GREAT STRIDES

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12394, 13 March 1926, Page 4

GREAT STRIDES

INDUSTRIAL ADVANCE ‘ A MINISTER’S VIEWS HOW LOST GROUND WAS ; t , ’ . GAINED “It cannot be denied, that in the varied concerns which add to the material progress of the country, we have shown considerable energy, ” Baid the Hon. R. F. Bollard at yesterday’s meeting of the Board of Science and Art. “Industrial organisations have extended their influence throughout the length and breadth of the Do: minion. It is hoped that with the continued and 1 more intensive application of science, and art also, they wilL still further grow and achieve greeter progress. We are, perhaps, at times apt to overlook the important part played by art in the advancement of industry. ■ While science is being applied to the production and distribution, art' must he made use of in the design and presentation of the product. “A fact that has'been recorded in that at the Universal Exhibition .of 1851 Britain found herself ot the bottom of the list in all those branches of trade and. commerce which involved the application of art knowledge.. Art instruction was shortly afterwards instituted throughout the land. The result was that in twelve short years a good deal of the lost, ground had been recovered, and When she next appeared on the list of contending nations at the Exhibition in 1862, so marvellous had been her progress that the competent authority declared to the astonished Frenchmen that, eo prodigious had been the strides of Britain that if she continued to march at the same step, France.. herself would eoou be left in the rear. And before 1870 it was demonstrated by ' her arthral exports that Britain had carried away nearly half the; trade of France in articles in which the skill of the designer was used in their manufacture. “In some striking articles I have been reading in London papers of recent date, Sir Lawrence Weaver*: Director of Exhibits at the British Empire Exhibition,- has. directed attention to the many very important ways in which art has been used in the’ design and presentation of the products <3 industry displayed,in that vast Exhibition. I nave hot yet had an opportunity of visiting the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition in Dunedin, but many of those gentlemen who have seen it have recognised what both science and art have, already done in furthering the progress and volume of New Zealand’s industrial output. “It has been said that ‘Scienoe is an art, and art a science.’ “With the recognition and full use of both of our industries, and in all our endeavours, we may confidently, and with abounding hope, press on to the years that lie before us in this Britain of the South.”