New-York tribune., 1918-05-12

- Il
ing talent. They would then provide
each with the art technical training
that has made France world leader
The trouble with our gifted youth,
they maintain, is that ability early
displayed is too often forced by home
conditions into the factory for the
wage. Put to machine work at the
most impressionable age, they are too
apt to stunt their creative talent.
Scholarships in every community after
the manner of the scholarships estab-
hshed by the New York School Art
League would tend to avert this calam-
ity. Fortified by scholarship money,
youth would escape the factory until
assured the foundation of sound tech
nical training.
Paul Poiret
Leader in Paris
Paul Poiret, the world famous cos
tune designer, is credited with the in
PRODUCTION of this elementary work
into the public schools Of Paris. Five
years ago Poiret founded near the
rue des Capucines the Ecole Martin.
This school is attended by talented
children from ten to fifteen years,
picked up anywhere. Poiret paid each
pupil half a franc day to attend.
He furnished them with paint brushes,
erayons, textiles, and bade them Ego
to it." AZ o'clock each day Poiret
criticised the days work hung on the
wall for his inspection.
l. That's good design. Who made
it 2" he would ask.
"Oh, that's Marie's or Joan's," cho-
rused the class.
To the best work in line or color
he awarded franc.
From this Ego as you please" school
he is reported to have gathered fresh,
original ideas which he manufactured
in his workrooms into salable articles
to stock his shop-"Boutique Martin"
For originality seek untrammelled
youth, is his credo. The younger
America, unlike France, has children
galore. but where are the schools to
give them technical training in the
industrial arts?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in
it's effort to bring manufacturers, de-
! signers, artisans and the public, par
ticularly the foreigners, in closer touch
with its treasures, investigated in 1915
the industrial training available in
New York City for artists and artisans.
1t discovered that there are about two
thirds as many students as workers
in greater New York, while in the
whole United States there are only
third as many students in artistic
professions as there are men and
women actually engaged in the work.
New York has over one hundred
schools in which art in some form OF
other is taught. The night schools, OF
which there are seventeen, are con-
fined largely to craftsmen. Only one
art institute calls itself a school Of
applied design, while design is taught
in all except four purely academic.
IA costume manufacturer" to quote
M. D. G. Crawford, textile expert ans
pioneer in the discovery and develop
ment of native designers, "does no,
hesitate to pay his head designer fif
teen or twenty thousand dollars 8
year. Our makeshift industrial ar1
schools employ for the most part
teachers who to exc out living are toe
often forced to pot boilers Rarely do
they know anything of the factory side
of an art industry. It's the twenty
thousand dollar men that are needed in
every department of an industrial art
technical school if world-awakening re.
suits are to be achieved"
Textile Industries
Setting the Pace
Textile industries are now in the
vanguard, as they have been in the
past, in prccipitating in New York CITY
the MADE in U. S. A." idea, which
centres round the American museums
of art and natural history. LEADING
fabric and ribbon manufacturers are
for the most part men of vision. The,
set the pace for the country. They
: spend money, time and skill in seekine
O11D DIT