Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-12-28
BOOST ARTS AND CRAFTS
NEW YORK PUBLIC SCHOOLS
PROMOTE INDUSTRIAL STUDY.
Movement Helps to Solve Big Prob
lem Of "Deserters" From
ClasSroomS.

SldSSIOOluS.
A novel experiment in public education
chldren's arts and crafts community
operating twenty-five municipal work
shops, studios and printing rooms. has
been inaugurated among the 600, 600 chill
dren of the local schools by the public
school authorities. Already nearly five
hundred boys and girls, twelve to fifteen
years of age. the industrial cream of
twenty-five elementary schools. have been
enrolled in the "Childrens Crafts Society
of New York, and after school hours
are busily engaged in designing and fash
ioning artistic household appointments,
jewelry and articles of apparel from
metal. wood leather cloth and paper
Under the direction of skilled teachers.
these little folks are carrying on nine
different art industries. including book
binding, fretted, etched and repousse
metal work, chip carving, leather toollng,
joinery, stenCiling and the making OF
book plates. monotypes and block prints.
The standard of work set for these little
craftsmen has been that the product
must be good enough to SELL and ac-
cording to competent critics, much OF
their work is already far from amateur
ish. The public school authorities, how
ever, are not anxious to bring these chill
dren into trade competition, and their
| work has either been taken away to beau
tify the tenement homes of the makers,
or else collected by the teachers for a
great exhibition which will be held dur
Ing the school year at the metropolitan
Museum of Art-probably the first time
that children's art work has ever been
shown this scale in this temple or
master craftsmen.
Practical Training Given.
This chldren's crafts community. which
has the support of City Superintendent
William H. Maxwell, was organized and
is carried on by DIR. ]. P. Haney, public
school director of manual arts, and his
corps of supervising art teachers, who
have volunteered to give their time with
out compensation to training children
after 3 o'clock The board of education
has granted the use of the school work
shops and art rooms and provided all
tools needed. and friends" of the arts
have supplied the materials used by the
juvenile artificers There is absolutely no
charge to the children.
The children's crafts community Is
really plan on the part of the New York
public school system to solve the prob
lem of the child's wasted years, the years
between fourteen and sixteen, when so
employments which are undesirable. both
from the point Of view of remuneration
and of learning anything worth while A
large proportion of these children drift
into unskilled trades, where they are sub
merged for the rest of their lives. How
serious a problem this is becoming is evil
denced by the fact that, according to an
eminent educator, 100000 school chill
dren deserted between the time the
public schools closed last June and when
= 1, N1Nny
Hence. the New York experiment is be-
ing watched with interest by school au-
thorities throughout the country
Pupils Must Show Ability.
In the craft club the brilliant pupil is
not hampered by the lock-step system
which regulates progress in the regular
classroom by the ability of the average.
The clever boy can go as fast as he likes
and can specialize on particular line. 1t
also gives him a chance to test in actual
shop practice his leaning toward crafts
manship as a calling, and so let's him de-
eide between the arts and clerical en-
ploy- Admission to the community, there
FORE is limited absolutely to those who
show special ability. The children or
.ganize not as a class, but as a club or
guild, working at one industry after
school two hours each week. The clubs
also form the Children's Crafts Society,
which prizes and mentions will be award
ed by a grown-up jury of experts. A
series of Saturday morning children's lee
lures on crafts will be given by leading
this plan interested Sir Casper Purdon
Clarke, the director of the Metropolitan
Museum, that he has invited the Chill
drens Society to meet in the museum
hall The museum, also, for the first
time has recently extended to little artists
he n sRatrhiOu in its cO1leO-
lions
The craft work for the children con-
sists of four misunderstanding, making
working drawings, color application, and.
finally, the tool work. In the leather
crafts the children make fooled leather
belts, portfolios, bags, card cases purses,
desk sets and mats. In the bookbinding
guilds they assemble and stitch pages.
put on covers. and then decorate or tool
the bound volumes into charming gift
books Another club designs and makes
| book plates.
Variety of Work.
Curtains, scarfs and individual designs
on burlap denim, silk and other cloths
for screens. table covers and mural dec
orations are made by the children in the
stenciling craft. The metal crafters use
copper sheets in three different ways.
| The etchers scratch designs on an as
acid, which bites the lines into the metal.
The fretted metal workers bore and saw
out open-work designs and the ropousse
clubs hammer metal into all sorts of or
namental and useful forms. In the Sc
clubs children as young as twelve years
have made commercially valuable YES
sels trays, ash receivers desk appoint
ments, hinges. lock escutcheons push
plates, jewel boxes. fobs, belt buckles and
paper knives.
The monotypists paint pictures on glass,
and then make an impression on Japanese
paper much like an etching. The wood
blocl. printers carve in low relief on wood
and then print from the block by hand.
The chip carvers, who are doing work
which Swedish craftsmen originated as
a profitable recreation for the long win
tiers, chip out designs with the peculiar
triangular cut made with a special knife
and so decorate broad boards, boxes,
table tops, etc. In some of the classes
ambitious little workers make real furni-
ture-simple but artistic in. line. Investi-
gators of the Industrial Education So
ciety, of which DR.. Haney is also a di
rector. have expressed surprise at the
excellence of the work of these children,
which they say, in many cases COM