ARTS AND CRAFTS.
[To ms EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,---AS a constant reader of the Spectator, and an admirer of the general careful and exhaustive treatment of subjects reviewed in its columns, I would direct attention to what appears to be an exception to the rule. I refer to an article on "The Arts and Crafts Exhibition," appearing in the Spectator of November 22nd. The whole tone of the article seems unnecessarily caustic and unsympathetic, and calculated to produce an impression that the main object in its composi- tion was the display of the superior '.smartness" of the writer, rather than a judicious review serving as an educational guide for the benefit of your readers and the exhibitors alike.
The article insinuates that the " amateur " and the " shop- keeper " equally have no right or claim to be admitted to the "Valhalla" of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition, and " gibbets " them for daring to place the results of their several labours where they will come in contact with the works of some half- defined conservative hierarchy.
Further, your critic so luxuriates in an opportunity to humiliate and chastise the "shopkeeper," that he invents a special designation with that intent, and stigmatises certain among them as "outer shopkeepers," in order, it would appear, to express more forcibly the measure of contempt entertained towards the class as a whole. Incidentally, there is a distinct misstatement ia the assertion that "the committee have allowed some among the (' pariah' ?) shopkeeper class to leave the names of the designers and craftsmen in obscurity."
As a member of one of the two firms thus singled out and specified by name, I confidently appeal to the Spectator to at least not encourage this irrelevant and partisan method of criticism. Should the Spectator consider it beneficial for the progress of art to bludgeon and belabour en bloc the aspirations and the work of " amateurs " or "shopkeepers," by all means let the process proceed ; but it surely oversteps the utmost bounds of legitimate criticism, to single out for animadversion, not the art productions exhibited, but distinctive classes of the community, and to invent and apply to them names which appear designedly calculated to insult.
As a matter of detail, many years in advance of the Arts and Crafts Exhibitions, Messrs. Liberty have in a practical manner, as designers, producers, and distributors, helped forward the cause of decorative art, and particularly by popularising the revival of artistic colouring and colour- harmonies ; whilst Mr. G. j. S. Lock (a member of the other firm so invidiously alluded to by your critic) is an artist whose name appears in the catalogue as the designer of no less than eleven important works in the present Arts and Crafts [Mr. Liberty misquotes and misunderstands. The words " pariah " and "shopkeeper class" are his own glosses on what we said, and in these glosses only lies the supposed insult. Mr. Liberty, if he reflects, will remember that there are shopkeepers inside as well as outside the Society. Our point was, that the Society at the outset seemed to discourage the " outer " shopkeeper,—the firms, that is, who are accus- tomed to exhibit as firms, leaving their designers and workmen anonymous ; and that in the present exhibition there seems to be a relaxing of that .policy. We added that we had no quarrel with the change, but we proceeded to criticise its results in this exhibition ; and our view is, that if the Society can obtain good work on these terms, so much the better, and that in the case of Messrs. Liberty's exhibit, it was the kinder way not to mention names. Other efforts of Messrs. Liberty in the cause of art did not, of course, come within the limits of our review ; but we gladly admit that the chimney-piece in question may be the solitary indiscretion of a bright and beneficent career.—En. Spectator.]
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