ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8612, 24 December 1913, Page 10

ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS

NOW 160 YEARS OLD SOAIETHING OF THE HISTORY OF THE FAMOUS INSTITUTE. So busy has the Royal Society of Arts been in doing its extraordinarily; varied work thqt it has reached its one hundred and sixtieth year without embarking on its reminiscences, says the London “Graphic.” But one of the busiest of its secretaries. Sir Henry Trueman Wood, has at last found time to write a histoy of the Society, very properly published by the house of Murray, which is of equally respectable antiquity. Its contents will be a revelation even to those who thought that Lhey knew the institution weii, and were fully informed of those varied activities which comprise tho encouragement of Indian archaeology; which respond to every new discovery in science, from the development of wireless telegraphy and the applications of oil fuel; and winch have left no branch of technical education as applied to manufacture witnout encouragement. Lord Sanderson, for two years president of tho society, contributes the preface to the secretary's volume, and therein remarks with sly humour that unexhausted by its et‘fo’rts in connection with the International Exhibition of 1851, tho society immediately proceeded to offer a medal for a shilling box of colours. Of the box which won tho prize eleven millions were sold! Lord Sanderson’s mention of the 1851 exhibition recalls what has been tho most conspicuous path of endeavour trodden by the society. Tliht great node in the development of English arts and manufactures was the work of tho society, and perhaps itD greatest achievement. There is a cryptic saying—cryptic, perhaps, because its origin is now forgotten—that “the 1851 exhibition started from a teacup.” The reason for it is that five years before, in 1846, prizes were offered by tho society for designs of “useful objects calculated to improve general taste.” Tho “Felix Summerly” tea-service, designed and sent in under this pseudonym by Sir Henry Colo, was one of tha signposts of a movement which certainly awoke manufacturers to a now sense of their .responsibilities in the matter of public taste; and it was the development of the feeling which led, after five years of consideration and consultation, to the great exhibition. But this, if tho greatest, was only one of many movements which it inaugurated or fostered. Under its first chairman, Viscount Folkestone, it made the first attempt at a public exhibition of tho works of artists. The great success of the experiment led to tho foundation of tho Royal Nearly a century later, in 1852, it held tho first exhibition of photographic pictures. It had an honourable share in reforming tho patent laws in. 1852, and in obtaining copyright for works ot art. Postal reforms, mechanics’ institutes, the establishment of a training school for music, all had its powerful advo cacy and aid; and it has always been its honourable tradition to inaugurate new movements and to foster the new idea. Withal it has always preserved a dignity which is in keeping with the circumstances of its foundation, and with the long roll of its honourable names. Among tho earliest members were tho elder Pitt, Lord North, Lord Rockingham and Lord Bute. That, perhaps, bettor than anything else recalls the ago of tho society, and it is rather interesting to find that side by side with those names are those of the printer of tho letters of Junius and Dr. Johnson. The latter was one of the society’s strong supporters, making at one of" its meetings the only speech ho was ever known to deliver.