File:Art crafts for amateurs (1901) (14760796464).jpg

Identifier: artcraftsforamat00mill (find matches)
Title: Art crafts for amateurs
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Miller, Fred, decorative artist
Subjects: Decorative arts Decoration and ornament
Publisher: New York, London, Truslove, Hanson & Comba, Ld.
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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nd yet by degrees, bygetting the mind travelling that way, astonish yourself byyour fertility of resource. It is another instance of a wasteplace blossoming as the rose. The great difficulty we allexperience is to start the mind, to overcome the inertia dueto inactivity. It is something like getting a gas engine tomove which has been cold for a long time ; overcome theinitial difficulty and it will work away right well. It is easy to adapt a design drawn for one kind of workto fit it for some other, but where this is done the alterationsmust be made with circumspection, for nothing is in worsetaste than to see, say, the effect of tooled leather, producedby inlaying. Those who work in leather soon learn toknow what can best be done by tooling just as those whoinlay learn to appreciate the effects given by letting incoloured woods in a panel; and that brings us back oncemore to our former position, the desirability of each workerbeing the designer of his own handiwork instead of working
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With regard to fashion in design which I touched uponin a former paragraph, no one can help being influenced by 12 ART CRAFTS FOR AMATEURS. the work one admires around him; but there gets to be afeeling abroad that, because a very dominating personalityworks in a particular way, that is the only excellent wayof working. What so often happens is that the followersof a strong personality imitate their masters weaknesses andleave out the qualities that make him a master mind. It isas unfortunate as it is true that the affectations and con-ventionalities are the qualities seized upon and perpetuatedby pupils, while the spirit denominating the whole is lostsight of. Just as we quicker see the faults and failings ofour friends than their excellencies, so we lay hold of themere surface trickery of artists and think that, because weget the knack of reproducing that side of the man, we mustbe making progress. Set no one up as a master, be nomans pupil, but a student of the world with all that

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