Hopes and Fears for Art | Page 4

of the People The Beauty of Life Making the
Best of It The Prospects of Architecture in Civilisation

THE LESSER ARTS {1}

Hereafter I hope in another lecture to have the pleasure of laying before
you an historical survey of the lesser, or as they are called the
Decorative Arts, and I must confess it would have been pleasanter to
me to have begun my talk with you by entering at once upon the
subject of the history of this great industry; but, as I have something to
say in a third lecture about various matters connected with the practice
of Decoration among ourselves in these days, I feel that I should be in a
false position before you, and one that might lead to confusion, or
overmuch explanation, if I did not let you know what I think on the
nature and scope of these arts, on their condition at the present time,
and their outlook in times to come. In doing this it is like enough that I
shall say things with which you will very much disagree; I must ask
you therefore from the outset to believe that whatever I may blame or
whatever I may praise, I neither, when I think of what history has been,
am inclined to lament the past, to despise the present, or despair of the
future; that I believe all the change and stir about us is a sign of the
world's life, and that it will lead--by ways, indeed, of which we have no
guess--to the bettering of all mankind.
Now as to the scope and nature of these Arts I have to say, that though
when I come more into the details of my subject I shall not meddle
much with the great art of Architecture, and less still with the great arts
commonly called Sculpture and Painting, yet I cannot in my own mind
quite sever them from those lesser so-called Decorative Arts, which I
have to speak about: it is only in latter times, and under the most
intricate conditions of life, that they have fallen apart from one another;
and I hold that, when they are so parted, it is ill for the Arts altogether:
the lesser ones become trivial, mechanical, unintelligent, incapable of
resisting the changes pressed upon them by fashion or dishonesty;
while the greater, however they may be practised for a while by men of
great minds and wonder-working hands, unhelped by the lesser,
unhelped by each other, are sure to lose their dignity of popular arts,
and become nothing but dull adjuncts to unmeaning pomp, or ingenious
toys for a few rich and idle men.
However, I have not undertaken to talk to you of Architecture,
Sculpture, and Painting, in the narrower sense of those words, since,

most unhappily as I think, these master-arts, these arts more specially
of the intellect, are at the present day divorced from decoration in its
narrower sense. Our subject is that great body of art, by means of which
men have at all times more or less striven to beautify the familiar
matters of everyday life: a wide subject, a great industry; both a great
part of the history of the world, and a most helpful instrument to the
study of that history.
A very great industry indeed, comprising the crafts of house- building,
painting, joinery and carpentry, smiths' work, pottery and glass-making,
weaving, and many others: a body of art most important to the public in
general, but still more so to us handicraftsmen; since there is scarce
anything that they use, and that we fashion, but it has always been
thought to be unfinished till it has had some touch or other of
decoration about it. True it is that in many or most cases we have got so
used to this ornament, that we look upon it as if it had grown of itself,
and note it no more than the mosses on the dry sticks with which we
light our fires. So much the worse! for there IS the decoration, or some
pretence of it, and it has, or ought to have, a use and a meaning. For,
and this is at the root of the whole matter, everything made by man's
hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it
is in accord with Nature, and helps her; ugly if it is discordant with
Nature, and thwarts her; it cannot be indifferent: we, for our parts, are
busy or sluggish, eager or unhappy, and our eyes are apt to get dulled to
this eventfulness of form in those things which we are always looking
at. Now it is one of the chief uses of decoration, the chief part of its
alliance with nature, that it has to