Art
The stroke of 12
John McEwen
Ten years ago Lord Eccles, when Mini-
ster responsible for the Arts, set up the Crafts Advisory Committee. This in turn became the present Crafts Council and the Council in turn opened a little gallery at the clubby end of Lower Regent Street: This gallery has now been enlarged and the building in general at 12 Waterloo Place proclaimed as the Council's new 'resource centre'. Anything anybody wants to know about the crafts and 'craftspeople' of this country can in future be found there, easy to hand. It is a promotional landmark for an activity that, till Lord Eccles's interven- tion, had not been considered worthy of permanent state patronage; and it is in- augurated with an exhibition entitled The Maker's Eye' (till 27 March), in which 14 leading practitioners, representative of sun- dry fields and ages, have each been allocated a space to display their personal
'It's news for the hard of hearing.'
choice of the best British craftwork (along with their own) of the recent — in OP titular — and not so recent past.
But what is craft? The selectors have also been. asked to indicate this by their choice, and it ranges in definition from a painting by Ben Nicholson to a TriUmph motorbike. Lord Eccles is more specific. In a recent issue of the very smart and successful Inok-_, ing crafts magazine, he sees the crafts and design forming a dual link between art and industry, with the implication that the crafts incline to the individual expression of fine art, and design to the more market- controlled requirements of mass produc- tion. And this opinion is broadly confirmed by the selectors, at least in their catalogue statements. Design comes across as a hit commercial and suspect, craft as hand- made and fulsome. The virtue of an object being well made is extolled so often it amounts to a definition; but Michael Cardew, doyen of today's potters and the most senior of the selectors, is the most suc- cinct. He sees craft, irrespective of its ar- tistry, always tied to use; and this would seem the most reasonable and indeed ' useful, categorisation with which to address the diverse objects in the current show. This definition soon declares itself, also, as a matter of simplicity. The older selectors make the most straightforward selections. and the oldest and plainest objects sti1110°14 the best. Cardew concerns himself ex- clusively with pots, David Kindersley almost as devotionally with lettering. The most satisfying pieces of furniture are both 19th-century, the most stunning logo 0131 of Edward Johnston, the great Scottish calligrapher, for the London Underground in 1916: the famous red name-band dividing a blue circle, that remains functional to this day. Overall, however, and especially among the younger exhibitors, there is a desire to catch the buyer's rather than the maker's eye, which is the negation of craft principle. Objects that suffer from this fault invariably look arty in. a way that things made with unapologetically fine art inten; tions do not. Stephenie Bergman's stitched and dyed abstract canvases are a popular example of the second kind. This confirms that 'craftspeople' — and the self-conscions- ness of that word is highly appropriate are at their most pretentious when then, work seeks to identify with painting and sculpture, whereas painters and sculptors invariably seem at their most innocent and most exuberant when dabbling in the crafts.
When Lord Eccles proposed the setting. up of the Crafts Advisory Committee he was told that craftsmen were too in" dividualistic, and therefore intractable, It° find common cause in a single represen' tative body. He thought money would soon put an end to that — and it did. It mos', fervently be hoped, however, that the money wand of the Crafts Council does not eventually turn all craftsmen into craftsre- pie, all craft into design. On present evidence craftsmen would surely be well a"1 vised to treat the burgeoning importance 01 12 Waterloo Place with caution.
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