Helping Lincoln Ladies Conquer Ugliness

This is not a part of 'My Life's Medley', but a speech made by Frederick's son Wilfred. As the piece is quite long we have decided to post it here instead of on the 'notes on a medley' page.

"Evidence of a growing revolt against all that was pretentious, tawdry and ill-proportioned in industrial art was described by Mr. Vincent Brooks, vice-chairman of the L.C.C School of Printing and Engraving, at a luncheon of the Lincoln branch of the National Council of Women at the Great Northern Hotel, Lincoln, yesterday." Lincolnshire Echo, Tuesday April 30, 1935

From January 5th to March 9th The Royal Academy of Arts ran an exhibition entitled British Art in Industry. Wilfred Vincent Brooks was Chairman of the commercial printing section and his speech below echoes the purpose of the exhibition itself. Britain's beset industry, in order to regain it's pre-war eminance, needed to embrace good design and it's consumers educated to exercise good taste.


"Chairman and Ladies,

When my sister Mrs. Herbert Newsum asked me to talk to your Council, I greatly appreciated the honour, but I was rather doubtful as to my abilities to make my talk sufficiently interesting. However, I decided to do my best.

The reason Mrs Newsum invited me to do this was I suppose because I was Chairman of the Printing (commercial) section of the recent exhibition at Burlington House of British Art in Industry.

I have decided to give my talk the following title:-
“How improved art in industry can help to conquer ugliness and
add to the happiness of our fellow countrymen”

I hope that the remarks that I have to make will show that greater attention to the artistic side of industry is essential if our manufacturers are to develop their domestic and overseas markets. Proof is not lacking that tariffs, however high, fail to keep foreign goods out of the country, if they possess qualities which the domestic article lacks, and you will agree I am sure that beauty is by no means the least telling factor among those which account for the appeal that an article makes, and in this connection it has been said that “The simplest thing if it fills its purpose is the right thing and the beautiful thing.”

A substantial improvement in the design of machine made goods especially of mass produced and cheap wares will go far to raise the average level of taste and give pleasure in countless homes. If these aims are to be achieved, industry in this country will have to improve its organization dealing with its artistic problem, on the lines already applied to the protection of its other interests.

The glory of God and the joy of men are the constant sources of beauty. To extend the one and give voice to the other are the aims to which Art aspires. If there must be a dividing line between the “fine” and the other arts, can it be said that the former are concerned with capturing and rendering the beauty that resides in all created things while the latter attempts to impart beauty to the work of mans own hands?

In either case the gift of the artist or craftsman – for again the line of demarcation is faint – is to experience the joy that comes from creative action, while his skill consists of communicating it to others through the medium of beauty. Joy lies at the root of Art as of beauty; and it will therefore radiate from every true artist’s lowest effort. Neither joy nor the happiness it brings are so plentiful in the world that we can afford to neglect the sources from which it springs.

To scatter beauty is to render a service of mankind. The spreading of ugliness is a crime and a root of further evil. That is why the conquest of ugliness is not the concern of Aesthetics, not a thing to be leisurely discussed in the rarefied atmosphere of sublimated thought. It is a rugged task to be firmly taken in hand by all men and women whose blood runs red enough through their veins, to give them joy in action and whose hearts are kind enough to make them feel the emptiness of those lives from which joy through beauty is absent. To make primitive and simple people respond to beauty is easy enough. Whatever the form in which it be placed them, so long as it is a worthy artist’s worthy endeavour there will be enough in it that is human to rouse a human response. Full understanding is not needed to derive joy from what one sees, though understanding may increase the measure of appreciation. But it is much less easy to stir this simple emotion amongst of the uncultured sections of so-called civilised peoples, whose constant immersion in squalor and ugliness has coated with a kindly crust of insensitiveness. If those who have to live amid some of the disgraceful surroundings and circumstances which most countries still tolerate were to be constantly aware of what they see and what they lack, their lives would be utterly unbearable. The absence of quick response to that which would rouse the normal emotions of more favoured human beings is their protective armour.

