DIA Year Book, 1964-5 XIII Patient Progress Three: I T IS familiar that the pattern for the DIA was the German Werkbund. The Werkbund was founded in 1907 and after seven years had established itself so firmly that it could hold a large exhibition at Cologne, on the scale of national exhibitions. It was the exhibition which is now famous mostly for Gropius' model factory and Bruno Taut's glass house, two truly epoch-making buildings. The war broke out shortly after the opening and deprived it of much of its potential effects. But, as the story of the DIA shows, not all of them. For meanwhile, this n. I is what had happened in England.* In 1912 one of the Arts and Crafts Exhibitions had been held which had taken place every four years in London since the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society had been founded in 1888 and which continued in the traditions of William Morris. The exhibition had been a financial failure, and some younger members began to ask themselves whether there was something basically wrong with the society. The most active of them was Harold Stabler, craftsman in metals. His thoughts on craft, design and industry were met by those of a few who had seen the Cologne Exhibition of the Werkbund. They were Ambrose (later Sir Ambrose) Heal, his cousin the architect Cecil Brewer (Smith & Brewer were the 2 designers of Heal's store in Tottenham Court Road, an outstandingly modern job considering its date 1916) and H. H. Peach, founder of Dryad's, who made cane furniture under German and Austrian inspiration. 3 A working committee was formed consisting of Stabler, Heal, Brewer, Peach, Ernest Jackson, a painter and lithographer, J. H. Mason, the printer and n.2 typographer who taught so admirably at the London Central School,* and Hamilton Temple Smith, later a director of Heal's. He and Brewer were secretaries. Hamilton Smith was the last of the seven founders to survive. He died only on 30 December 1961. Behind the group, not at first one of them, but a tower of strength, stood W. R. Lethaby, head of the Central School and the greatest of the followers of Morris' teachings. When Brewer shortly after the visit to Cologne showed friends photos of recent German work, Lethaby did the n.3 explaining, so he tells us in his obituary notice for Brewer.* The committee of seven in January 1915 presented a memorandum to Sir Hubert Llewellyn Smith who was Permanent Secretary to the Board of Trade from 1907 to 1919. It pointed out that the menacing expansion of German trade before the war was due to the 'untiring efforts which the Germans have made to improve the quality of their work'. The Werkbund was specially mentioned and the signatories included Lord Aberconway, chairman of the Metropolitan Railway and of John Brown's steel mills, Kenneth Anderson of the Oriental Steam Navigation Company, Brangwyn Burridge, Lethaby's successor as head of the Central School, B. J. Fletcher of the Leicester College of Art, St John Hornby of The memorandum was acted upon remarkably speedily, and in March an exhibition was arranged by the Board of Trade in Goldsmiths' Hall called 'Exhibition of German and Austrian articles typifying successful design'. H. H. Peach kept a copy of the brief pamphlet issued on fine paper for the occasion. Much of the exhibition seems to have been devoted to the Wiener Werkstätte.* In the pamphlet Germany is praised for 'methods... co-ordinating education, production and distribution' and promoting 'co-operation between the manufacturer and the designer'. "The need for the employment of machinery', the pamphlet adds, 'has been thoroughly appreciated'. 'The founders of the modern movement' in Germany succeeded not by 'redundancy of ornament' but by 'appropriateness, technical perfection and honest workmanship'. The pamphlet ends with this sentence: 'The establishment of a well organised association with similar objects in this country is much to be desired. It all sounds DIA and may well have been formulated in collaboration of the group of friends with the Board of Trade. The group, fortified by the blessings given in the pamphlet, now acted quickly and in May 1915 brought out a pamphlet of the same format and on the same paper called A proposal for a new body. The paper, the mise-en-page, the black and red printing and especially the dark greyish-blue paper cover tell of the Emery Walker-Cobden Sanderson tradition. The new body was to encourage ‘a more intelligent demand amongst the public for what is best and soundest in design', to insist that 'machine work may be made beautiful by appropriate handling' and to prove that 'many machine processes tend to certain qualities of their own'. It emphasises the influence of the English Arts and Crafts on the Continent, especially on German typefounding, and blames England for leaving her own arts and crafts 'to struggle hopelessly' while favouring a 'sort of curiosity shop ideal'. 