St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1889-05-12

which use and beauty are associated.
While endless copying of exhausted
patterns proceeds in European work.
shops, the American designer is mani
Testing diScernment in the selection of
types worth preserving, and originality
and Imagination in the creation of new
ones possessing the essential traits OF
beauty. The Tiffany exhibit intro
duceS native ideas of decoration taken
frankly from the Indians and developed.
presenting a pleasing contrast to Brit
flabbily repeating the feeble, stiff pat
terms of India. hackneyed at the In
dian and colonial exhibition three
years ago and worked to sub
sequent exhaustion at Kensington.
In force and individuality, as well as in
exquisite manufacture. the GOrham
company stands in front; also in the ar
tistic use of the plate by electric
process, the Meriden company has no
visible rival. The small articles eXhib-
tied from the workshops of the Fair
child company, such as pencils, match
boxes and pen-holders, are also notable
for dainty fancy, durable construction
and beauty. If we have supplied an in
telligent world with reading, writing
and speaking machines. we have also
SiNCl II tilC OHlN uulNCISdl SOlu pCll,
but with this brief comment the deco
rative and industrial art of the United
States, impressive in only one great
line, comes to an end. 1t is incredible
that we should be content to occupy
relatively
INSIGNIFICANT POSITION.
The universal exposition shows that
our path out of it is not untried. Eng
land has taken 1T before our eyes. She
sent to artist countries for designers.
foremen and trained artisans. She
located art museums. and established
technical art schools near the centers of
her raw materials. She has been edu-
eating her labor. Her artisans are ac-
Quiring the consciousness of the artist.
She sets apart money every year for the
art training of labor. We have been
doing in a small way invOluntarily
what she had the sagacity to do in
large way. Under stress OF her uncOn-
querable commercial instinct we have
used foreign trained labor in founding
the decorative industry that we can
now boast. The artist artisans of the
Tiffany house few years ago were
nearly all foreign-bOrn or trained, and
One-third of them are so now. The
chief designer. who is now in Paris,
Paulding Farnham, was pupil of the
free art schools whose existence is due
to the foresight and national spirit Of
Peter Cooper, but he has also foreign
training. The chief designer of the
GOrham company. Mr.. Wilkinson, is an
Englishman, and was trained in Eng
land. His chief associate is French
man. A large number of their most
reliable artisans, according to their rep.
resentative here, Mr.. HOughtOn, are for
OF Inv hiVfh VT Mr.. oil
child states that for the finishing of
articles requiring a sense of form they
employ only young men trained in art
schools. The Britannia company,
according to its representative, Mr..
Miles, has been developed into great
factory of artistic products only by the
employment to considerable degree of
f0reign-bOrn or foreign-trained labor.
What the art schools of France had to
do with retaining for ages the first
place in the beautiful manufactures can
be learned in little volume by COmynS
Carr. The debt OF the United States to
France for
BEST SKILLED LABOR
is best known to American architects;
but all who have had personal knOwl-
edge of the difficulties that encompass
the development of taste In manufact-
we have been almost totally dependent
upon this labor, the American artisan,
if given an opportunity, soon distances
his alien competitor in originality,
keenness and inventiveness. When
the educational exhibit can be
comparatively considered. it will
be found that artistic peoples begin
training the eye when they begin train
ing the mind. The child learns to think
with his hands when he begins to think
with his head. Decorative manufact-
ures are the most profitable. In the
future of American industry, when the
training of eye and hand is universally
established in our free schools in place
of the many abstract subjects of which
it is impossible the students shall ac-
quire an amount of knowledge prac-
tlcally useful, there will be a natural
benefcent distribution of talent into the
various artist crafts. The professions
of law aud medicine and the counters
of merchants, now all overcrowded with
underpaid men, will be relieved, and
we shall become as independent as for
eign countries in the manifold products
blending beauty with cas- we are now
in food supply, fuel, motive power and
machinery.
MARGARET F. SULLIVAN.