<h1>VII<br/> ARTS AND CRAFTS—GREAT TECHNICAL SCHOOLS.</h1>
<p>The most interesting social movement in our time is undoubtedly that
of the arts and crafts. Its central idea is to lift the workmen up
above the mere machine that he is likely to become, as the result of
the monotonous occupation at some trade, that requires him only to do
a constantly repeated series of acts, or direct, one little portion of
machinery and so kills the soul in him. Of course, the other idea that
a generation of workmen shall be created, who will be able to make
beautiful things, for the use of the household as well as the
adornment of the house is another principal purpose. Too many people
have mistaken this entirely secondary aim of the movement for its
primary end. It is because of the effect upon the workman himself of
the effort to use his intellect in the designing, his taste in the
arrangement, and his artisan skill for the execution of beautiful
things, that the arts and crafts movement has its appeal to the
generality of mankind.</p>
<p>The success of the movement promises, to do more, to solve social
problems than all the socialistic agitation that is at present causing
so much dismay in some quarters and raising so many hopes that are
destined to be disappointed in the hearts of the laboring classes. The
solution of the problem of social unrest is to be found, not in
creating new wants for people and giving them additional wages that
will still further stimulate their desire to have many things that
will continue to be in spite of increased wages beyond their means,
but rather to give them such an interest in their life work that their
principal source of pleasure is to be found in their occupation.
Unfortunately work has come to be looked upon as a drudgery and as men
must spend the greater portion of their lives, at least the vast
majority of them must, in doing something that will enable them to
make a living, it is clear that unhappiness and discontent will
still continue. Blessed is the man who has found his work, blessed is
the man to whom his work appeals with so much interest that he goes
from it with a longing to be able to finish what he has been at, and
comes back to it with a prospect that now he shall be able to
accomplish what time and perhaps fatigue would not allow him to
proceed with the day before.</p>
<p>This is the best feature of the promises held out by the arts and
crafts movement, that men shall be interested in the work they do.
This may seem to some people an unrealizable idea and a poetic
aspiration rather than a possible actuality. A little study of what
was accomplished in this line during the Thirteenth Century, will
surely prove even to the most skeptical how much of success is capable
of being realized in this matter. The men who worked around the
Cathedrals were given opportunities to express themselves and the best
that was in them as no class of workmen before or since have ever had
the opportunity. Every single portion of the Cathedral was to be made
as beautiful as the mind of man could conceive, his taste could plan
and his hands could achieve. As a consequence the carpenter had the
chance to express himself in the woodwork, the village blacksmith the
opportunity to display his skill in such small ironwork as the hinges
or the latch for the door and every workman felt called upon to do the
best that was in him.</p>
<p>It is easy to understand under these circumstances with what interest
the men must have applied themselves to their tasks. They were, as a
rule, the designers as well as the executors of the work assigned
them. They planned and executed in the rough and tried, then modified
and adapted, until finally as we know of most of the Cathedrals, their
finished product was as nearly perfect in most particulars as it is
ordinarily given to man to achieve. Their aim above all was to make
such a combination of utility with beauty of line yet simplicity of
finish, as would make their work worthy counterparts of all the other
portions of the Cathedral. The sense of competition must have stirred
men to the very depths of their souls and yet it was not the heartless
rivalry that crushes when it succeeds, but the inspiring emulation
that makes one do as well as or better than others, though not
necessarily in such a way as to belittle others' efforts by
contrast or humble them by triumph.</p>
<SPAN name="opp126">{opp126}</SPAN>
<p class="image">
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FOUNTAIN (PERUGIA) [TOWN PUMP]</p>
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LAVATOIO (TODI) [PUBLIC WASH-HOUSE]</p>
<p>In these old medieval days England used to be called Merrie England
and it is easy to understand that workmen would be profoundly merry at
heart, when they had the consciousness of accomplishing such good
work. Men must have almost tardily quitted their labor in the evening
while they hoped and strove to accomplish something that would be
worthy of the magnificent building in which so many of their fellow
workmen were achieving triumphs of handicraftsmanship. Each went home
to rest for the night, but also to dream over what he might be able to
do and awoke in the morning with the thought that possibly to-day
