Читать книгу The Arts & Crafts Movement - Oscar Lovell Triggs - Страница 3

Philip Webb and Morris & Co., The Victorian Drawing Room, c. 1892–1894. Standen, East Grinstead.

The primary motive of the Arts and Crafts movement was, as the name implies, the association of art and labour. Initially an English movement, it slowly emerged from the general industrial field over about forty years, though its differentiation into a distinct phase of industrialism belonged to the last ten years. The year 1860 was counted as the approximate year of its beginning, when William Morris built his famous Red House on the outskirts of London, and served his apprenticeship to the industrial arts by designing and executing the decoration and furniture of his home. The Arts and Crafts theory appeared before 1860 though, through the writings of Ruskin and Morris.

The story of John Ruskin’s pilgrimage, his passage from naturalism to artistic interests, and thence to socialism, is one of the most significant life histories of the nineteenth century. In all his early writings on nature and art it was the relation of these to man for which he cared. Ruskin’s moral sentiments were the element that differentiated him from other art teachers and thus marked him early for the mission of social reform. He declared himself that the beginning of his political economy is to be found in the assertion in Modern Painters that beautiful things are useful to men because they are beautiful, and for the sake of their beauty only, and not to sell, or pawn, or in any way turn into money. We are fortunate also to have Ruskin’s own statement of the purpose of his art studies, following upon Modern Painters. He told an audience at Bradford:

“The book I called The Seven Lamps was to show that certain right states of temper and moral feeling were the magic powers by which all good architecture, without exception, had been produced. The Stones of Venice had, from beginning to end, no other aim than to show that the Gothic architecture of Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in all its features, a state of pure national faith and of domestic virtue, and that its Renaissance architecture had arisen out of, and in all its features indicated, a state of concealed national infidelity and of domestic corruption.”

The recognition of the relations between art and national character signifies the social bearing of these volumes. Concerning the Stones of Venice, W. G. Collingwood makes the following comment:

“The kernel of the work was the chapter on the nature of the Gothic, in which he showed, more distinctly than in The Seven Lamps, and connected with a wider range of thought, suggested by Pre-Raphaelitism, the great doctrine that art cannot be produced except by artists; that architecture, in so far as it is an art, does not mean the mechanical execution, by unintelligent workmen, of vapid working-drawings from an architect’s office; that, just as Socrates postponed the day of justice until philosophers should be kings, and kings philosophers, so Ruskin postponed the reign of art until workmen should be artists, and artists workmen… Out of that idea the whole of his doctrine could be evolved, with all its safe-guardings and widening vistas. For if the workman must be made an artist, he must have the experience, the feelings, of an artist, as well as the skill; and that involves every circumstance of education and opportunity which may make for his truest well-being. And when Mr. Ruskin came to examine into the subject practically, he found that mere drawing-schools and charitable efforts could not make an artist out of a mechanic or country bumpkin; for wider questions were complicated with this of art – nothing short of the fundamental principles of human intercourse and social economy. Now for the first time, after much sinking of trial-shafts, he had reached the true ore of thought, in the deep-lying strata; and the working of the mine was begun.”

The volume entitled A Joy Forever being the substance of lectures delivered in 1857 on the political economy of art – the title is significant – marks definitely the parting of the ways, and his intention thereafter to speak out openly on social themes.

As an economist Ruskin inaugurated three departures from teachings of the time, the first relating to general political economy, the second to the theory of beauty, and the third to the doctrine of work. Ruskin’s divergence from the economical teaching of his day was not wider than his difference from contemporary aesthetics. The term “aesthetic” had been first used by Baumgarten in the eighteenth century to designate the science of beauty, meaning by the term that the beautiful made its primary appeal to sensation, as distinguished from the good and true, where perception was interior.

William Morris (for the design) and Morris & Co. (for the production), Tulip and Willow, 1873 (design) and 1883 (printing).

Pattern for printed fabric, block-printed and indigo discharge on cotton, 135.5 × 93 cm.

Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

William Morris (for the design) and Morris & Co. (for the production), Strawberry-Thief, 1883.

Pattern for printed fabric, block-printed and indigo discharge on cotton, 60 × 95.2 cm.

Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

William Morris, “Wallflower” design.

Private collection.

