TRENDS IN DESIGN
Snt,—As part author of the book which has prompted the discussion in your columns on the influence of English popular art on contemporary design, I ought perhaps not to intervene. Nevertheless, the subject seems so important in these times when British exports need all the encourage- ment possible, including lively design, that I am tempted, as an industrial designer myself, to add my mite. It is clear that in future we can no longer compete in mass production of cheap goods with the more recently industrialised countries who now wish to supply their home markets them- selves. We shall have to look to more specialised goods, and must try to offer something distinctive and individual. We urgently need a renaissance of English design, comparable to the great traditions of the past, but contemporary in feeling I, myself, in visits to the Continent, have been struck by the way countries like France, Germany and Scan- dinavia have been drawing on their native popular art to influence machine production tewards a genuine modern industrial design. Un- fortunately, in England this process has been hindered by the breach between the epftsman and the industrialist, which dates, I imagine, front the days when William Morris and the Utopian Socialists turned their backs on the machine as the great source of ugliness. Disciples are apt to be more extreme than their masters, so we have had one side shouting " Shoddy! and the other retaliating with "Arty-crafty! "
One way of helping to bridge this gap is to be take a leaf from other countries' notebooks, and recognise that England, too, has a " popular art " of her own. Painters have always done so—vide Cruikshank or Dickey Doyle—but I suggest that it can also provide plenty of inspiration even for the most modern industrial design. The English are not likely to excel in the austere, functional non-national style, which today seems rather dated ; they are too individualist. But in character and vitality they have a long tradition to draw upon, and these qualities now seem to be coming back into their own again amongst foreign customers, who are tiring of too much austerity end too impersonal a style.—Yours faith-
fully, ENID MARX.
43 and 44A Ordnance Road, St. John's Wood, N.W. R.
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