ART IS THOUGHTFUL WORKMANSHIP - 1913

The homes which we now call "Craftsman Bungalows" were popular partly because they held the promise of "an artistic home for Everyman." The notion of "art," as conceived in the Arts & Crafts Movement, is hard for us to understand in the first years of this new century. We take it for granted that every object in our daily lives is mass-produced by machines. And we take it for granted that an object can be beautiful because it is simple and useful; that beauty does not arise from extraneous or inappropriate ornament.

The Arts and Crafts Movement began in Britain with a feeling of revulsion against the ornate, mass-produced goods of the mid-Victorian era. The Movement emphasized craftsmanship and quality of materials. Goods produced by exponents of the Arts & Craft Movement were simple, subtle, and superbly executed by comparison to the Victorian taste of the day. Although very different in style, the Arts & Crafts Movement can be regarded as a precursor to Art Nouveau and Art Deco.

A guiding light of the movement was the influential designer William Morris who formed William Morris & Co in 1861 with the goal of re-vitalizing the arts through craftsmanship. In this he was joined by several other designers such as the architect Philip Webb, the cabinet maker Ernest Gimson, and the designer C.R. Ashbee.

This article from an English magazine expresses the spirit of the Arts & Crafts Movement so well, I'm including it here for your enjoyment. It was written by W. R. Lethaby (1857-1931), the founding Principal of the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. (I've edited the text rather liberally in order to make the article easier to read on the web. Italics are mine.)

Source: Adapted from an article in "The Imprint", an English magazine dealing with design, January, 1913.

ART AND WORKMANSHIP

by William Richard Lethaby

We have been in the habit of writing so lyrically of art and of the temperament of the artist that the average man who lives in the street is likely to think of art as something remote and luxurious, something which is not "for the likes of him." There is the danger in habitual excess of language that the plain man is likely to be frightened by it. It may be feared that much current exposition of the place and purpose of art only widens the gap between art and our common lives.

A proper function of art criticism should be to foster our national arts and not to frighten timid people away with high-pitched definitions and far-fetched metaphors mixed with a flood of (as William Morris said) "sham technical twaddle." It is a pity to make a mystery of what should most easily be understood.

There is nothing occult about the thought that all things may be made well or made badly. A work of art is a well-made thing, that is all. It may be a well-made statue or a well-made chair, or a well-made book. Art is not a special sauce applied to ordinary cooking; it is the cooking itself if the cooking is good. Most simply and generally art may be thought of as THE WELL-DOING OF WHAT NEEDS DOING. If the thing is not worth doing it can hardly be a work of art, however well it may be done. A thing worth doing which is badly done is hardly a thing at all.

Fortunately people are artists who know it not - bootmakers (the few left), gardeners and basketmakers, and all players of games. We do not allow shoddy in cricket or football, but reserve it for serious things like houses and books, furniture and funerals.

Our art critics might occupy quite a useful place if they would focus less attention on the changing styles of "fine art" and focus more attention on the vast and important field of "decorative arts," the arts of the builder, furniture maker, printer and the rest, which are matters of national well-being.

During the last thirty years (1883-1913) many English designers have set themselves to learn the crafts as artists, so that they may have complete mastery of both design and workmanship. I may remark here that a characteristic of a work of art is that the design inter-penetrates workmanship as in a painting, so that one may hardly know where one ends and the other begins. The master-workman, further, must have complete control from first to last to shape and finish as he will.

If I were asked for some simple test by which we might hope to know a work of art when we saw one I should suggest something like this: EVERY WORK OF ART SHOWS THAT IT WAS MADE BY A HUMAN BEING FOR A HUMAN BEING. Art is the humanity put into workmanship, the rest is slavery. The difference between a man-made work and a commercially-made work is like the difference between a gem and paste. We may not be able to tell the difference at first, but, when we find out, the intrinsic worth of the one is self-evident. Still it is highly important that commercial work shall be properly done after its own kind.

Although a machine-made thing can never be a work of art in the proper sense, there is no reason why it should not be good in a secondary order - shapely, smooth, strong, well fitting, useful; in fact, like a machine itself. Machine-work should show quite frankly that it is the child of the machine; it is the pretense and subterfuge of most machine-made things which make them disgusting.

In the reaction from the dull monotony of early Victorian days it must be admitted that many workers fell into the affectation of over-designing their things. Rightly understood, "design" is not an agony of contortion but an effort to arrive at what will be obviously fit and true. The best design is one which, cost apart, should become a commonplace. A fine piece of furniture or a fine book-binding should be shaped as inevitably as a fiddle.

The problem of bringing back art to workmanship is not the least serious problem we face. We cannot be too hopeful that it will be solved. It is a tremendous thing that whereas a century or so ago the great mass of the people exercised arts, such as boot-making, book-binding, chair-making, smithing, and the rest. Now a great wedge has been driven in between the craftsman of every kind and his customers by the method of large production by machinery. "We cannot go back" - true; and it is as true that we cannot stay where we are.

Let me make it clear that by "art," instructed thinkers don't only mean pictures or quaint and curious things, or necessarily costly ones, certainly not luxurious ones. They mean worthy and complete workmanship by competent workmen.