The journal of design and manufactures
Miscellaneous, pp. 184-190 ff.
Miscellaneous. .Aistelancous. WOLVERHAMPTON SCHOOL OF DESIGN. -The manufacturers of Wolverhampton seem intent upon impressing the people of their neighbourhood with a sense of the value of a good School of Design to the great manufacturing district around them. At the county meeting held on the 15th of December, a committee was appointed to take charge of the matter in hand, and the first public act does credit to the gentlemen composing it. They felt the necessity of doing some- thing to teach those who were ignorant of the subject, and to dispel the apathy which always, at first, stands so much in the way of the establishment of any new public institution of an educational character. They determined to have a public lecture upon the subject, and it was delivered on the 5th of January by Mr. George Wallis, the master of the Birmingham School of Design. The lecture was entitled "Schools of Design, in relation to Art, Manufactures, and General Education," and was illustrated by a series of drawings illustrative of the historic styles of orna- ment: and, moreover, it was very nu- merously attended. Mr. Wallis com- menced with a reference to the Great Exhibition, and dwelt upon the necessity of the establishment of means for the art-education of the industrious classes. He then gave an exposition of the ele- mentary principles of drawing and design, and maintained the importance of teach- ing drawing in all primary schools, and that its practice in certain elementary forms should be prior to any attempt to teach a child to write. He referred to paucity of men of great talent in orna- mental as compared with other branches of art, as an evidence that while the imitative art of drawing was largely cultivated, the inventive faculty or design had been seriously neglected; and he laid great stress upon adaptation as the first principle of design. The lecturer then described the relations of the art- workman, a class of which we have sadly too few in this country, but which it was a primary duty of Schools of Design to furnish us, as well as the draughtsman and designer. He observed that com- paratively few of our students would learn design, in the highest acceptancy of the term; that many would become useful to themselves and their country under the head of draughtsman, but that our great aim should be to make as many as possible of art-workmen, since fifty art-workmen, or perhaps, he might say, ten times that number, would be required to do all that one thoroughly able de- signer could be capable of inventing for them. Art, Mr. Wallis maintained, must be made a portion of handicraft; and inasmuch as we apprenticed our youths to learn a trade to those who practised it, so Schools of Design were necessary for the tuition of these youths in those great essentials which he was endeavour. ing to impress upon their minds. And in conclusion, he urged all present to support the committee appointed to carry out the plans proposed in the establish- ment of a School of Design for Wolver- hampton and South Staffordshire, inas- much as it would be better to depend upon themselves than upon any aid the Government could give, since out of their own intelligence and proper management the true results could alone arise, the functions of a government being neces- sarily limited in such cases. THE LECTURES OF MR. WORNU TO THE STUDENTS OF THE BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL OF DESIGN.-On the evenings of the 1st and 2d of December Mr. Wornum de- livered lectures "On the Analysis of Or- nament," including within the above title the various characteristics and types of Egyptian, Grecian, Roman, Byzantine, Saracen, Gothic, Renaissance, Cinque- Cento, and Louis-Quatorze styles. The several varieties were illustrated by drawings, and the lectures were listened to throughout with marked attention by the best audiences we have yet seen, in so far as they were composed of a few of the leading manufacturers and the ma- jority of the students attending the School. One feature afforded us much pleasure, viz., that the lecturer insisted upon the necessity of those attending the School cultivating their minds by a perusal of theliterary treasures which are now, thanks to the efforts of enterprising publishers, placed within the reach of the humblest artisan, and may be found in the lending libraries which are or should be attached to every school; as also making themselves acquainted with all forms of natural objects, animate and inanimate, not to be slavishly copied because they are suggestive. This we have long insisted upon as an essential element; and we are convinced it will be found as part and parcel wherever success has been achieved. Towards the conclusion, the lecturer, in passing in review the various styles of art, entered something very like a protest against the Gothic: that it is liable to degenerate into a slavish copying of ancient objects,
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