owever, is orthodox or to be propounded with authority:
each has its apostles: and besides the definitions attempted above,
there are still others, some of them, indeed, concerning themselves
only with the facilities to be afforded to the craftsman for the
exhibition, advertisement, and sale of his wares.
Nor do I propose, myself, to propound one at this stage of my
description of the movement. I merely adumbrate the shifting goal, as
it may have presented itself to the minds of the men engaged in the
movement, that you may know at the outset, in vision, those far-off
heights, which they, or some of them, essayed not only themselves to
climb, but to make all mankind also to climb.
It is to the movement itself that I will first ask your attention.
Art is one, though manifold, and when the Royal Academy of Arts, in
spite of many protests, continued to restrict its Academic Exhibitions
to Painting, Sculpture, and Abstract Architecture, a body of protesters
came together, not any longer to protest only, but this time to
constitute a society of exhibitioners who should widen the academic
conception of art, and open its exhibitions to all forms of art,
provided only that the form _was_ of art, born of the imagination, and
destined to touch the imagination.
Such a society was in due time formed, and, under the name of the 'Arts
and Crafts Exhibition Society,' initiated the wider movement which,
from itself as source, has spread all the world over, and created a new
interest. The arts and crafts have been born again, and, in a new
sense, occupy the attention of mankind.
The first exhibition was held in the New Gallery, in London, in the
autumn of 1888. It is not necessary to dwell on the exhibits which
stand enumerated in the catalogue now before me. It is sufficient to
say that whereas each exhibit, standing alone, might have been seen
without any sense of a new 'movement' being on foot, the accumulation,
under one roof and idea, of so many different and differently conceived
things of beauty, made a marked impression on the public imagination, &
unmistakably heralded the advent of a new force into society, at once
creative and classificatory. Old things, long since done, were to be
put into new relations, & upon a higher plane, and all new work was to
be conceived of as convergent upon one end, the dignity and sweetness
of life, and the workman--artist or craftsman--was to derive therefrom
his measure of happiness &
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