OF FURNITURE. Part 1.
A lecture given before a gathering of art workers.
Ourinstructions for to-night are that we show you examples of some of our work. But we have found ourselves unable to comply with the letter of the instructions, to confine the examples that we show you to-night to furniture; for, of furniture which can be considered apart from the building it furnishes, we have scarcely any to show. Complying as nearly as we can, we will as far as possible keep within what may be considered furnishing.
Before proceeding to the illustrations of our work, I would like to point out what we claim you shall find to be its leading characteristics: and among these I will name first, absolute simplicity, directness, and straightforwardness. I feel that we are to-day so completely smothered in lifeless and meaningless fuss of pattern, moulding, knick-knack, flourish and convention, and the machine-made & mechanically produced substitute for ornament, that it is well-nigh impossible for our artistic sensibilities to exist at all unless liberated from them. I would mention secondly complete unity and absolute harmony between all the parts, such as can only be obtained when a house, its decorations and furniture, are all designed by one man—or at least under the entire supervision of one man. Now when I claim that if the result is to be artistically satisfactory, nay also if it is to besatisfactory from the point of view of comfort and practical utility, the house and everything in the house must from the first be thought of and designed as a whole, the objection most commonly made is that a house should reflect somewhat the character, habits, and taste of those who live in it; and that if the architect is to make his influence felt in every detail of its furnishing and decoration, it will showhisfeeling, taste, and character, not his client’s.
There seems at first glance to be some truth in this; but a very little thought will show, that instead of the power of the members of a household to impress their own individuality upon their home being lessened by this extension of the architect’s influence, it would be greatly increased.
The architect who is worth anything will always design a house which will fit any particular client much better than would any house he could possibly find not designed for him: and of furniture, fittings and decoration, and all else belonging to a house, this is also true. The client wanting a piece of furniture, can otherwise only select, from those offered for sale in the shops, that which will most nearly fill the place of something designed specially to meet his requirements. His own taste and individuality can have no influence upon it whatever; no say in the form it shall take; this has been decided for him by a designer to whom he probably never gives a thought. But if his architect designs something to fit him & his house, the client can make his own taste felt from the beginning; hecan make known to his architect his own personality, habits, and feeling; and have some chance of getting what will accord with these and moreover be in proper relation with the whole. It is not a question whether he shall have things to his own design or to that of another: this would be a different matter altogether: the question is: Shall he have things designed to fit in with him and his requirements, or do the best he can with what chance may offer him?
It has struck me as very wonderful how good a result has in rare instances been attained by one of true artistic feeling through long years of careful watchfulness making the most of such opportunities as came in his way of picking up & gathering round him—often in a house which has not a redeeming characteristic—furniture and decoration which his own taste has told him are good and reasonably congruous. But I have always felt: What would not this man have made of it if he had been able to have some influence upon the design for the house and the things in it! By choosing an architect capable of sympathy with his own artistic feeling, he could have done more at the very outset towards procuring a fitting setting for himself and his life, than he has been able to do by all his care and thought in selection.
That they who lack taste will also stamp their own individuality on the house they live in, no matter how extended has been the architect’s province, we know to our cost to be only too true.
All here know that the only right way to go towork to design anything is to give it that form which will best enable it to fulfil its functions, that form which is best adapted to the methods by which it is to be produced, at the same time giving it the most beautiful form consistent with & explaining these conditions of purpose and construction: and I contend further that to gain artistic success the position it is to occupy must also be taken into consideration; it must be designed for its place; and, to get the best result, its place must even be designed for it.
Socially morally and artistically one of the most necessary reforms to-day is that we should simplify our lives; we should shake ourselves free from all this hampering web of artificialities in which we have become so degradingly entangled: and in our homes we must make this possible for ourselves by first sweeping away all these fussy substitutes for ornament, all these supposed indications and requirements of refinement. Then, when we have done this, we must set ourselves to make those things which are necessary and helpful to real life and true refinement also beautiful.
But have you ever seen theordinaryroom with nothing but the bare necessaries of educated and refined life in it? I can assure you the effect is not comfortable. And it is not to be wondered at that people condemned to live in such rooms should try to supplement their baldness by all sorts of added ornament and bric-à-brac. Some time ago a picture dealer was looking at some of our designs for rooms, and he said: “Yes, but it cannot be expectedthat I should admire them. You, and those who follow your teaching are the worst enemies I have. I want people to have houses of the ordinary type, that they may always be trying in vain to make something of them, by patiently buying & buying in the hope that by adding firstthisthenthatsome approach to a satisfactory result may be obtained. Each of these rooms is in itself a complete and satisfactory whole: there is no temptation to add anything.”
Lest the foregoing should give any the impression that I do not find places for pictures, I will let this bring me to what sooner or later this evening I shall be called upon to justify myself in, namely, the amount of realism I admit in a picture to which I accord a place as an element of decoration. I hold that the degree of conventionalisation justifiably demanded in any decoration is only such as is necessitated by the following: The limitations of the materials and the processes by which it is to be produced; a just appreciation of the special beauties of these materials and characteristics of these processes; and a full recognition of its proper relations to all by which it will be surrounded, and with which it is to be combined as a component part of an architectural whole. There is no need for adding any further artificial restrictions. But as a legitimate reason for convention I would add a perfectly frank acknowledgment of considerations of economy. If you use one process in preference to another because it is less costly, there is no occasion to disguise this. But, spite of theconvention justified by this needful economy, seek to retain something of the effect which themotifthat gave the inspiration had upon you.
The easel picture hung on the walls of our houses is certainly unsatisfactory; that it is only more so when hung on the walls of an exhibition all will admit: but that all the advance we have made in our power to represent nature in realistic portraiture is in the wrong direction we cannot admit. We may insist that our easel pictures shall be regarded as complete in themselves, and thought of as detached & dissociated from all that surrounds them; but this is demanding an impossibility: they must form part of a whole. We find the easel picture is less unsatisfactory if we do nothing more for it than consider its frame, the colour scheme of its setting and surroundings with relation to it: give it a definite place made for it, and it is better still. But let us add to all its other dignity this too, that it fulfils all the demands made upon it in its capacity as an element of decoration, and it will be by so much the greater. The imaginative picture, or the picture giving a bit of nature with her mood, and having something of the effect upon one the real scene would have, only gains by being at the same time also decorative. And it is equally true that if decoration, by the suggestion of a beautiful scene, can also have upon us something of the uplifting effect such a scene would have, as a decoration it is finer.
Do not let us have convention pure and simple. If we are to retain all that art has gained in thedevelopment of the easel picture, we must face the problem fairly, not shirk it. Let us first have something which we feel to be really beautiful, and then let us suffer it to undergo only such conventionalisation as is dictated naturally by the conditions and processes of its production, the limitations of the materials from which it is to be created, and a true feeling for fitness; never losing sight of the essential elements of the beauty of ourmotifand the factors in creating that beauty, and sacrificing nothing we can help of its meaning and charm.
BARRY PARKER.