'We need an Efficiency Style' say the signatories. They were more or less the same as those of the memorandum. The address given was 6 Queen Square, i.e. Cecil Brewer's office, which was also the premises of the Art Workers' Guild. The ties with the Arts and Crafts were strong at the beginning, despite the insistence on the potential value of the machine. We shall hear more of that. May 1915 is the date of the formation of the DIA. In July the first propaganda leaflet was issued. It was called A New Body with New Aims and was presented in the same way as its predecessors. It contained articles by A. Lys Baldry, painter and writer, A. Clutton Brock, art critic of The Times, who had characteristically enough only a year before written a book on William Morris, Sir Robert Lorimer, the Scottish architect, F. Morley Fletcher, director of the Edinburgh College of Art, and Sir Leo Chiozza Money, a politician specially interested in trade and labour questions. Chairman was Kenneth (later Sir Kenneth) Anderson. On the council were Lethaby, Burridge, W. B. Dalton, the principal of Camberwell, Morley Fletcher, St John Hornby, James Morton, Frank Warner, Charles F. Sixsmith of the Bentinck Cotton Mills near Bolton, and John Marshall. The articles were reprints, e.g. from The Times and Country Life. Clutton Brock's contained the memorable phrase: 'Where an enemy has a noble lesson to teach, it can only be learned from him nobly'. Lorimer referred to Muthesius's stay in England as an instance of intelligent German promotion of good design and to Messel's façades of Wertheim's store in Berlin as an instance of truly modern architecture. At the same time (or even a little earlier) Lethaby's article on Art and Workmanship, published in Imprint No. 1 (January 1913), was issued as another pamphlet. It contains phrases worth remembering in perpetuity, whether they stand up to close investigation or not. 'A work of art is a well-made thing, that is all.' 'Art is not a special sauce applied to ordinary cooking.' It is the well doing of n.4 what needs doing'. It is ‘the humanity put into workmanship; the rest is slavery'. All this is patently William Morris, and it is not surprising after it that Lethaby grants machine-made products only goodness 'in a secondary order'. Here clearly was a conflict looming, and we shall have to watch it through the early years of the new body. The proper prospectus came out in November. The council had in the meantime been joined by James Burton of Pilkington's, William Foxton who 12, 13 became foremost in promoting cheap, modern, printed textiles, H. P. Gee of Stead & Simpson, E. Scott Nicholson of Hudson, Scott & Sons, colour-printers, and Harry Peach. Manufacturers among the original members included Boots, Cadbury's, Early's of Witney, A. E. Grey the potters, Hollis the spinners, Lord Leverhulme of Lever's, Osler's and Worcester Royal Porcelain. Among the printers who were members were the Baynard Press, the Chiswick Press, Eyre & Spottiswoode and Spottiswoode Ballantyne, among the stores Debenham & Freebody, Crofton Gane of Bristol and Gordon Selfridge. There were several art schools led by Edinburgh and Leicester-Bath, Bradford, Brighton, Camberwell, Cork, Hessle, Huddersfield, Ipswich, Nottingham and Woolwich. There were a number of architects-Forbes & Tate, Theodore Fyfe, J. A. Gotch, Charles Holden, Morley Horder, Keay of Leicester, Basil Oliver, J. H. Sellers, F. W. Troup, E. Warren and R. S. Weir. Frank Pick who does not fit into any one category, was a member, as were the designers W. A. S. Benson, Gordon Forsyth, Graily Hewitt, Selwyn Image, Minnie McLeish, Joseph Thorp (if he can be called a designer), and Percy Wells, the artists Anning Bell, Lucien Pissarro and Noel Rooke, and James Bone the journalist. ). 136, 9 n.7 n.8, 9 n. 10 In October 1915 already the DIA had shown its youthful energy. At the Whitechapel Art Gallery an exhibition of Design and Workmanship in Printing was opened. The signet designed by Ambrose Heal was already in prominence. There were good reasons why the first exhibition was one of printing. England in her best work was foremost in the world in that field, and the exhibition found wide interest. In 1916-18 it travelled to Liverpool, Leicester, Leeds, Edinburgh, Dublin, Belfast, Derby, Perth, Ipswich, Northampton and in the end to Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town and Bloemfontein. It must have done a great deal to make the young struggling body known. In 1916 also the Deutscher Werkbund published a translation of the foundation documents of the DIA, all the articles by Lethaby, Clutton Brock, etc.—a pretty piece of give and take. Membership of the DIA rose in 1916 from 244 to 391 and reached 583 in n.5 1917.* The Werkbund, however, had 1319 members at the beginning and 1870 n.6 by 1914.* But it must not be forgotten that there was a war on. Considering that, the DIA was remarkably active in its first three years.* Branches were founded at Manchester, Edinburgh* and Glasgow* and lunch meetings were arranged in London.* In October and November 1916 the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society held a show at Burlington House, and the DIA had one room of this. The Burlington Magazine called the room 'anti-Ruskin in that it welcomes n.11 machinery and seeks to give it designs worth making in ten thousand lots'.