Page:Arts & Crafts Essays.djvu/282

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Of Designs and Working Drawings.

end; and his end is the stuff, the paper, or whatever it may be, in execution.

A workman intent on his design will sacrifice his drawing to it—harden it, as I said, for the sake of emphasis, annotate it, patch it, cut it up into pieces to prove it, if need be do anything to make his meaning clear to the workman who comes after him. It is as a rule only the dilettante who is dainty about preserving his drawings.

To an artist very much in repute there may be some temptation to be careful of his designs, and to elaborate them (himself, or by the hands of his assistants), because, so finished, they have a commercial value as drawings—but this is at best pot-boiling; and the only men who are subject to this temptation are just those who might be proof against it. Men of such rank that even their working drawings are in demand have no very

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