BEAUTY IN COMMERCE.

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17326, 11 February 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

BEAUTY IN COMMERCE.

THE NEW BUSINESS TOOL.

(By Scissibus.)

Beauty is introduced into material objects to enhance them in the eyes of the purchaser. The appeal of efficiency alone is nearly ended. Beauty is the natural and logical next step. It is in the air. Wlicn choice rests between two articles of equal utility, it veers towards tlie more attractive, writes Mr E. E. Calkins, in the Atlantic Monthly. Tli is remarkable turn of the industrial world toward beauty is not really a new thing. It is merely the size of the movement that is startling. From the earliest days the making of things followed the same process, but at a slower pace. Each new implement or tool was crude in its first conception, was refined and took on the semblance of design as soon as its usefulness had reached the maximum. The first wheel, the first jar, the first bench, were not those that we know. The potter made a vessel that would hold water, but he carried the idea no further. It was a second step to realise that the bottle or jar

Could Have a Pleasing Shape. These little processes of evolution have gone on following the introduction of each new device. But here we are in the midst of an industrial age with new devices, machines, uteusils, coming forth in a flood, by going through the same process—first utility, and then beauty added, as each one goes steadily forward to that final happy and pleasing shape which satisfies. In fact, if it is true that there is in all of us an inherent craving for beauty, we may rest confident in the assurance that each new ugly thing that is hurled at us by the machines will evolve into something better to look at. The effect of beauty in distributing goods is interesting from its economic aspect when we consider what is coming to he known as “styling" the goods. When we speak of style, we usually mean a quality whicli makes a thing popular, with the corollary that popularity will soon cause it to cease to be stylish. Style flourishes best in a civilisation'in which a small class practises its rites and a large class stands enviously outside, barred by financial considerations and social ignorance from participating. What has happened, apparently, is that many more people have become conscious of style and the style idea has been extended to many more articles, than were included in the original indictment. This means that the new influence on articles of barter and sale is largely used to make people dissatisfied with what they have of the old order, still good and useful and efflcient, but lacking the newest touch. In the expressive slang of the day, they “date.” People buy a new car, not because the old one is worn out, hut because it is no longer modern. It

Does not Satisfy thele Pride

They refurnish the house, not because the old furniture is unable to perform its duties as furniture, but because it is out of date, out of style, no longer the thing. You cannot produce this state of mind by mere efficiency. The new quality must be borrowed from the realms of good taste—smarter lines newer design, better colour, more luxurious upholstery, more art, or at least more taste. Much of the art influence which is transforming business is what is described, not very lucidly, as the "new art." The new art is the product of those men who are determined lo break with tradition and produce art exactly as was produced that art which is now the tradition. They believe that art should reflect the age, especially an age which lias introduced so many new values. The modern school of artists insists (hat we must have art that grows out of our life, not out of the life of a dead-and-gone era subject to influences so remote Pom to-day, and they are producing that art. it is logical that business should prove susceptible to these new art forms, because, in a way, both are the result of the same set of causes. Both the industrialism and the art are modern. Modern colour and design are styling not only products hitherto in tlie style class—but social stationery, foods, motor ears, building materials, house furnishing, hook bindings, interior decoration, furniture, and bric-a-brac. Beauty may he discerned in unexpected places. It already exists even in our machine-made age. The present Ingredients are being assembled in new patterns which will eventually change the aspect of the world, it is to he hoped that manufacturers In the search for design to beautify their products will start with a clear conception of what beauty is, especially beauty in an article of use. Beauty is original. It is found in tiie thing itself. Good design is never imitative.

Tou cannot take a Greek temple and mako a library, a Renaissance palace and make a railway station. You may produco a beautiful and exotic building, but it will lack the

Deeper Beauty of Appropriateness.

Good design Is produced only by studying the article to be treated, its use. its purpose, so as to shape and colour it to suggest unerringly that use and purpose. It must make tho thing beautified newly significant. We are helped in this Jf wc are able to observe tho beauty that already exists in the industrial world around us. We must acquire tho new point of view, aided by tho undeniable affinity that exists between some aspects of modern Industrialism and some aspects of modern-art. Not only Is art influencing business, but business is Influencing art. Joseph Pennell, who railed uncrcaslngly at this industrial world of ours, Its factories, its* advertising, its commercialism, contradicted himself with his etcher’s needle by portraying tho beauty so ofU-n inheres in tho steel skeleton of a skyscraper, or In v- steam shovel eating Us way Into a vast excavation, or in a row of smoko-hung fateory chimneys across tiio evening sky. The surest guide in divining new beauty in machine-made things is to grasp and interpret the beauty (hey naturally and intrinsically possess."