1916 Porcelain Decoration & Design - Keramic Studios CD

Preserving the Past, Digitally

Foreword:

Before presenting in the following chapters, the problems for practical study, a resume of the conditions under which this particular craft has labored since it was first transplanted to this soil, may be interesting and enlightening to the student of today for whom the path has been made smooth and comparatively straight.
 

Why is it that Keramic Art, or more specifically, china decorating, while the first of the applied arts to be introduced into this country, is the last to be recognized by the Art World and admitted into the Art Schools as a part of the curriculum? Why has China Painting been so long the "Cinderella of Art?" Why this dissension in its ranks and this prejudice in the Art World? There is no end to the discussion of the subject or of criticism from artists in other lines, but what of the cause?
 

Today, Art, as applied to industry, is in a more flourishing condition than ever before. Our Art Schools have departments of Applied as well as Academic Art. Design and its application to the different crafts is a part of nearly every school curriculum from the lower grades to the high school. There has been a general revival of the industrial Arts in the Old World and a rapid growth, and appreciation in the New. Books on the subject are numerous and valuable and in our own particular craft, in many of the studios, the study of design and its application to porcelain go hand in hand as they should. Not so the condition thirty years ago, when the art of decorating china was introduced into this country. Unlike the countries of the Old World where the fine Arts are the natural outgrowth of the Industrial Arts of the people, in America, the word Art had come to mean Pictorial Art only. Art education was dominated by ideas and methods of the Pictorial Artists. Everything had come under this influence and was measured by the Pictorial principles of representation.

 

The Industrial Arts came as an after thought and it is but recently that we have become aware of what industrial art means to a people, as a training in appreciation for the Fine Arts.

 

"Art appreciation does not spring full-grown," but is of
slow growth and comes of association with the artistic in our daily life. This, as a people, we have not had. We were transplanted to this country full-grown and our struggle for existence became so strenuous that the art instinct was for a time checked and held back by the commercial. Emotions which in people of older countries of quiet occupations found expression in beautifying the objects of daily life, were, in us, checked or turned into other channels and we became a nation of commercial importance at the expense of the artistic. This lack of training on the part of our people was responsible for the slow growth of the Fine Arts in this country. The appreciation had not been cultivated, and to quote Walter Crane, in "The Claims of Decorative Art:" "It is certain that painting and sculpture, `The Fine Arts,' as commonly understood, cannot reach perfection where the multitudinous arts that surround and culminate in them are not also in vigorous health."
 

The introduction of our craft into this country was premature. There had been no preparation. We knew little or nothing of design, the foundation of all crafts. So it grew to be a fad, depending for its inspiration on the factories of the Old World, copying the styles of these and striving to overcome technical difficulties. Consequently when in response to a demand for technical instruction, representatives of some of these factories, of which flower painting was the chief characteristic, came to this country, we followed blindly, and nearly lost our way in the labyrinth of beautiful flowers that were made to bloom on the surface of our white china.
 

So we copied and our pupils in turn copied us and we became "degenerate copyists of copies." Then, to paint a rose or a bunch of grapes "so natural that it could be picked" was our highest ambition and the original intention of the beautiful objects upon which we inflicted this naturalism was eventually lost sight of and they became objects of art (?), instead of articles of service. There was no system of orderly thought in the decoration. We acquired a technical facility at the cost of other qualities. A piece of china was to us the same as canvas to the pictorial artist. In a short time we became so prolific that exhibitions, first local, then national, were planned and it was then that our position was forced upon us by the art schools who refused to open their doors to us for the purpose of exhibition ; their reason being that china painting as it was practiced could not be classified ; that we, in short, were neither "fish, flesh, nor good red herring." This imputation, as a class, we resented and continued to paint our flowers and fruit au naturel, holding our exhibitions independent of any art body. Thus while we grew tremendously in numbers and experience from a technical standpoint, the general standard of the work, except in individual cases, improved little ; in fact it seemed, in the indulgence of naturalism and the lack of restraint, both in color and in the abundance of decoration, to be going from bad to worse. A few earnest students, however, touched by these arguments, betook themselves to the art schools, to the museums and art galleries, for study and research. Thus while, as almost inevitably happens, some became mere "cribbers from the past," nevertheless the spirit which prompted them became the leaven which has been slowly but surely working, and to-day, because of their pioneer work and the following they have gained, the art schools of the land are now open to us for exhibition. In the meantime (our sister crafts having been introduced into this country under happier conditions), we have found ourselves, not as china painters, but as china decorators, to be a part of that great Industrial Army which is making itself felt in every department of the home all over the land ; and our craftsmen, accepting their limitations and glorying in the possibilities are happier and more content than when trying to cover the whole field of art (and incidentally the whole surface of the china).

 

We have found in our study of the principles of design that "it requires our best faculties, whether we treat things flat or in the round" and the joys of imitation are forgotten in the joys of creation ; in making nature subserve to our ends, instead of trying to see how closely we can imitate nature on surfaces where the drawing of a natural motif is necessarily distorted. There is, however, still a large percentage of the devotees of this craft who are unconvinced of their position in the art world, or who have not as yet had the subject presented in the right way, and the teacher of Keramic Art, before she can proceed to the technical part of instruction must first convince her students of the difference between Pictorial and Decorative Art ; between Imitative and Creative Design. Owing to past influences, environment, or a lack of early artistic training on the part of the student, her efforts even yet are not always crowned with success. It becomes the obligation of the instructor to point the way, to call attention to the guide posts (the governing principles), to stimulate the imagination and to strengthen the judgment by the logic of her reasoning ; not to require of the student any particular style or allow any slavish following of her ideas.

 

Design is a larger subject than we at first realize. It opens the eyes to beauty and order in everything. It is not alone for the artist ; it is a study of universal principles which underlie all creation. It furnishes logical reasons for things hitherto considered of the emotions ; and art does not lose by this process; on the contrary it gains permanence. If we would raise our craft to the highest standard and avoid the merited criticism it has received in the past, we must realize that we are studying to conform to universal principles, we must bring our work within the same province and under the same laws which govern all art ; realizing this, the study of design assumes importance and becomes an absolute necessity.

 

There is not one of the crafts so intimate, so much in daily use in the home, as ours. Should we not then as workers in this most useful craft, give to the work the same serious study as do those who are trying to express themselves in other materials.

 

Design does not teach any particular style of decoration, does not deal in fads, but with principles, and the sooner we understand and conform to these principles, the better for us and our craft.

 

As we learn by doing, far more than by reading and thinking, the exercises suggested in this book are of value in impressing upon the mind the laws under which we will work and will go farther toward convincing one of the reasonableness of the system than much reading or many lectures. The course of lessons here presented has been in practice as a correspondence course since 1910, and a few of the units of design used for illustration are the corrected work of students taking the regular course.
 

The arguments presented are largely quotation from the best thought on the subject, and the problems stated have been selected from the large subject of design as having the most direct bearing on our craft-the overglaze decoration of porcelain- and are presented to the decorator as a short cut and an incentive to further study, rather than as something final and complete in itself ; and because of the importance of this craft and the large following it has attracted this little book seems justified and is sent out in answer to a growing demand for help in this direction, with the hope that it may be a means of steering some workers over a properly charted course into the Port of Legitimate Art.

HENRIETTA BARCLAY PAIST.