But just as callous hands are denied the joy of touching delicate objects, so those whose lives have forged a crust around their souls, cannot be expected to react spontaneously to the beauty that may come their way. Rather they should be gradually acclimatized to it by being enabled to enjoy decency in their surroundings. They should also be accustomed to using and seeing objects that are in good tastes. This would seem an easy aim to achieve since the buildings they will most often see are probably those erected by public bodies or important commercial concerns, and the objects that they will use are the outcome of machine production. In either case those that control the shaping of these buildings and these objects have the power to make them as decent as they wish, for it costs no more to make a thing conform to good taste than to turn it out in a form offensive to the cultured eye. Thus, especially at the lower end of the social scale, the introduction of decency and beauty into the lives of the people is a matter which is largely in the hands of builders and manufacturers. If they fail in their duty to the community, let them blame none but themselves. And let those of us who can give assistance do so, through public bodies or in our private capacities, for private initiative will always remain the source of the happiest improvements.

But lasting improvement – for those on the lowest rung of the social ladder – will never be achieved until at all levels above them certain general conceptions have gained common acceptance. Therefore, at all the social stages where the essential and superfluous are blended in varying proportions, we need a fair and growing appreciation of what brings beauty into our lives and a determination that it be made available. That is a task in which producers and artists must join hands if the results are to be satisfactory from an artistic point of view, while meeting economic requirements. Let us not overlook the economic factor; for though it be not the end of human aspirations, it is the solid basis upon which all other progress must be built. During the 150 years or so in which artists have intermittently admonished manufacturers for being Philistines they have all to rarely tried to see their point of view, or offered to lend a sympathetic hand towards achieving the aims of both. Far too often they have remained perched on their pedestals of their own erecting and have looked down with contempt – an attitude out of which no constructive action has ever yet come forth.

This attitude may have arisen from the misconception that art was a cerebral function, proceeding from thought, and proclaimed through words, when in fact it is dependent on emotion both for its creation and for its experience, and progresses only by being practised and enjoyed. Like many other un-English developments, this theoretical conception of art originates across the Channel, and though it came to be talked of in this Country, it never sufficiently took root in the souls of the people to lead to a movement of any National importance. In recent years we have suffered two waves of these aesthetic attacks. The first reached these shores from Paris in the years just before the war. The noxious gases which composed it were largely the decomposition products of the very proper reaction which had bare set in against the meaningless limitations imposed on the arts by the Paris Exhibition of 1900. But that reaction had almost spent itself by the time it came to be felt over here and had degenerated into mere affectation and cerebral acrobatics. A minor supporting wave of Continental theories blew over from Italy, but its “futurism’ was soon a thing of the past in Britain, and its dynamic force worked itself before it had well begun. The war saved us from the necessity of being further concerned with the futile meanderings of unoccupied minds.

After the war one might have expected in this country, and in France at any rate a revival of artistic activity based on National conceptions. For some reason it was not so, it was Germany which set the pace with an outburst of mechanised art, well attuned to the predilections of its people, but entirely alien to either the spirit of the English or the French. Nevertheless both countries for a while suffered acutely from this influence. Nothing was more marked in many of the French products shown at the Paris exhibition of 1925 than the undercurrent of purely Teutonic conceptions which had influenced their making.

In this country we are sometimes inclined to take our cue from France in matters of Art; at any rate for a start and until we find our own feet again, when that which has been borrowed may be turned into something more National in feeling and in style.

The lack of imagination with which some of our manufacturers have copied alien designs, without the true conception of what was good and sound in the underlying idea together with the queer exteriors of the objects and their exotic patterns to which alone they seemed to give thought in an attempt to sell so called modern goods to their customers, has resulted in a dreadful influx of inane designs from which some of our machine made goods and even some products of craftsmanship have suffered in the last decade. One came almost to understand the tendency in so called decorative arts which ruled not only all decoration but almost all objects, out of our modern rooms. Just as the ugliness of many electric fittings made one almost approve of concealed lighting, in itself an unsound and uneconomical means to the desired end.