would see some noteworthy result. This represents the ideal of the
workman's life. He has an interest quite apart from the mere making of
money. The picture of the modern workman by contrast looks vain and
sordid. The vast majority of our workmen labor merely because they
must make enough money to-day, in order that they may be able to buy
food enough so as to get strength to work to-morrow. Of interest there
is very little. Day after day there is the task of providing for self
and others. Only this and nothing more. Is it any wonder that there
should be social unrest and discontentment? How can workmen be merry
unless with the artificial stimulus of strong drink, when there is
nothing for them to look forward to except days and weeks and years of
labor succeeding one another remorselessly, and with no surcease until
Nature puts in her effective demand for rest, or the inevitable end
comes.</p>
<p>It would be idle to say that these men who knew how to make the
beautiful things for these cathedrals were not conscious of the
perfection of the work that they were accomplishing. The very fact
that each in his own line was achieving such beautiful results must
have stamped him as thoroughly capable of appreciating the work of
others. The source of pleasure that there must have been therefore, in
some twenty towns in England alone, to see their Cathedral approaching
completion, must have been of itself a joy far beyond anything we can
imagine as possible for the workmen of the present day. The interest
in it was supreme and was only heightened by the fact that it was
being done by relatives and friends and brother workmen, even
though they might be rivals, and that whatever was done was redounding
first to the glory of the Lord to whom they turned with so much
confidence in these ages of faith, and secondly, and there was
scarcely less satisfaction in the thought, to the reputation of their
native town and their fellow-townsmen.</p>
<p>This is the feature of the life of the lower classes in the Thirteenth
Century which most deserves to be studied in our time. We hear much of
people being kept in ignorance and in servitude. Men who talk this way
know nothing at all of the lives of the towns of the Middle Ages and
are able to appreciate not even in the slightest degree the wonderful
system of education, that made life so much fuller of possibilities
for intellectual development for all classes and for happiness in
life, than any other period of which we know. This phase of the
Thirteenth Century is at once the most interesting, the most
significant for future generations, and the most important in its
lessons for all time.</p>
<p>We have been following up thus far the exemplification in the
Thirteenth Century of John Ruskin's saying, that if you wish to get at
the real significance of the achievements of a period in history, you
must read the book of its deeds, the book of its arts and the book of
its words. We have been turning over a few of the pages of the book of
the deeds of the Thirteenth Century in studying the history of the
establishment of the universities and of the method and content of
university teaching. After all the only deeds that ought to count in
the history of mankind are those that are done for men—that have
accomplished something for the uplift of mankind. History is
unfortunately occupied with deeds of many other kinds, and it is
perhaps the saddest blot on our modern education, that it is mainly
the history of deeds that have been destructive of man, of human
happiness and in only too many cases of human rights and human
liberties, that are supposed to be most worthy of the study of the
rising generation. History as written for schools is to a great extent
a satire on efforts for social progress.</p>
<p>We shall continue the study of the book of the deeds of the Thirteenth
Century and its most interesting and important chapter, that of the
education of the masses. We shall find in what was accomplished in
educating the people of the Thirteenth Century, the model of the
form of education which in spite of our self-complacency does not
exist, but must come in our time, if our education is to fulfill its
real purpose. Perhaps the most interesting phase of this question of
the education of the masses will be the fact that in studying this
book of the deeds, we shall have also to study once more the book of
the arts of the Thirteenth Century. All their best accomplishment was
linked with achievement and progress in art. Yet it was from the
masses that the large number of artist-artisans of workmen with the
true artistic spirit came, who in this time in nearly every part of
Europe, created masterpieces of art in every department which have
since been the admiration of the world.</p>
<p>We may say at once that the opportunity for the education of the
masses was furnished in connection with the Cathedrals. In the light
of what we read in these great stone books, it is a constant source of
surprise that the Church should be said to have been opposed to
education. Reinach in his Story of Art throughout the Ages says:</p>
<p class="cite">
"The Church was not only rich and powerful in the Middle Ages; it
dominated and directed all the manifestations of human activity.