* Special praise was given by a number of journals to the cotton fabrics in high colours made by the Bentinck Mills for the West African trade. To include them was certainly a stroke of genius. The DIA after that held a competition in conjunction with the Calico Printers' Association, and on the short list for the prize appeared the names of Mrs Maufe and of Lovat Fraser who was to die so soon after.* In May and June 1916 a textile exhibition was held at Manchester. The DIA had written to sixty manufacturers. Only three replied. It was still an uphill fight. In the end members themselves went round and found much more than they had expected. The exhibition was held at the Art Gallery. In selecting and discussing the members gathered valuable experience of the snares of textile designing: fabrics which appear clear from nearby but muddled at a distance, fabrics whose colours speak at daytime but go dead by artificial light, fabrics convincing in design when seen flat but not when seen draped and so on.* The 13 n. 12 n. 13 pottery trade was also tackled, and the reception was no warmer. A conference was held at Stoke on Trent concerning the Burlington House exhibition. The exhibition was strongly criticised locally. No process-work had been shown. What had been shown was coarse and did not do justice to the high skill of the factories. 'Expert craftsmanship', Hamilton Smith retorted, 'does not always go hand in hand with fine design', and H. H. Peach stressed that the exhibition was deliberately confined to 'things of our own day'.* Another conference followed in October 1917, and the establishment of a Pottery Trade Group. Not much is heard of it after. The ups and downs of the association can be followed closely in the Journal, started in 1916 with two odd numbers called The Beginnings of a Journal and More Beginnings, and established properly in 1917. Some themes run through the twelve numbers. The last came out in summer 1919. One theme of course is that of the DIA principles by then well and truly handed round, discussed and formulated. Fitness for purpose had become the slogan. But there remained worries. Sturge Moore the poet* in a letter contrasted the beauty of a rose, neither neat nor tidy, with the DIA criteria of beauty (as formulated for instance in Lethaby's Art and Workmanship). 'Comely utensils won't do instead of roses.' 'Worthy work never equals Michaelangelo.' 'Morris cannot touch Burne-Jones.' We have not yet found an answer to this letter today, even if we disagree on the superiority of Burne-Jones over Morris. Sturge Moore ends with a plea for 'the luxurious and capricious displays of the unmerited kindness of the universe', and one is grateful to him for the reminder. From the other side an anonymous editorial in answer to a Morrisite article by the painter Harold Speed in the Fortnightly Review of May 1918 wrote aggressively that men will never be content if they have to do humdrum work, for example at a stamping machine 'making perfect buttons for the commonwealth' and that, in spite of that, a machine civilisation such as the DIA accepts according to its terms of reference, must face the fact that 'work, in most walks of life, will be a curse for ever'. Speed answered, but here again the debate is still as wide open as ever. n.14 n. 15 Then there was the worry of well-designed things not being cheap enough for those who would want them, those with incomes of £150 to £300 a year. Members did not doubt that the demand existed, e.g. Ambrose Heal who asked in 1918 for 'plain, straightforward, stoutly made, properly planned and thoroughly useful furniture'.* But in fact the DIA style, if one can speak of a n.16 DIA style, was still close to that of the Arts and Crafts, whatever compliments were paid to machinery, i.e. quantity production. This came out for instance in the passages the Journal chose to reprint from writers of the past. n. 17 Herbert Spencer and his Study of Sociology of 1872 are introduced because they stress functional soundness and criticise thoughtlessly designed objects;* Gladstone (at the opening of the Wedgwood Institute at Burslem in 1863), because he spoke of 'the greatest possible degree of fitness and convenience for [the] purpose', even if he added (unaware of Lethaby's plain cooking and sauce) that beauty comes after and only to the 'highest degree which, . . . compatibly with that fitness and convenience, it will bear'.* Ruskin's address of 1859 at Bradford n.18 (printed in Two Paths) is the first the DIA reprinted with his still entirely topical plea to the manufacturers: 'You must remember that your business, as manufacturers, is to form the market, as much as to supply it'.* The longest passage is from an address by J. D. Sedding of 1883, and this is entirely in the Morris spirit, although the machine received some kind words. Sedding singles out three evils in English manufacture: 'bad design, bad materials, and bad housing of the operatives'. He pleads against smoke, against products which appear to be of materials innocent of them and against 'borrowed inspiration', i.e. period styles. He sees ‘a pale society of ghosts' stand at the elbow of the designer. And the end of the passage is: 'Art can never live a wholesome life... that is not related to the people at large'. Similarly Lovat Fraser in a letter cursing the bad influence of the cinema (which he already calls The Pic n.19 |