By 1933 the receding tide of elimination had almost swept away everything worth looking at. In self defence the manufacturers came to ask themselves what they could do to make people want to ‘see’ things about them once more and consequently to buy them. The impulse on their part coincided as such things often do, with the culmination of a desire on the part of artists to take a practical share in remedying a state of affairs which was developing into a National calamity. Far better than others they realised that unless beauty could come into its own again a vitally necessary element in the building of National happiness and contentment was being destroyed. From all sides action had been converging towards a single aim: the rural beauties of England as well as the amenities of places already built on or intended to be covered in houses were made the object of competent care. A desire to improve the application of artistic design to production by machinery, grouped artists and others in all manner of enthusiastic bodies. The most enlightened manufacturers enlisted the permanent cooperation of artists, while the least competent were at least becoming uncomfortable about this troublesome new tendency. On top of all this came the steadying of conditions in Britain and the gradual return of confidence in the economic outlook. But what was still lacking was a definitive point around to which to rally enthusiasm without which no movement can ever gather speed. There was also the stubborn fact that in the complex organization standing between the primary producer and the ultimate consumer, there were always many obstacles to be overcome before improved products could be made to reach the public. It was with this idea in mind and with the full knowledge of the difficulties that would have to be faced and the criticisms that would be levelled at it that the recent exhibition at the Royal Academy was held.

Art and Daily Life

The importance of art to industry lies in the fact that art is a real force in the lives of the people. It is not a mere trimming on a garment but the very stuff and cut of our lives daily wear, and as the peoples main concern is with the quality and appearance of the coat or dress, the appeal of the products of industry will only have the effect in so far as these products conform to the sound dictates of Art.

A proper understanding and use of art has boundless possibilities. The right application of artistic principles to industrial production is of the greatest value to the people as a whole; it raises their standards of appreciation and their capacities of enjoyment and happiness. Hence the endeavour to establish active relations between designer and manufacturer is a matter of great concern, not to these two only but, to the whole nation.

Education today is on more enlightened lines than it was some years ago and does not neglect the cultivation of taste. In all classes of society there is evidence of a growing revolt against all that is pretentious, tawdry and ill-proportioned. The young generation in particular, show a dislike of the complication and confusion which design has heedlessly inherited from the haphazard ways of the past. There is a definitive awakening to the errors of the last 100 years, and bad shapes, inappropriate and excessive ornaments, poor patterns and insipid colours must give way to a better order of things.

Few may have though of the number of trades into which Art enters in a greater or lesser degree, or of the extent of its influence in industry, and many would be surprised that the commercial results achieved through its aid – results that would be even greater if Art were more encouraged and more ably applied, with consequent advantages to employers, employees and the country as a whole. But is only too well known, that owing to neglect of the artistic side of production in the past, our trade has suffered in many directions, and has failed at times to hold its own in home and foreign markets. Other nations have perceived how Art could help to improve their trade and they have made great profits in fields that we had once counted as ours.

But now many leaders of industry are aware of the truth and are working whole-heartedly with artists who put matters on a better footing. They have come to the conclusion that British manufacture, which is of the highest repute abroad, must be allied to good and attractive design, if in these days of intense competition, it is to assert and maintain itself in the markets of the world.

Many people have got into the way of thinking that certain classes of goods are better made by foreigners than by us. This notion is fostered and exploited by an unintelligent copying of imported articles, whereas it should be contested, and might well be disproved, by fresh and original developments of the lines of our National tradition adapted to the changing needs of the times. The public must show a quicker appreciation of our native production and by exercising their own taste they will stimulate our trade and bring more of our people into employment. A living art always springs from the life and the spirit of the people, as shown in the daily occupation and interests. There are of course many difficulties to be faced. We live in an age of rapid changes of adaptation to new conditions and of quick anticipation of what the coming generation will require. These problems cannot be solved by manufacturers and artists alone. The people have their part to perform and all – including distributors, who are the necessary link between producers and consumers must work together with goodwill and understanding if success is to be attained.

While the products of all industries must have in common general tendency towards the demands of contemporary life, each industry should give earnest attention to the kinds and degrees of beauty proper to its own products and should consider what changes are necessary from time to time in the training of its staff. For it is difficult to adapt old designs to modern ideas, and we have to discover new forms which are more suited to the spirit of the age. Today, wherever we go we see striking innovations of style and design, some of which are due to passing fancies, while others arise from fundamental changes in our needs. These changes have been hastened by mechanical and scientific inventions, the use of new materials and fresh demand from the ever-increasing number of decently equipped households.