There was practically no art but the art it encouraged, the art it
needed to construct and adorn its buildings, carve its ivories and
its reliquaries, and paint its glass and its missals. Foremost among
the arts it fostered was architecture, which never played so
important a part in any other society. Even now, when we enter a
Romanesque or Gothic church, we are impressed by the might of that
vast force of which it is the manifestation, a force which shaped
the destinies of Europe for a thousand years."</p>
<p>It was as the result of this demand for art that the technical schools
naturally developed around the Cathedrals. To take the example of
England alone, during the Thirteenth Century some twenty cathedrals
were erected in various parts of the country. Most of these were built
in what we would now call small towns, indeed some of them would be
considered scarcely more than villages. There were no large cities, in
praise be it spoken, during the Thirteenth Century, and it must not be
forgotten that the whole population of England at the beginning
of the century was scarcely more than two millions of people and did
not reach three millions even at the end of it. Every rood of ground
did not perhaps maintain its man, but every part of England had its
quota of population so that there could not be many crowded centers.
Even London probably at no time during the century had more than
twenty-five thousand inhabitants and Oxford during the palmiest days
of the University was perhaps the most populous place in the land.</p>
<p>There was a rivalry in the building of Cathedrals, and as the main
portion of the buildings were erected in the short space of a single
century, a feeling of intense competition was rife so that there was
very little possibility of procuring workmen from other towns. Each
town had to create not only its cathedral but the workmen who would
finish it in all its details. When we consider that a Cathedral like
Salisbury was practically completed in the short space of about
twenty-five years, it becomes extremely difficult to understand just
how this little town succeeded in apparently accomplishing the
impossible. It has often been said that artists cannot be obtained
merely because of a demand for them and that they are the slow
creation of rather capricious nature. It is only another way of saying
that the artist is born, not made. Nature then must have been in a
particularly fruitful mood and tense during the Thirteenth Century,
for there is no doubt at all of the wonderful artistic beauty of the
details of these Gothic cathedrals. While nature's beneficence meant
much, however, the training of the century probably meant even more
and the special form of popular education which developed well
deserves the attention of all other generations.</p>
<p>It may be said at once that education in our sense of teaching
everybody to read and write there was none. There were more students
at the universities to the number of the population than in the
Twentieth Century as we have seen, but people who were not to devote
themselves in after life to book learning, were not burdened with
acquisitions of doubtful benefit, which might provide stores of
useless information for them, or enable them to while away hours of
precious time reading trash, or make them conceited with the thought
that because they had absorbed some of the opinions of others on
things in general, they had a right to judge of most things
under the sun and a few other things besides. The circulation of our
newspapers and the records of the books in demand at our libraries,
show how much a knowledge of reading means for most of our population.
Popular education of this kind may, and does benefit a few, but it
works harm to a great many.</p>
<p>Of education in the sense of training the faculties so that the
individual might express whatever was in him and especially that he
might bring out what was best in him, there was much. Take again the
example of England. There was considerably less in population than
there is in Greater New York at the present time, yet there was some
twenty places altogether in which they were building Cathedrals during
this century, that would be monuments of artistic impulse and
accomplishment for all future time. Any city in this country would be
proud to have any one of these English cathedrals of the Thirteenth
Century as the expression of its taste and power to execute. We have
tried to imitate them more or less in many places. In order to
accomplish our purpose in this matter, though, we deliberately did
everything on a much smaller and less ambitious scale than the people
of the small English towns of seven centuries ago, and our results do
not bear comparison for a moment with theirs, we had to appeal to
other parts of the country and even to Europe for architects and
designers, and even had to secure the finished products of art from
distant places. This too, in spite of the fact that we are seven
centuries later and that our education is supposed to be developed to
a high extent. If there were twenty places of instruction in Greater
New York where architects and artist workers in iron and glass, and
metal of all kinds, and wood and stone, were being trained to become
such finished artisans as were to be found in twenty different little
towns of England in the Thirteenth Century, we should be sure that our
manual training schools and our architectural departments of
universities and schools of design were wonderfully successful.</p>
<p>When we find this to be true of the England of the Thirteenth Century
