Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1901-11-25
NOVEMBER 25. 1901.
WORKROOM AND SCHOOL.
Professor Triggs' P1eo For Indus
trial Art and Artistic Industry.

trial Art and Artistic Industry.
Professor Oscar Lowell Triggs In his
lecture the other night predicted that
the time was at hand when .the work
shop would crowd out the classroom
and become itself school. He said that
even now the development of manual
training in educational institutions and
the establishment of schools In factories
We're making the first factories and the
second colleges.
His topic, on which he spoke In Uni
versity han, Fine Arts building, was
industrial Art" His argument was
for the utility of art and for the artistry
of production. His plea was that man
Is. not made for work, but work for
man, and he said that Industrial art, or
: the moy ement of ARTS and crafts" was
a general modern tendency working to-
ward social equality He marveled how
long, ,the intelligent rich would be satis-
fed with the roundabout way of apply
Mg their money to schools instead of
applying the more direct method of
bringing education into their industrial
establishments
In his exploitation of the progress and
effects of the movement for industrial
art Professor Triggs pointed to Carlyle,
Ruskin and William Morris as the three
greatest eXponents of its development
Carlyle, he said, introduced the move
ment Ruskin elaborated 1t and William
Morris practiced it. Referring deprecat-
ingly to Carlyle Professor Triggs said:
1T has been the misfortune of men of
letters to write of work and not to work
themselves"
He said that Ruskin went many steps
further than his predecessor, Carlyle in
that he "hnmanized economies and
WAS 'the first scientific economist" But
William Morris, said the lecturer, was
the fruit and flower of both his philo-
sophical ancestors, for he not only
knew and taught what they had vague
ly outlined, but in his own person and
practice realized and made tangible and
effective the gistAnd substance of their
wise theories.
incidentally Professor Trggs inserted
a fine thrust at merely literary" men
when he said:
81 "I'wou1d not insult Ruskin by calling
him a fire writer which would mean
that | care nothing at all for his writ
ings."
William Norris" he said, IAN aris-
tocrat by birth and environment, fel-
low of Oxford and a poet by tendency,
made concrete the teachings of Ruskin
and the theories of Carlyle. He said,
afna dow Xyra Wi, Hoo al
daily labor and, having. said it, he pro-
ceeded TO put his own words into prac-
tice.
"When a certain nobleman referred
to him as the poet upholsterer,' he
only smiled wisely and went back to
his upholstery. 1t is known now to all
the world that he not only got more
pleasure from his application of art to
the crafts than he got from his poetry,
but THAI in his famous London work
shop he achieved more for the pleasure
and profit Of his fellow men than if he
had spent his life writing verse.
industrial art Is freedom condition
ed by use. 1t means the combination
of industry with art, labor artistic and
art useful. l think there is promise in
the tendency by which already art and
education are now reaching for the
workshop, and labor is marching bold
ly and with dignity into the studios
and schools"
To the question, GLOW can work be
artistic:" Professor Triggs pointed to
the achievements of William Morris
and his followers. He described the
Roohwood pottery at Cincinnati, which
combined within its scope workshop,
school of decorative art, museum, a
lyceum and n social settlement that
makes for the utility of all that is beau
tiful and the beauty of all that is use
full.
He pleaded that the "best men,
should turn their talents and their ap-
probation to the crafts and predicted
that if men of education, wealth and
leisure once seriously took up the use
full arts and went to work instead of
inviting degeneracy by the constant
pursuit of pleasure labor would not
remain the same, but would be spurred
to excellence and prompted to progress.
He outlined project for the forma-
ton Of an experimental guild of fifteen
master workmen, who, skilled in as
many various crafts, should adopt the
Ruskin rule, THE man before the prod
net" lie said that he would educate
such n community not with books, but
with the work which the members
would do, work which in itself, in its
motive and in its consummation, must
necessarily contain not only the sub
stance of education, but its flower and
fruit.-ChicaCo Record Herald