I believe that the mechanisation of industry, if properly managed, is not opposed to Art, and that if artists and manufacturers work together in making machine and raw materials serve the requirements of good taste, all kinds of articles for our daily needs can be produced in this country, which will satisfy even the most fastidious, and will show points of superiority to much that is produced abroad. The day, I hope, will come when quality and quantity will come together in happy alliance and the most ordinary commodities will benefit in form as well as in substance. Ugliness is at all times and in all places to be vigorously rejected; it is a coarsening and debasing influence, a clear sign of deterioration in a nations life. Since the products of industry are so widespread amongst the people, there influence for a good or evil condition of taste is immense. Hence the conquest of ugliness is of even greater moment in industry than elsewhere.

The cultivation of a sense of beauty, in all varieties of forms is a necessary part of human education. In early years children should be taught to observe, compare, discriminate and form their own judgements on what they see and handle. This visual appeal to the minds is vital to the highest feelings; and a warm response to the beauty in man-made as well as natural things has no small part in a truly moral life. Many common evils would recede or disappear if people were in constant contact with things that were as beautiful as they were ordinary. Industry with its elaborate organisation and all pervading energy, is today the most effective means of spreading the primal influences of art among the people, if it chooses the right method for its welfare.

I will now say a few words about training the young Idea on the lines I have already indicated. I am amongst other duties Vice-Chairman of the L.C.C. School of Printing and Engraving and have inspected various Technical & Art Schools all over the country for the Board of Education.

A very big responsibility rests on all those who are entrusted with the teaching of Art and Craft to girls and boys for it is to them that their pupils may fairly look for guidance not only in learning to draw and paint, to embroider, to make furniture, but also a lead which will enable them to develop appreciation and discrimination in the chance of the things with which they will live.

In our public schools, secondary and even some of the elementary schools where older children are taught, the Art master or mistress is generally a specialist who deals with Art and Craft alone and should, by reason of his or her training, have the ability and initiative necessary to be able to inspire in their pupils a real love for beautiful things as well as to teach them some branch of craftsmanship and to draw and paint.

In most of our elementary schools, however, Art and Crafts are taught by teachers who have also to deal with other subjects. Sometimes a teacher in an elementary school who has had no special training in Art and Craft has been able, by reason of his or her own enthusiasm and interest, to devise a way of making the subjects a real joy to the pupils and to interest them keenly in the design of everything they have about them as well as in the beauty of nature.

It is not of course to be expected that many teachers who necessarily have to deal with a number of different subjects should be able to tackle Art and Craft so confidently as those who have been specially trained to do so, but it is to be hoped that there are very few teachers dealing with these subjects who have not at any rate a real interest in beautiful things and who desire to put them before their pupils even although their own personal ability in Art and their own knowledge and understanding of Art in the wider sense may not be very great.

The recent exhibition at Burlington House should have been a great help to teachers of all Art, but especially to the vast number in the last category, in their work with the younger generation, because they had the opportunity of seeing what Britain can do in the design of the simplest things of everyday use, and to pass on the discoveries they made to those pupils who were not able to see the exhibition for themselves.

It may be asked – “How can children be taught good taste” ? There are two ways in which the inherent good taste which is probably possessed by all of us can be brought out and trained – firstly, by making things ourselves and finding out in that way how best to use different materials, so as to achieve beauty and secondly, by having good examples of fine design and workmanship put before us, preferably in the original but also in pictures. The two methods should march side by side. A girl who has learned at school to print a simple repeating pattern on a piece of cheap material will look at all the curtains and dress fabrics in the shop windows with a new interest and will be all the more ready to appreciate the finest examples of printed textiles which she may see. In the same way the boy who has learned how to lay out a page of good pen lettering and to bind a book will look at all kinds of printed matter with the eye of one who himself knows something about the conditions under which books and magazines are produced.

It is through practising crafts that many children who cannot ‘draw’ in the ordinary sense of the word may be taught not only how to make something worth while, which will be a delight to them both in the making and after it is made, but also to appreciate and enjoy all sorts of things in a way which would otherwise not have been possible.

