Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages | Page 3

to the demands of the article to be constructed. As in other

forms of culture, balance and sanity are necessary, in order to produce a
satisfactory result.
But when a craftsman is possessed of an æsthetic instinct and faculty,
he merits the congratulations offered to the students of Birmingham by
William Morris, when he told them that they were among the happiest
people in all civilization--"persons whose necessary daily work is
inseparable from their greatest pleasure."
A mediæval artist was usually a craftsman as well. He was not content
with furnishing designs alone, and then handing them over to men
whose hands were trained to their execution, but he took his own
designs and carried them out. Thus, the designer adapted his drawing to
the demands of his material and the craftsman was necessarily in
sympathy with the design since it was his own. The result was a
harmony of intention and execution which is often lacking when two
men of differing tastes produce one object. Lübke sums up the talents
of a mediæval artist as follows: "A painter could produce panels with
coats of arms for the military men of noble birth, and devotional panels
with an image of a saint or a conventionalized scene from Scripture for
that noble's wife. With the same brush and on a larger panel he could
produce a larger sacred picture for the convent round the corner, and
with finer pencil and more delicate touch he could paint the vellum
leaves of a missal;" and so on. If an artistic earthenware platter was to
be made, the painter turned to his potter's wheel and to his kiln. If a
filigree coronet was wanted, he took up his tools for metal and jewelry
work.
Redgrave lays down an excellent maxim for general guidance to
designers in arts other than legitimate picture making. He says: "The
picture must be independent of the material, the thought alone should
govern it; whereas in decoration the material must be one of the
suggestors of the thought, its use must govern the design." This shows
the difference between decoration and pictorial art.
One hears a great deal of the "conventional" in modern art talk. Just
what this means, few people who have the word in their vocabularies
really know. As Professor Moore defined it once, it does not apply to

an arbitrary theoretical system at all, but is instinctive. It means
obedience to the limits under which the artist works. The really greatest
art craftsmen of all have been those who have recognized the
limitations of the material which they employed. Some of the cleverest
have been beguiled by the fascination of overcoming obstacles, into
trying to make iron do the things appropriate only to wood, or to force
cast bronze into the similitude of a picture, or to discount all the credit
due to a fine piece of embroidery by trying to make it appear like a
painting. But these are the exotics; they are the craftsmen who have
been led astray by a false impulse, who respect difficulty more than
appropriateness, war rather than peace! No elaborate and tortured piece
of Cellini's work can compare with the dignified glory of the Pala d'Oro;
Ghiberti's gates in Florence, though a marvellous tour de force, are not
so satisfying as the great corona candelabrum of Hildesheim. As a rule,
we shall find that mediæval craftsmen were better artists than those of
the Renaissance, for with facility in the use of material, comes always
the temptation to make it imitate some other material, thus losing its
individuality by a contortion which may be curious and interesting, but
out of place. We all enjoy seeing acrobats on the stage, but it would be
painful to see them curling in and out of our drawing-room chairs.
The true spirit which the Arts and Crafts is trying to inculcate was
found in Florence when the great artists turned their attention to the
manipulation of objects of daily use, Benvenuto Cellini being willing to
make salt-cellars, and Sansovino to work on inkstands, and Donatello
on picture frames, while Pollajuolo made candlesticks. The more our
leading artists realize the need of their attention in the minor arts, the
more nearly shall we attain to a genuine alliance between the arts and
the crafts.
To sum up the effect of this harmony between art and craft in the
Middle Ages, the Abbé Texier has said: "In those days art and
manufactures were blended and identified; art gained by this affinity
great practical facility, and manufacture much original beauty." And
then the value to the artist is almost incalculable. To spend one's life in
getting means on which to live is a waste of all enjoyment. To use one's
life as one goes along--to live every day with pleasure