we can conclude that somehow better opportunities for art education
must have been supplied in those times than in our own, and though we
do not find the mention or records of formal schools, we must
look patiently for the methods of instruction that enabled these
generations to accomplish so much. Needless to say such attainments do
not come spontaneously in a large number of people, but must be
carefully fostered and are the result of that greatest factor in
education, environment. It will not be hard to find where the
ambitious youth of England even of the workman class found
opportunities for technical education of the highest character in
these little towns. This was never merely theoretic, though, it was
sufficiently grounded in principle to enable men to solve problems in
architecture and engineering, in decoration and artistic arrangement,
such as are still sources of anxiety for modern students of these
questions.</p>
<p>To take but a single example, it will be readily appreciated that the
consideration of the guilds of builders of the Cathedrals as
constituting a great technical school, is marvelously emphasized by
certain recent observations with regard to architects' and builders'
methods in the Cathedrals. There is a passage in Evelyn's Diary in
which he describes certain corrections that were introduced into Old
St. Paul's Cathedral, London (the Gothic edifice predecessor of the
present classical structure), in order to remove appearances of
dissymmetry and certain seeming mistakes of construction. This passage
was always so misunderstood that editors usually considered it to be
defective in some way and as the classical critics always fall back on
an imperfect text for insoluble difficulties, so somehow Evelyn was
considered as either not having understood what he intended to say, or
else the printer failed to put in all the words that he wrote. It was
the modern readers, however, not Evelyn nor his printer who were
mistaken. Mr. Goodyear of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences
has proved by a series of photographs and carefully made observations,
that many of the old Gothic Cathedrals have incorporated into them by
their builders, optical corrections which correspond to those made by
the Greeks in their building in the classical period, which have been
the subject of so much admiration to the moderns.</p>
<p>The medieval architects and builders knew nothing of these classical
architectural refinements. They learned for themselves by actual
experience the necessity for making such optical corrections and
then introduced them so carefully, that it is not until the last
decade or so that their presence has been realized. It is only by an
educational tradition of the greatest value that the use of such a
refinement could become as general as Professor Goodyear has found it
to be. Besides the practical work then, and the actual exercise of
craftsmanship and of design which the apprentices obtained from the
guild, there was evidently a body of very definite technical
information conveyed to them, or at least to certain chosen spirits
among them, which carried on precious traditions from place to place.
This same state of affairs must of course have existed with regard to
stained glass work, the making of bells and especially the finer work
in the precious metals. Practical metallurgy must have been studied
quite as faithfully as in any modern technical school, at least so far
as its practical purposes and application were concerned. Here we have
the secret of the technical schools revealed.</p>
<p>It is extremely interesting to study the details of the very practical
organization by which this great educational movement in the arts and
crafts was brought about. It was due entirely to the trades' and
merchants' guilds of the time. In the cathedral towns the trades'
guilds preponderated in influence. There gathered around each of these
cathedrals during the years when work was most active, numbers of
workmen engaged at various occupations requiring mechanical skill and
long practice at their trade. These workmen were all affiliated with
one another and they were gradually organized into trades' unions that
had a certain independent existence. There was the guild of the stone
workers; the guild of the metal workers—in some places divided into a
guild of iron workers and a guild of gold workers, or workers in
precious metals; there was the guild of the wood workers and then of
the various other forms of occupation connected with the supplying of
finished or unfinished materials for the cathedral. In association
with these were established guilds of tailors, bakers, butchers, all
affiliated in a merchants' guild which maintained the rights of its
members as well as the artisans' guilds. Some idea of the number and
variety of these can be obtained from the list given in the chapter on
the Origin of the Drama.</p>
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RELIQUARY (LIMOGES MUSEO, FLORENCE)</p>
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CRUCIFIX (DUOMO, SIENA)</p>
<p>These were the workmen who not only accomplished such brilliant
results in art work, but also succeeded in training other workmen so
admirably for every line of artistic endeavor.</p>
<p>It is somewhat difficult to understand just how a village carpenter
did wood-carving of so exquisite a design and such artistic finish of
detail that it has remained a subject of admiration for centuries. It
is quite as difficult to understand how one of the village blacksmiths