In making beauty “the perfection of sensuous knowledge,” the field of aesthetics was demarked plainly from that of logic and ethics. These distinctions prevailed in philosophy up to the middle of the nineteenth century, with the result of fashioning a school of art that laid stress only upon sense effects, and, advocating “art for art’s sake,” had so far withdrawn from life that art had become merely a means of amusing and entertaining the upper and leisure classes. Against this aesthetic Ruskin set his face, affirming that the impressions of beauty were not of sense, or wholly of mind, but more essentially moral or social. The test he applied to art was its degree of social usefulness. He would never even use the term “aesthetic” except to refute its implications. The art of any country is seen to be an exact exponent of its ethical life: “You can have noble art only from noble persons.” When writing the Stones of Venice, he examined each structure with reference to its capacity for fulfilling expressional purposes. In his more technical lectures on art at Oxford it was noticed that he touched constantly upon the problems of life. His exposition of the art of engraving, for instance, was as much a treatise on line in art as on line in conduct. His characterisation of the art of engraving, in the course of these lectures, is quite typical of his attitude: “It is athletic; it is resolute; it is obedient.” In Aratra Pentilici, speaking of sculpture, he said: “Its proper subject is the spiritual power seen in the form of any living thing, and so represented as to give evidence that the sculptor has loved the good of it and hated the evil.” The laws which he deduced for sculpture are wholly untechnical: (1) That the work is to be with tools of men. (2) That it is to be in natural materials. (3) That it is to exhibit the virtues of those materials, and aim at no quality inconsistent with them. (4) That its temper is to be quiet and gentle, in harmony with common needs, and in consent to common intelligence. From such discussion the definition is soon reached that art is expression.

As art, then, is not an entity distinguished by a quality called beauty, but a mode of expression, allied to all other forms of expression, and so marked by characteristics that may be termed moral or social, it follows that the chief test of art is its inclusiveness, its lowly origin, its universality, its serviceability, its degree of satisfying genuine social needs. The general proposition underlying Modern Painters, Stones of Venice, and his other art studies is this: “Great art is nothing else than the type of strong and noble life.” A sense for the noble in life is something quite different from the “taste for beauty” developed by the opposite aesthetic. The false sense for art is known by its refinement, its fastidiousness, its preciosity; purity of taste is tested by its universality. Hence Ruskin told his students to beware of the spirit of choice, saying, “It is an insolent spirit, and commonly a base and blind one, too.”

Philip Webb and Morris & Co., The Morning Room, c. 1892–1894.

Standen, East Grinstead.

S. & H. Jewell & Co. (for the table and Queen Ann chairs) and Philip Webb (for the fireplace design), The Dining Room, 1896 (furniture).

Standen, East Grinstead.

William Morris, Violet and Columbine, 1883.

Pattern for woven textile.

Private collection.

William Morris, Wandle (name of the river next to Morris’ workshop), 1884.

Pattern for printed fabric, block-printed and indigo discharge on cotton, 160.1 × 96.5 cm.

Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

He told them also that the main business of art was its service in the actual uses of daily life, and that the beginning of art was in getting the country clean and the people beautiful. He pointed then to the fact that all good architecture rose out of domestic work, that before great churches and palaces could be built it was necessary to build good doors and garret windows. The best architecture was simply a glorified roof. His own statement runs: “The dome of the Vatican, the porches of Rheims or Chartres, the vaults and arches of their aisles, the canopy of the tomb, and the spire of the belfry are art forms resulting from the mere requirement that a certain space should be strongly covered from heat and rain.” In the Crown of Wild Olive we meet the startling statement that the builders of the great medieval cathedrals corrupted Gothic architecture – they corrupted it by forgetting the people and devoting it to priestly and aesthetic needs, until, losing its vitality, it declined in expressiveness and ultimately ceased to be. From these and other instances, Ruskin deplored the tendency of art to narrow its appeal and to become the object of the educated classes.

However attractive much of the art of the Renaissance was to him, he yet saw that it had for foundation nothing but the pride of life – the pride of the so-called superior classes. His strongest statement on this point occurs in The Two Paths:

“The great lesson of history is, that all the fine arts hitherto, having been supported by the selfish power of the ‘noblesse’, and never having extended their range to the comfort or the relief of the mass of the people – the arts, I say, thus practiced, and thus matured, have only accelerated the ruin of the states they adorned; and at the moment when, in any kingdom, you point to the triumph of its greatest artists, you point also to the determined hour of the kingdom’s decline. The names of great painters are like passing bells: in the name of Velásquez, you hear sounded the fall of Spain; in the name of Leonardo, that of Milan; in the name of Raphael, that of Rome. And there is profound justice in this; for in proportion to the nobleness of the power is the guilt of its use for purposes vain or vile; and hitherto the greater the art the more surely has it been used, and used solely, for the decoration of pride or the provoking of sensuality. We may abandon the hope – or if you like the words better – we may disdain the temptation of the pomp and grace of Italy in her youth. For us there can be no more the throne of marble, for us no more the vault of gold; but for us there is the loftier and lovelier privilege of bringing the power and charm of art within the reach of the humble and the poor; and as the magnificence of past ages failed by its narrowness and its pride, ours may prevail and continue by its universality and its lowliness.”

