Shorter Notices
English Popular Traditional Art By Margaret Lambert and Enid Marx. Britain in Pictures Series. (Collins. 5s.) THE problem with a book of this kind is where to begin and end— both in time and with the curiosities to be included. The writers have sensibly decided to ignore the Middle Ages, about which, as they say, much has been written already, and have limited themselves almost entirely to the last two centuries. But even then the choice is bewildering. For in this book " art " implies no aesthetic stan- dard ; tattooing, for example, is mentioned and the trick of getting a model ship into a bottle. Toy theatres and chapbooks, valentines and figureheads, weathercocks and patchwork quilts—the outlets for this spontaneous untutored urge to decoration are inexhaustible ; and, as the writers point out, the Industrial Revolution by no means stifled it. The most diverse motifs are combined as the world changes and broadens. Canal-boat ornamentation adds to naïve flowers the romantic Gothic castles that were fashionable in the second half of the eighteenth century when canals were being •cut. Ostrich-farming in South Africa brings ostriches to join horses on the roundabouts. The writers describe British popular art as possess- ing forthrightness, gaiety, well-balanced design and delight in bright colours, but it must be confessed that many of the articles illustrated are quaint rather than anything else. Nevertheless, the range of crafts described gives a sense of exuberant human ingenuity ; and altogether these forty pages, summarising information which has never been collated before, present out-of-the-way facts with gusto and make all sorts of oddments interesting.
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