sell his work or not. But if he wants merely to please the public, as do ninety-nine out of every hundred artists, let him turn to the creation of such beautiful things as the public need. Let him design mirrors, let him weave rugs. For there will always be a demand for mirrors and rugs, if they be well designed. Society also has its obligations. It must free itself from the charge of indifference. This it will not do by collecting pictures and pottery as mere investments, or by studying museum show-cases, but by studying and acquiring the work of the living as keenly as it now studies and acquires the work of the dead.

The artist of to-day will only be able to work freely and happily when the people who want a picture buy not the reproduction of an Old Master but an original picture by a living artist; or, if they can afford an Old Master itself, not the dubious specimen they may be offered but two hundred modern pictures, distributing as many as they do not want among the art galleries of the provinces; when people who want china look not for old Chelsea or Worcester but at what the modern potter can produce; when people who want furniture forget that Chippendale and Sheraton ever existed and try to discover what excellent craftsmen there are working here in England at this present time; when people who want curtains demand stuffs wrought by some one who has studied the art of design, and can produce graceful abstract patterns to take the place of the beasts and birds and vegetation that commonly flourish all together in a veritable jungle of hideousness on even the highly expensive chintzes and cretonnes of the fashionable decorator's stock. Only then will the artist be encouraged to produce things that are useful in shapes that are good to look upon. When the country has taken the creation of all the things which should be beautiful out of the hands of ignorant bunglers by whom beauty is abused; when patrons have learnt to ignore the absurdities of modern pictorial art and to take pleasure in the lines of a bed, in the proportions of a sideboard, in the gainliness of a sconce, then and only then will Art flourish in the country as the profession of Art should flourish.

It may be that some people will surmise a difficulty

in thus acting as patrons of modern Art. With more sincerity than self-confidence they may profess that, while books and lectures have helped them to estimate the value of the Art of past ages, they have as yet no standard or authority by which to judge the arts and crafts of to-day. Vital as it is to the craftsman who wants to make his way in the world, the question of the evolution of design, of the conflict of the modern style with the antique, is too often dismissed as all a matter of taste; which it is not. As Whistler said on a famous occasion, it is a matter of knowledge. It is by the knowledge that comes of experience that a man sums up the worth of a horse from its points. It is by a similar knowledge that customers decide whether what attracts them in a shop has a beauty that will last or only a facile charm that in time will tire the eye.

This experience can be gained in a multitude of ways. People must use their eyes and see where good design exists. Many business houses are doing their utmost to encourage it, aware at last that a presentable appearance is as much a commercial asset to a firm as to a person. In all the building, printing, and poster work that they have commissioned of recent years, the London Underground Railways, influenced largely by Mr Frank Pick, have set an example which the more enterprising firms have found it worth their while to follow; and the rebuilding of such important trading grounds as Regent Street and the site of Devonshire House has given the merchant a rare chance of asserting publicly his allegiance and indebtedness to Art.

The expert in publicity has been mentioned as one who is keen to encourage the artist of ability. It is perhaps not so curious as at first it may seem, that today, when we have a universal system of education, the people should be taught what the modern world is most anxious they should know, what, that is, private shareholders will profit financially by their knowing, in much the same way as the illiterate were taught by the Church in the Middle Ages. Pictures still have their place in national life. We may no longer want to turn our houses into art-galleries, but we have established what have rightly been called 'the art-galleries of the poor' on hoardings everywhere up and down the

country, and particularly at the railway stations. The railway companies are themselves doing excellent work. The Underground has already been mentioned, and it is only fair to add that the L.M.S. and the L.N.E.R. are doing their utmost to obtain posters worthy of the country through which their lines pass. The other companies are doubtless alive to the need for publicity, and the peculiar efficacy of a good design for portraying a scene, or for pointing out some new amenity of service to the best advantage; but in my opinion it is the companies above mentioned who have so far been most successful in securing good designs. It will be noticed that their posters, unlike those of the Underground, are the work of artists of established reputation; and young artists may complain, as some, I believe, have complained in letters to 'The Times' and other newspapers, that here is no opportunity for them. But it is to be hoped that in future the railway companies will judge all work submitted to them on its merits, and one may surmise that none of them is blind to the fact that a young artist is generally an unknown artist, and an unknown artist not one to expect, even when he deserves, the same rate of payment as a Royal Academician or a member of the New English Art Club.