The beauty which is to be “a joy forever” must be a joy for all.

John Henry Dearle (for the design) and Morris & Co. (for the production), Iris, 1902.

Wallpaper.

Private collection.

William Morris, The Woodpecker, 1885.

Tapestry.

William Morris Gallery, London.

Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris (for the design) and Morris & Co. (for the production), Pomona, 1885.

Tapestry woven wool, silk and mohair on a cotton warp, 300 × 210 cm.

The Whitworth Gallery, University of Manchester, Manchester.

William Morris, Philip Webb and John Henry Dearle (for the design) and the Merton Abbey Workshop (for the production), The Forest, 1887.

Tapestry, woven wool and silk on a cotton warp, 121.9 × 452 cm.

Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

The ground is now cleared for understanding Ruskin’s teachings respecting industry. He had proclaimed that art must spring from the people, that its test was its lowliness and its universality. He now reversed the proposition, and announced the necessity of ennobling the people through association with art – an association to be attained by means of their labour. The separation that had occurred between the artist and the artisan had worked injury to both kinds of products. The artists had become effeminate because they were not used to handling rough materials; workmen had become debased because they could not exercise their faculties in designing. The problem was to universalise art and to ennoble labour. Whether labour was dignified or not depended upon its character; whether rough and exhausting or with elements of recreation; whether done under conditions of slavery or freedom. Some work is degrading by its physical conditions; other work is dangerous to health; still other work destroys moral character. Labour can be dignified only as it has the character of dignity. In The Seven Lamps it is written that “objects are noble or ignoble in proportion to the amount of the energy of that mind which has visibly been employed upon them.” But fullness of life involves a large degree of freedom.

The sight of a degraded workman caused Ruskin the deepest gloom, while that of a free workman aroused his highest enthusiasm.

He observed and commended in the free workman the hand’s muscular firmness and subtlety, the brain’s instantaneously selective and ordinant energy, the will’s unceasing governance, and the whole being’s joyful play and exertion – a joy such as the eagle seems to take in the wave of his wings. His defense of Gothic architecture as against the Greek is based upon the nature of the Gothic as involving the liberty of the workman in its design and execution, and he went so far as to assert that, in order to raise up the workman of the present day into a living soul, the whole system of Greek architecture as now practised – the system, that is, of ordered and deindividualised work – must be annihilated. To produce a free workman education and science should strive, for surely these are made for man and not man for them. The modern industrial problem is to decrease the number of employments involving degradation, and to raise the character of others by allowing the utmost possible freedom to the workmen.

William Morris, Wild Tulip, 1884.

Pattern for wallpaper.

Dining Room, Wightwick Manor.

Wightwick Bank.

Richard Norman Shaw (architect) and various designers, The Yellow Bedroom, 1883–1884.

Cragside House, Garden and Estate, Rothbury.

William Morris, Single Stem, c. 1905.

Wallpaper, colour print from woodblocks.

Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Another fundamental proposition in Ruskin’s theory of industry is that all good work must be free hand-work. Probably Ruskin would admit to himself that his antagonism to the machine was too extreme; but to cry out against the machine is one way of insisting upon the value of human life. If the machine was always employed in the service of man, to relieve him of drudgery and of all work debasing in its nature, if it always did work for him, and produce the things he needed, little could be said against it. But in the service of mammon and greed, compelling men to be its slave and lackey, it is anything but a lovely spectacle, and to Ruskin’s eyes it appeared in the guise of a monster and not of a minister. And there is this to be said, that as soon as the principles of art are applied to industry the machine ceases to have much importance, and we can agree with the twenty-fifth aphorism of The Seven Lamps, that “All good work must be free hand-work.”