of the time made a handsome gate, that has been the constant
admiration of posterity ever since, or designed huge hinges for doors
that artists delight to copy, or locks and latches and bolts that are
transported to our museums to be looked at with interest, not only
because they are antiques, but for the wonderful combination of the
beautiful and the useful which they illustrate. We are assured,
however, by the Rev. Augustus Jessopp, that he has seen in the
archives of the old English parishes, some of the receipts for the
bills of these village workmen as we would term them, for the making
of these beautiful specimens of arts and crafts.</p>
<p>The surprise grows greater when we realize that these beautiful
objects were made not alone in one place or even in a few places, but
in nearly every town of any size in England and France and Italy and
Germany and Spain at various times during the Thirteenth Century, and
that at any time a town of considerably less than ten thousand
inhabitants seemed to be able to obtain among its own inhabitants, men
who could make such works of art not as copies nor in servile
imitation of others, but with original ideas of their own, and make
them in such perfection that in many cases they have remained the
models for future workmen for many centuries. Even the bells for the
cathedrals seem to have been cast in practically all cases in the
little town in which they were to be used. It may be added that these
bells of the Thirteenth Century represent the highest advances in bell
making that have ever been attained and that their form and
composition have simply been imitated over and over again since that
time. Even the finer precious metal work such as chalices and the
various sacred vessels and objects used in the church services, were
not obtained from a distance but were made at home.</p>
<p>An article that appeared a few years ago in The Craftsman
(Syracuse, N. Y.), a magazine published in the interests of the Arts
and Crafts movement, called attention to how much more beautifully the
Thirteenth Century workman in the precious metals accomplished his
artistic purpose than does the corresponding workman of the present
day. A definite comparison, was made between some typical chalices of
the Thirteenth Century and some prize cups which were made without
regard to cost, as rewards for yachting and other competitions in the
Twentieth Century. The artist workman of the olden time knew how to
combine the beautiful with the useful, to use decoration just enough
not to offend good taste, to make the lines of his work eminently
artistic and in general to turn out a fine work of art. The modern
prize cup is usually made by one of the large firms engaged in such
work who employ special designers for the purpose, such designs
ordinarily passing through the trained hands of a series of critics
before being accepted, and only after this are turned over to the
modern skilled workmen to be executed in metal. All this ought to
assure the more artistic results; that they do not according to the
writer in The Craftsman, demonstrates how much such success is a
matter of men and of individual taste rather than of method. We have
already called attention to the fact that in needlework and in other
arts connected with the provision of church ornaments and garments,
the success of the Thirteenth Century workers was quite as great. The
Cope of Ascoli considered by experts to be one of the most beautiful
bits of needlework ever made is an example of this. Many other
examples are to be found in the treasuries of churches and
monasteries, in spite of the ravages of time and only too often of
intolerant and unfortunate destruction by so-called reformers, who
could see no beauty in even the most beautiful things if they ran
counter to certain of their religious prejudices.</p>
<p>The training necessary for the production of such beautiful objects of
handicraftsmanship was obtained through the guilds themselves. The boy
in the small town who thought that he had a liking for a certain trade
or craft was received as an apprentice in it. If during the course of
a year or more he demonstrated his aptness for his chosen craft, he
was allowed to continue his labor of assisting the workmen in
various ways, and indeed very early in the history of the guilds was
bound over to some particular workman, who usually supplied him with
board and clothing, though with no other remuneration during his years
of apprenticeship. After four or five years, always, however, with the
understanding that he had shown a definite talent for his chosen
trade, he was accepted among the workmen of the lowest grade, the
journeymen, who usually went traveling in order to perfect their
knowledge of the various methods by which their craft maintained
itself and the standard of its workmanship in the different parts of
the country.</p>
<p>During these three years of "journeying" a striking development was
likely to take place in the mind of the ambitious young workman. His
<i>wanderjahre</i> came just at the most susceptible period, sometime
between 17 and 25, they continued for three years or more, and the
young workman if at all ambitious was likely to see many men and
methods and know much of the cities and towns of his country before he
returned to his native place. Sometimes these craft-wanderings took
him even into France, where he learned methods and secrets so
different to those at home.</p>
<p>After these years if he wished to settle down in his native town or in
