FUTURE OF ENGLISH SILVER

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 92, 12 January 1929, Page 22

FUTURE OF ENGLISH SILVER

OUR CRAFTSMEN’S WORK WORSHIP OF ANTIQUE DEPRECATED At a meeting recently of the Royal Society of Arts, Mr. Omar Ramsden read a most interesting and informative paper on English silver and its future, in which he briefly summarised the history of the silver-workers’ art in these islands from “the great epoch of the cloistered monk, to whom xve owe the lovely articles of early Irish art,” to the industrial revolution and the production of silver on commercial lines. The nexv day daxvned with William Morris, whose ideas, leading to the arts and crafts movement have, he said, profoundly affected the present-day world of applied art. Mr. Ramsden depleted a sad state of affairs in-England. The British buyer liked foreign silverwork, believing that any art product to be really flue must have made a sea crossing. The nation had spent untold millions on a school of art system which trained more or less efficient producers, but which seemed to have had little effect in educating the buying public to the proper appreciation of English art, either fine or applied. Referring to the curious way in which English committees of taste often selected designs for important presentation pieces from a competition of several invited firms, the lecturer said; “I have been informed over and over again that after a cursory glance at the draxvings the invariable question is, ‘What are the weights of gold or silver suggested by the would-be makers?’, and that hands always go up for the heaviest, irrespective of any artistic qualities the designs may happen to possess. “Important firms, I am told, lend themselves to this curious form of ‘nugget-giving’ competition under the mistaken idea that it is a good advertisement to get the job, and that the public neither knoxv a good design when

they see it, nor care for anything but weight of metah They do not know that some of the very finest pieces of silver ever made in. olden times are of the thinnest gauge it is possible to employ’, and that art qualities, not weight, are the all-important points.” In northern countries, he said, good work could be taken for granted, so the real question was one of design. He believed that in the future there would be two classes of silver-workers —a small band of artist-craftsmen who would gradually absorb all the important and unique work such as church ornaments and presentation pieces, and a much larger group who would work for factory production. Exploitation of Artist’s Name. He had been very much impressed when travelling abroad by the splendidly appointed shops full of beautiful silver, similar shops selling exactly the same things in half a dozen capitals. He would call it the relentless exploitation of an artist’s name and work in the world market by almost unlimited capital. He hoped this country would have brains to copy the method but would keep clear of the designs. He believed that the best work being done at present, in England was far ahead of anything done in other countries, but that the ordinary run of manufactured stuff in this country was not as good as what was being produced abroad.

Mass production and cheapness,” he said, “have come to stay. Other European nations realise that art is not only delightful but may be a real business asset. It is high time that ordinary people for their own good and for the well-being of England should cease to regard art as an exotic plaything of the rich. It is really a national necessity. Beauty is not the prerogative of wealth.” Mr. Ramson deprecated the worship of the antique—one of the great drawbacks to the modern craftsman; and he advocated the claims of modern work to have a museum of its own. The representatives of our old families who had been brought up in an art atmosphere could teach the new moneyed classes how to approach the appreciation of art, and the public could be taught that a work could not be judged by its price. If artists, designers, masters, and men could sink small, mean differences and pull together, he believed England had a splendid chance of regaining her natural position as leader in the world of applied art. • Mr. Ramsden illustrated his lecture with a series of pictures of modern silver work, British and foreign, and interested. his audience intensely by criticising the examples of his own work—professional crosses, maces, almsdishes, and trophies—including two Ascot cups, explaining how some of the designs were worked out, which of the earlier pieces he would like to do over again and why, what he had aimed at, where he had' sometimes failed, and some of the work that had given him the greatest pleasure.