The social wrong wrought by division of labour is another phase of Ruskin’s arraignment of current industrialism. A profitable device from the point of view of production, considered as mere quantity, division of labour, especially in association with machinery and forced by competition, does injury to the producer and eventually to the consumer. It is a social wrong to the workman because it tends to degrade him to a mechanism, exercises but a single set of faculties, and dissociates him from the completed product, a knowledge of which alone makes his labour rational. “It is not the labour that is divided, but the men – divided into mere segments and crumbs of life.” It is a social wrong to the consumer because production, though increased in quantity, is lessened in quality, and the true utility of the goods is correspondingly lowered. In other words, the mercantile value of machinery and division of labour does not coincide with their social value, which is the true economy. “It comes to this,” says J. A. Hobsors, remarking upon this point, “that only good work can produce real utilities; excessive division of labour, in degrading the character of labour, degrades the quality of commodities, and a progress estimated quantitatively in increase of low-class material forms of wealth is not true progress.” The demand of art is for a whole man, a rational process, and a valuable result. Its expression is qualitative and not quantitative. And this explains why artists and those associated in art production are the first to protest against an industrial system that enforces bad workmanship.

Other aspects of his doctrine of work are presented in an early essay on pre-Raphaelitism and though this special passage was written with reference to the artist, it applies to all workers:

“It may be proved, with much certainty, that God intends no man to live in this world without working; but it seems to me no less evident that he intends every man to be happy in his work.

Richard Norman Shaw (architect) and Morris & Co. (for the stained-glass windows), library, 1883–1884.

Carved oak ceiling and wainscoting.

Cragside House, Garden and Estate, Rothbury.

William Morris, Wandle (name of the river next to Morris’ workshop), 1884.

Indigo-discharged and block-printed cotton, 165 × 92 cm.

Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Richard Norman Shaw (architect) and his assistant, W. R. Lethby (for the design of the chimneypiece), drawing room, 1883–1884.

Carved Italian marble inglenook and fireplace.

Cragside House, Garden and Estate, Rothbury.

It is written, ‘in the sweat of thy brow,’ but it was never written ‘in the breaking of thine heart,’ thou shalt eat bread; and I find that, as on the one hand, infinite misery is caused by idle people, who both fail in doing what was appointed for them to do, and set in motion various springs of mischief in matters in which they should have had no concern, so on the other hand, no small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself. Were it not so, I believe the fact of their being unhappy is in itself a violation of divine law, and sign of some kind of folly or sin in their way of life. Now in order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it – not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of other people for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and faithfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it. So that in order that a man maybe happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his work.”

In other words a certain amount of leisure, a certain amount of skill, and a certain amount of intelligence, are requisite for the best work. Given, then, ideal conditions for work, what profits should a man have for his labour?

The essential reward lies naturally in the happiness which the work engenders. Labour that is wholesome exercise, involving the skill and intelligence and character of the individual, is not really labour in the Ruskinian sense, for there is in it no expense of life. By the recognition of the human values of labour the question of wages is rendered of secondary moment. The real demand of workmen who have not been degraded or corrupted by the mammonism of the day is not for higher wages but for better conditions of labour. The assumption that a man is a repository of energy to be elicited by wages alone is unworthy any observer of men. The wage system is simply one stage better than the slave system it superseded, and wages high or low is still a token of industrial bondage. The distinguishing sign of slavery, Ruskin said, “is to have a price and to be bought for it.” The best work of artists, poets, and scientists is never paid for, nor can the value of toil in these fields be ever measured in terms of money. “The largest quantity of work,” our economist declares, “will not be done by this curious engine (the Soul) for pay, or under pressure. It will be done only when the motive force, that is to say, the will or spirit of the creatures is brought up to the greatest strength by its own proper fuel, namely, by the affections.” Could workmen today direct their united energies toward self-education, so that the nature by which they are surrounded and the life with which they are connected might mean more to them, and so that the things they possess might be more highly valued; could employers understand that work is done well only when it is done with a will and that no man has a thoroughly sound will unless he has character and is contented, knowing he is what he should be and is in his place; could this higher ideal of labour be generally accepted and acted upon, then would the battle between those who have and those who have not be speedily ended.

Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., Moon, 1866–1868.

Panel.

The Green Dining Room, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., Elderflowers, 1866–1868.

Panel.

The Green Dining Room, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

The real labour problem is not that of shorter hours or of higher wages, but it is to change the character of work so that work will be its own reward. It will be remembered that Ruskin promised as the fruit of ideal labour a crown of wild olive, symbolising by this token grey honour and sweet rest. “Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed trust, and requited love, and the sight of the peace of others, and the ministry of their pain; these – and the blue sky above you, and the sweet waters and flowers of the earth beneath; and mysteries and presences, innumerable, of living things – may yet be your riches, untormenting and divine; serviceable for the life that now is; nor, it may be, without promise of that which is to come.”

