POST-WAR DESIGN
By SIR CECIL HARCOURT-SMITH*
OIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS in one of his lectures stresses suit-
Obviously, some conversions may be harmless, or even consonant with the designer's intention. But there is some risk just now that in the urge for utility the utile may obliterate the duke. Useful- ness need not always connote austerity. Even the simplest object can be decorated suitably at trifling cost. Emerson says wisely:
"Give to barrows, trays and pans, Grace and glimmer of romance."
And in this war-ridden world any spice of romance is surely welcome, even if it comes to us in a wheelbarrow.
In most of our post-war industries we shall find that war con- ditions have left radical changes. In those mechanically produced the scrapping or modification of productive machinery, and the changed scope of demand due to the war, must have a profound effect. The wider range of design and the desire for cheapness may together be destructive of accepted standards. There was never perhaps a time when ugliness masquerading *Formerly Director of the Vicioria and Albert Museum.
under the cloak of simplicity was so great a menace as it is today. Already before the war our aesthetic traditions were. challenged by apostles of startlingisms, and false gods, mostly ugly, were being set up, even in high places. Spending-capacity after the war will be greatly diminished, and inexpensiveness will be a quality more than ever in demand. Machinery and mass-production, however, may even improve the general standard of taste, provided that they disseminate good types of production, and so serve an educational purpose ; it is therefore all the more important that the producers should recognise their individual responsibility for fostering good design.
The art of the potter differs from most other industries in two respects ; it is in more universal demand by all classes, and is practically independent of machinery. Even where it is in some degree susceptible of mass-production, by the use of moulds for the form of transfer for the decoration, it can still exhibit something of the original designer's hand. The inter-relation of form and decoration is a matter of great artistic importance. A simple decoration may often enhance the beauty of the form without any appreciable addi- tion to the cost ; but the decoration should be carried out by the potter himself, or at least under his immediate control ; otherwise he may find his creation used merely as the unimportant setting for some treatment that has no relation to the potter's art.
Even the specimens most prized by collectors have sometimes ignored the unities. Bernard Palissy, for instance, acquired a reputa- tion by making dishes on which fish, lizards and other animals were the decoration, modelled in high relief and coloured. Since art is not, like cricket, governed by any permanent aesthetic standard. it is too often at the caprice of individual taste ; and, as someone has said, there is plenty of taste, and most of it bad. In the optimistic hope of remedying the position, societies, councils and commissions spring up like mushrooms, and like mushrooms die ; and periodically we are threatened with the future creation of a Ministry of Fine Arts as an infallible nostrum.
British pottery has for two centuries at least held its own against foreign competition and foreign influences. The 1851 Exhibition. however, was partly intended to provide foreign models for th "improvement of British design." The result in many cases was disastrous. The unholy union produced a hybrid offspring, flimsy Franco-British furniture spotted with Sévres plaques, and Italo- English pottery dignified with the name of "Majolica," for some time the pride of public lavatories ; fortunately, in Nature's scheme of things, hybrids are often sterile. We may hope that in the general love-feast that is to follow the war nationality in art will not wholly disappear. But in pottery, at any rate, we do not need to go abroad for models. Even if the old-estab- lished firms like Wedgwoods produced nothing more modern than their original favourites these would still command market ; nor need we rely only on successes of the past. In Moor- croft, for example, we possess an artist-potter whose wares are upholding the supremacy of British production both at home and overseas.
When all is said and done, the ultimate determining factor must always be the measure of public education in art. We cannot hope to inoculate an indifferent populace with the artistic instinct, as though it were a matter of immunity against disease ; and even if we could compel the vaccination, the doctors would be by Ile means agreed as to the composition of the serum. We migheperhars indicate at least what should not be done. Our professors in art harp too exclusively on the masterpieces. Why should they not sometimes show and talk about the notoriously bad, and explain why they are considered bad? The Spartan educational plan of exhibiting drunken helots as a warning to their children, though crude, was successful, and the principle might usefully be adopted by us in our schools of art. The detection and exposure of Or inebriate, and the noxious in art and handicraft would be a divert- ing as well as an instructive exercise, and the diagnosis might ht agreeably controversial.
The fact that goods made of raw materials in short supply owing to war conditions are advertised in this tournal should not be taken as an indication that they are necessarily available for export.
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