Page:Arts & Crafts Essays.djvu/72

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Of Decorative Painting and Design.

all diverse individualities: each art is kept distinct, with a complete recognition of the capacity and advantages of its own particular method and purpose.

In our age, for various reasons (social, commercial, economic), the specialised and purely pictorial painter is dominant. His aims and methods influence other arts and crafts, but by no means advantageously as a rule; since, unchecked by judicious ideas of design, attempts are made in unsuitable materials to produce so-called realistic force, and superficial and accidental appearances dependent on peculiar qualities of lighting and atmosphere, quite out of place in any other method than painting, or in any place but an easel picture.

From such tendencies, such influences as these, in the matter of applied art and design, we are striving to recover. One of the first results is,

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