industry, the Ministry of Agriculture held a competition for National Mark labels for which over 600 designs were submitted. These were judged by a panel appointed by the Council and the winning designs, with some thirty specimens of other designs entered, were exhibited at Leicester during the Imperial Fruit Show from November 2nd to the 10th. This is an admirable example of encouraging good design officially and of bringing home the problem to those most concerned. Art will never really marry closely with industry until there is a more frequent relationship between them and some organisation should arrange for exhibitions of good design to be held in connection with all important trade shows and fairs.
ART SCHOOLS & INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
Following on our note in a recent issue on the activities of the Farnham School of Art we have received the prospectus of the Chesterfield and District School of Art and Crafts and we are glad to record here also an effort towards improvement of industrial design. A shop window display executed at the school is illustrated. We do not find this very satisfactory, but at least it shows that the authorities are moving away from the old narrow view of art ; while the two posters illustrated not only show this but are also themselves definitely attractive. We are satisfied that now this movement has once started it will inevitably spread, if only because the students of progressive schools will be more successful in finding remunerative employment.
THE RACKETECT
A recent misprint for “ architect ” seems applicable to the view which some laymen take of this useful member of society. An art critic recently wrote in one of the large dailies a brief article on a building by a living architect. An otherwise educated member of the public innocently congratulated the critic on the “ fat cheque ” which he no doubt received from the architect. The critic was justly incensed and replied : “ Do you imagine that I have received fat cheques from every living painter whose works I have praised in the past ? Do you imagine that the dramatic critic rolls in the wealth supplied to him by actors and dramatists or the music critic in the sumptuous offerings of composers and fiddlers ? ” The member of the public was surprised at this answer and waved it aside with the remark : “ Ah no ! but architects are different.” Surely this is a very moral little story. It shows the curious state of mind—perhaps commoner than one would imagine—which does not consider the rank of the architect as an artist to be even comparable to that of the painter, the writer or musician. Such an attitude of mind moreover leads to the unhappy confusion—or perhaps results from it—between the builder and the architect.
THIS IS A JOKE
We recently reproduced in this part of the paper an example of what we felt spoke for itself as comically bad design and which we hoped would entertain our readers. One reader, however, writes to protest against our holding up such things for admiration. She missed the joke. We hope that there are not many others like her.
We therefore categorically state that we do not reproduce the following paragraph as an expression of our opinions. It is from a letter to the Press :—
Have you considered how ugly a thing the microphone is ? To look at it is like a human skull viewed frontwise, or like a cubist’s impression of Mickey Mouse. Can you do nothing to make it beautiful ? I would suggest that you shape it like a cherub or like Mercury, the winged messenger of the gods.
