They are merely painting the
wrong subjects on the wrong material, that is all. They have not
been taught that every material and texture has certain qualities
of its own. The design suitable for one is quite wrong for the
other, just as the design which you should work on a flat table-
cover ought to be quite different from the design you would work on
a curtain, for the one will always be straight, the other broken
into folds; and the use too one puts the object to should guide one
in the choice of design. One does not want to eat one's terrapins
off a romantic moonlight nor one's clams off a harrowing sunset.
Glory of sun and moon, let them be wrought for us by our landscape
artist and be on the walls of the rooms we sit in to remind us of
the undying beauty of the sunsets that fade and die, but do not let
us eat our soup off them and send them down to the kitchen twice a
day to be washed and scrubbed by the handmaid.
All these things are simple enough, yet nearly always forgotten.
Your school of design here will teach your girls and your boys,
your handicraftsmen of the future (for all your schools of art
should be local schools, the schools of particular cities).
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