some other, having brought evidence of the accomplishment of his
apprenticeship and then of his years as a journeyman, he became an
applicant for full membership in the guild to which his years of
training had been devoted. He was not admitted, however, until he had
presented to the officials of the organization a piece of work showing
his skill. This might be only a hinge, or a lock for a door, but on
the other hand it might be a design for an important window or a
delicate piece of wood or stone-carving. If it was considered worthy
of the standard of workmanship of the guild it was declared to be a
masterpiece. This is where the fine old English word masterpiece comes
from. The workman was then admitted as a master workman and became a
full member of the guild.</p>
<p>This membership carried with it a number of other rights besides that
of permission to work as a master-workman at full wages whenever the
guild was employed. Guilds had certain privileges conferred on them by
the towns in which they lived, by the nobles for whom they
worked and the ecclesiastical authorities on whose various church
structures they were employed. At the beginning of the Thirteenth
Century at least, feudal ideas prevailed to such an extent that no one
was supposed to enjoy any rights or privileges except those which had
been conferred on him by some authority. Besides the workmen of the
same guild were bound together by ties, so that any injury inflicted
on one of them was considered to be done to the whole body. When human
rights were much less recognized than has come to be the case since,
this constituted an important source of protection against many forms
of injury and infringement of rights.</p>
<p>Besides the privileges, however, the guild possessed certain other
decided advantages which made membership desirable, even though it
involved the fulfilment of certain duties. In the various towns in
England, after the introduction during the Thirteenth Century of the
practice of having mystery plays in the various towns, the guild
claimed and obtained the privilege of giving these at various times
during the year. The guild of the goldsmiths would give the
performance of one portion of the Old Testament; the guild of the
tailors another; the guild of the butchers and so on for each of the
trades and crafts still another, so that during the year a whole cycle
of the mysteries of the Christian religion in type and in reality were
exhibited to the people of each region. Almost needless to say, on
such festive occasions, for the plays were given on important feast
days, the people from the countryside flocked in to see them and the
influence was widespread. What was most important, however, was the
influence on those who took part in the plays, of such intimate
contact for a prolonged period with the simplicity of style, the
sublimity of thought, the concentration of purpose and the
effectiveness of expression of the Scriptures and the Scripture
narratives even in their dramatized form.</p>
<p>The fact of actually taking part in these performances meant ever so
much more than merely viewing them as an outsider. It is doubtless to
this intimate relationship with the great truths of Christianity that
the profound devotion so characteristic of the accomplishments of the
arts and crafts, during the Thirteenth Century, must be to no little
extent attributed.</p>
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MADONNA, CIMABUE<br/>
(RUCELLAI CHAPEL, SANTA MARIA NOVELLA, FLORENCE)</p>
<p>Their beautiful work could only have come from men of profoundest
faith, but also it could not have come from those who were ignorant of
the basis of what they accepted on faith. In other words, there was a
mental training with regard to some of the sublimest truths of life
and its significance, the creation of a Christian philosophy of life,
that made the workman see clearly the great truths of religion and so
be able to illustrate them by his handiwork. Education of a higher
order than this has never been conceived of, and the very lack of
tedious formality in it only made it all the more effectual in action.</p>
<p>Other duties were involved in membership in the guild. All the members
were bound to attend church services regularly and to perform what is
known as their religious duties at periodic intervals, that is, the
rule of the guild required them to go to mass on Sundays and holy
days, to abstain from manual labor on such days unless there was
absolute necessity for it, and to go to confession and communion
several times a year. Besides they were bound to contribute to the
support of such of their fellow-members as were sick and unable to
work or as had been injured. A very interesting phase of this duty
toward sick members existed at least in some parts of the country. A
workman was supposed to pass one night at certain intervals on his
turn, in helping to nurse a fellow-workman who was seriously hurt or
who was very ill. It was considered that the family were quite worn
out enough with the care of the sick man during the day, and so one of
his brother guildsmen came to relieve them of this duty at night. It
is a custom that is still maintained in certain country places but
which of course has passed out of use entirely in our unsympathetic
city life. In a word, there was a thorough education not only in the
life work that made for wages and family support, but also in those
precious social duties that make for happiness and contentment in
life.</p>
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