Arbor Vit?: A Book on the Nature and Development of Imaginative Design for the Use of Teachers Handicraftsmen and Others (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Arbor Vitæ: A Book on the Nature and Development of Imaginative Design for the Use of Teachers Handicraftsmen and Others

The same result is only too evident in the work that is done in the schools and classes for handicrafts which have been lately founded in many of our towns and villages. These efforts to revive national industries are nevertheless the strongest, though the most silent, proofs of a reaction from the current ideas of art. It is because the movement has instinctively preferred to teach its followers to carve wooden bowls, beat brazen plates, and weave honest cloth and linen, instead of setting them to paint pictures, that we are justified in believing that a real renaissance is possible; for the first principle of all art is to create and decorate useful things instead of useless ones. We have forgotten this principle for a long time, and have been busy instead in making useless and expensive things, or in inventing labour-saving machines to take the place of human heads and hands when we wish to make necessary ones.

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