Nor are the railways the only possible patrons for posters of this kind. Health and seaside resorts realise the importance of advertising. The more enterprising of them have long ago received authority by Act of Parliament to raise what is commonly known as an 'Improvement' fund from the rates.* Some people find it hard to believe that advertisement and improvement can walk comfortably side by side, but the fact remains that the 'Improvement' rate can be spent as the municipal authorities like, and in every town where it exists a large proportion of it always is spent in attempting to attract visitors by means of posters and other forms of advertising. Every town of any size now has its art school, and in each of these schools there are students of ability who, born and bred in the neighbourhood, must know its charm better than any casual visitor

can. It may, therefore, be expected that the municipal authorities of every town which exacts an 'Improvement' rate will keep in touch with their art school, and, when they need posters, will commission them from some student who knows the place, rather than from a popular painter who may not spend there more than an hour or two in all, before he has found the conventional viewpoint and dashed off his design, in advertisement not so much of his scene as of himself.

Artists have reason to be thankful for certain developments that have taken place in the publishing world of recent years. In 1926 there were 2964 novels published.* Each of these novels had to be issued with a dust jacket, and most of these dust jackets had to be ornamented with a coloured design, partly because certain influential booksellers insist that this shall be so, and partly because the book thereby becomes a display card of itself, and so much extra and free publicity space for the publisher. For each of these jackets an artist's sketch had to be commissioned, at a fee which normally extends from two guineas up to ten; so that one may calculate the annual value to the artistic profession of the present vogue for these trifles of the trade as standing approximately at 18,000l. Here, then, is a mine of opportunities for the artist who can express the soul of a book and the temperament of its author in a design that will strike to the heart of those who go up to a bookstall without knowing precisely what they want. The artist who is attracted by poster work will find scope in book-jacket designing as well, for the two arts are akin. And if one looks at the jackets issued by any of the leading publishers one will see that almost all of them are the work of comparatively unknown artists. The well-known artist, who does not disdain having his name on posters which are placarded everywhere about the kingdom, does demur at having to exercise his brains over a novel which may sell so badly that the design he has wrought for its cover is lost to all but those mysterious merchants who find a market for publishers' remainders. So the young artist, who has nothing to lose by oblivion, is left to take the chance of achieving a name.

• And probably no fewer in 1927, though the actual figures are not yet available.

And there are chances for him inside modern books, as well as on their covers, chances for whoever has studied typography and knows how to 'make' a book; chances for whoever can bind a book; chances, more perhaps than in all else, in the illustration of books. For book-illustration and decoration is coming into its own again. The mechanical processes, which for the last fifty years or more have ruined the art of bookmaking by making everything too easy, have been explored by artists, and are now generally being used with caution, and in their right place. The line block has at last displaced the half-tone from its almost absolute supremacy, and the illustrations now are coming to be regarded as a part of the general scheme of the book, being no longer pasted insecurely between its pages but set up and printed with its panels of type. The modern illustrator is no mere draughtsman. He must understand the ways of printing and know how his designs can best be displayed on the printed page. That is why so many masters of the wood-cut are turning with success to the illustration of books; that, and the fact that the market for framed woodcuts is so small that practising artists are driven for the sake of their careers to search for other means of employing their skill. They have reason to be grateful to the publishers for giving them this employment, and the publishers as grateful to them for the distinction they have given, and are giving every day, to the making and illustrating of books.

For people who want to see what the modern craftsman has to set beside the work of the 18th-century cabinet-makers, there is displayed in Tottenham Court Road the genius of Mr Ambrose Heal-genius evident both in the furniture designed by his own hand and the energy by which he has created a market for welldesigned modern goods of all kinds, from Chesterfields to table mats; and now that the pioneering work has been done and the market exists, the leading department stores of the West End are following with banners flying and bugles blowing the way that he has won. For people out of touch with London and the big cities of the provinces 'The Studio' provides in its annual 'Year Book of Decorative Art' an admirable illustrated