Ruskin wrote a pamphlet pleading for the preservation of the great buildings of the past, then neglected and falling to ruins, and out of this suggestion came the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, in the work of which William Morris figured so conspicuously. As a writer, manufacturer, and distributer of books, he tried to apply the principles of commercial integrity and honour he had advocated. He would not advertise; he employed no middlemen; he gave no discounts; he engaged in no competitive struggle for a market; he looked out for the welfare of the workmen employed in manufacture; he used the best paper he could procure, and took extraordinary care with the printing; he began the sale of his books from a little Kentish village, at one price, and without credit. Of like nature was his experiment with a London tea-shop: putting a salaried servant in charge, he built up a successful business in tea, without advertisement or any trick of the trade, and was enabled later to turn the shop over to Miss Hill as a part of his good-tenement scheme. He was not above street-cleaning or road-making, as was shown by his forming a company to keep a certain length of London street “clean as the deck of a ship” for a given season, and by his joining in with Oxford undergraduates in mending the Hinksey road. The most considerable of his practical schemes for reform was the St. George’s Company, which began to take definite shape about 1875. The general purpose of this company or guild was to socialise both capital and labour, and incidentally to demonstrate two economic propositions – one, that agriculture formed the only genuine basis of national life, and the other that happiness was derived from honest and contented co-operative labour. It was his object to collect from persons of means a fund of money sufficient to buy land, at first for a small colony of Ruskinites, who should form an ideal nucleus of perfectly just persons, and from whom the idea of justice should radiate, until the whole social body was shaped to its image.

Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., The Green Dining Room, 1866–1868.

Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

As the idea of a perfect social order matured in Ruskin’s mind he turned his thoughts more and more to the possibility of showing to the world, in the St. George’s Guild, a copy of his vision of the new feudalism. With insufficient means for the experiment, and with no marked public approval, there was no opportunity in Ruskin’s lifetime for the dream to be realised. Like many another social dream, the St. George’s Guild remains a paper Utopia – though its conception by no means lacks potential for the future. As the agricultural proposition could not be proved, the guild funds were devoted to the establishment of the Ruskin Gallery in Sheffield, originally called the Museum of St. George. As this museum embodies certain of the master’s ideas on education, thus much of his original plan may be said to be realised. The finer examples of man’s and nature’s created forms are here placed in view with reference to their ethnic, scientific, and artistic significance, and the museum is so conducted that the objects displayed minister at once to delight and instruction. With this museum as a nucleus, and with the many societies organised in England and America for the study of Ruskin’s writings, the general ideal, if not all the specific ones, of the St. George’s Guild may yet be realised. Already the modern revival of various home industries, particularly in spinning and weaving, is due directly to Ruskin’s teachings. It was one of his opinions that workers should engage in some useful craft under wholesome and humane conditions, and another that the people, the consuming class, should have the opportunity of using sound and serviceable goods instead of being compelled to buy what Carlyle called “cheap and nasty” ones. He thought that home industry might still exist by the side of the machine-driven factory. Two opportunities for reviving the spinning and weaving industries presented themselves in Ruskin’s lifetime – one on the Isle of Man, where the industry was languishing, and another among the Westmoreland cottages, where the art had long since passed away. The successful revival of these local industries was the initial phase of a general economic movement that had for social support the Home Arts and Industries Association, now the Art Workers Guild, which has succeeded in establishing many of the handicrafts on a permanent economic basis. This movement is not to be understood as a fanatical protest against machinery, and not as a return to the abandoned domestic system of mediaeval days, but rather as a modern conscious effort to advance a step beyond the factory stage of industry, and to inaugurate a new industrialism wherein the interests of both the producing and consuming classes are guarded – the one class demanding the opportunity of individual expression, and the other the satisfaction of its higher wants. So it is today that in nearly every instance of organised effort to create better industrial conditions the informing mind of Ruskin is somewhere apparent. In whatever direction, one advances it is discovered that this pioneer mind has gone on before – and as the world advances but slowly it will be long before he can be passed by.

Edward Burne-Jones (for the design and decoration), Ladies and Animals sideboard, 1860.

Pine painted in oil paint, with gold and silver leaf, 116.8 × 152.4 × 73.7 cm.

Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Charles F. A. Voysey, The Donnemara (signature Donegal Carpets design).

Carpet, 622.9 × 465.2 cm.

Private collection.