hich are more especially
associated with design. Secondly, in doing this, we hope to treat design
itself as an essential part of good workmanship. During the last century
most of the arts, save painting and sculpture of an academic kind, were
little considered, and there was a tendency to look on "design" as a
mere matter of _appearance_. Such "ornamentation" as there was was
usually obtained by following in a mechanical way a drawing provided by
an artist who often knew little of the technical processes involved in
production. With the critical attention given to the crafts by Ruskin
and Morris, it came to be seen that it was impossible to detach design
from craft in this way, and that, in the widest sense, true design is an
inseparable element of good quality, involving as it does the selection
of good and suitable material, contrivance for special purpose, expert
workmanship, proper finish, and so on, far more than mere ornament, and
indeed, that ornamentation itself was rather an exuberance of fine
workmanship than a matter of merely abstract lines. Workmanship when
separated by too wide a gulf from fresh thought--that is, from
design--inevitably decays, and, on the other hand, ornamentation,
divorced from workmanship, is necessarily unreal, and quickly falls
into affectation. Proper ornamentation may be defined as a language
addressed to the eye; it is pleasant thought expressed in the speech of
the tool.

In the third place, we would have this series put artistic craftsmanship
before people as furnishing reasonable occupations for those who would
gain a livelihood. Although within the bounds of academic art, the
competition, of its kind, is so acute that only a very few per cent. can
fairly hope to succeed as painters and sculptors; yet, as artistic
craftsmen, there is every probability that nearly every one who would
pass through a sufficient period of apprenticeship to workmanship and
design would reach a measure of success.

In the blending of hand-work and thought in such arts as we propose to
deal with, happy careers may be found as far removed from the dreary
routine of hack labour as from the terrible uncertainty of academic art.
It is desirable in every way that men of good education should be
brought back into the productive crafts: there are more than enough of
us "in the city," and it is probable that more consideration will be
given in this century than in the last to Design and Workmanship.