by that means, but the cutting of the colour-blocks and the
clearing of the key-block after the first cutting of the line may well
be done by assistant craftsmen.

A larger demand for the prints might bring about a commercial
development of the work, and the consequent employment of trained
craftsmen or craftswomen, but the result would be a different one from
that which has been obtained by the artists who are willing to
undertake the whole production of their work.

The actual value of wood-block prints for use as decoration is a matter
of personal taste and experience.

In my own opinion there is an element that always remains foreign in the
prints of the Japanese masters, yet I know of no other kind of art that
has the same telling value on a wall, or the same decorative charm in
modern domestic rooms as the wood-block print. A single print well
placed in a room of quiet colour will enrich and dominate a whole wall.

The modern vogue still favours more expensive although less decorative
forms of art, or works of reproduction without colour, yet here is an
art available to all who care for expressive design and colour, and
within the means of the large public to whom the cost of pictures is
prohibitive. In its possibility as a decorative means of expression well
suited to our modern needs and uses, and in the particular charm that
colour has when printed from wood on a paper that is beautiful already
by its own quality, there is no doubt of the scope and opportunity
offered by this art.

But as with new wine and old bottles, a new condition of simplicity in
furniture and of pure colour in decoration must first be established. A
wood-block print will not tell well amid a wilderness of bric-a-brac or
on a gaudy wall-paper.

From another and quite different point of view, the art of block-cutting
and colour-printing has, however, a special and important value. To any
student of pictorial art, especially to any who may wish to design for
modern printed decoration, no work gives such instruction in economy of
design, in the resources of line and its expressive development, and in
the use and behaviour of colour. This has been the expressed opinion of
many who have undertaken a course of wood-block printing for this object
alone.

The same opinion is emphatically stated by Professor Emil Orlik, whose
prints are well known in modern exhibitions. On the occasion of a visit
to the Kunstgewerbeschule of Berlin, I found