Page:Arts & Crafts Essays.djvu/276

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Of Designs and Working Drawings.

man has, as I said, the leisure, even if he had the ability, to make an effective finished picture of a thing yet to be carried out—perhaps not to be carried out. This last is a most serious consideration for him, and may have a sad effect upon his work. The artist who could afford thus to give himself away gratis would certainly not do so; the man who might be willing to do it could not; for if he has "got no work to do"—that is at least presumptive evidence that he is not precisely a master of his craft.

The design that looks like a picture is likely to be at best a reminiscence of something done before; and the more often it has been done the more likely it is to be pictorially successful—and by so much the less is it, strictly speaking, a design.

This applies especially to designs on

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