One university, I believe, has established a professor's chair in the economics of arts and crafts. English study of fine lettering has in Germany been put into types which English printers are hastening to buy. I may remark here that a characteristic of a work of art is that the design inter-penetrates workmanship as in a painting, so that one may hardly know where one ends and the other begins. The master-workman, further, must have complete control from first to last to shape and finish as he will. We have now many highly trained men among us who might make books as notable as those of the finest presses if there were a steady demand for fine modern work.
Art is the humanity put into workmanship, the rest is slavery.
We may not be able to tell the difference at first, but, when we find out, the intrinsic worth of the one is self-evident. Still it is highly important that commercial work shall be properly done after its own kind. In the reaction from the dull monotony of early Victorian days it must be admitted that many workers fell into the affectation of over-designing their things. The best design is one which, cost apart, should become a commonplace. A fine piece of furniture or a fine book-binding should be shaped as inevitably as a fiddle.