Teachers of Art and Craft in secondary and other schools who may have some measure of ability as artists or craftsman, as well as the elementary school teachers of Art and Craft who may be general teachers, must constantly have before them the important fact that the work which the pupils are doing in the Art room should not only provide a course of practical training but also be a lesson in good design, remembering that it is through practice that appreciation will surely be developed. They must one and all be very alive to the latest and best productions of manufacture in their own country, if they are to be in a position to give a lead to the younger generation which is growing up in the schools. Nothing would be more welcomed by manufacturers and retailers than an ever increasing growth of interest and discrimination on the part of the purchasing public, both as to the goods themselves and the way in which the goods are put before them. A discriminating public by encouraging good design in the home market will play an invaluable part by helping the manufacturer constantly to improve the appearances and utility of his productions, which is of course, all the more likely to enable him to be successful in foreign markets, where he may well expect to sell characteristically English goods, whereas mere imitations of the foreigners own production would fall flat.
I have said nothing so far about Art Schools but the part they should play is the most important of all. Quite apart from the work which they have to do in training future designers and craftsmen, they cannot be said to be fulfilling their proper function unless they do all they can to provide inspiration to all and sundry to appreciate and enjoy beautiful things and to demand beautiful surroundings.

Theirs is the responsibility for training the future specialist teachers of Art and theirs also is the responsibility for providing really inspiring and useful instructions in the form of evening and part time courses to be attended by the teachers from all kinds of schools of general education.

It cannot be too strongly insisted that the teacher of Art and Craft who is not keenly alive to the importance of developing and sharpening his or her own personal capacity, to appreciate beautiful things and to discriminate between good and bad design will not be able to inspire in the pupils a desire to learn to appreciate and discriminate for themselves. Boys and girls cannot learn to appreciate beautiful things by rules. They must be encouraged to find out for themselves the difference between one kind of design and another by a teacher who knows from personal experience how many things there are to be seen and talked about before deciding which cup and saucer and which table and chair are going to be the most delightful for an Englishman or woman to sit down to breakfast with every morning.

So much for the educational side and before finishing I will say a few words on my own particular subject – the Printing side.

In judging printed matter there are gauges and standards which can be brought into use for comparison. Everything that is made has to perform some function. With printing, as with other things, the final test be not only whether or not, and how competently it does this, but also how attractively it is done. The first thing every piece of printing presumably had to do is to convey a message in as direct a way as possible. But there are two categories into which we may divide printed matter.

That which we wish to read and that which someone else wants us to read. The two sometimes overlap in the same piece of work as for instance in the book and its loose jacket and in the title page. It may be that we know what we want to read and order our books by post without reference to their appearance.

In this case we have the right to expect that the book shall be of a size and weight that we can hold in our hands without discomfort, that the margin shall be adequate for our thumbs, and for the convenience of our eyes-that the type shall be easily readable and pleasant to the eye, with adequate space between the lines and not overmuch between the words, so that the eye travels with ease from word to word and is not drawn by the variations in the lines above and below. The space between lines is indeed necessary to allow for adequate length in the ascending and descending characters.

It is for the linking together of letters into word units and as a lead to the eye that the serifs or little cross strokes on the ends of the straight lines of the letter are useful. But much reading matter had been printed in recent years in “Sans” type i.e. letters entirely without these strokes and thogh such type is excellent in certain circumstances for short statements in text matter, the result is demonstrably difficult to read because the eye sees disjointed letters and is induced to spell out words rather than to pick them up as a whole.

These are all mechanical points affecting readability of book pages and as such of paramount importance. There is a further quality to be desired in the designing of type itself that of assured draughtsmanship and definition of a consistent character throughout the alphabet, together with an absence of unnecessary flourishes.

The length of the reading lines is another factor in the design of a good page. The eye must be able to travel down the page with ease and at the end of one line consciousness must not have been lost where the beginning of the next line may be picked up. This factor bears relation to the size of the type used for this governs to some extent the distance from the eyes at which the books will be held. In practice an average of ten words to a line may be cited as a guide to what is best. One should not need to keep a finger on the left hand margin of a page as a guide.

On the other hand, instead of ordering our books unseen, we may prefer to loiter in bookshops and allow ourselves to be attracted first by the outsides of the books displayed, and later by the title and preliminary pages of certain books we like the look of. Temptation besets the unwary designer when as is now frequently the case, the reader must be coerced into absorbing the message.

Title and preliminary pages must set out in clear and logical sequence the essence of the books contents and aims, giving emphasis sparingly and only where needed, so that all be not lost by exaggerated proclamations.

Into this second category of printed matter fall all kinds of advertising literature. Here, there are various functions to be performed – first to attract, second to deliver a message and in most cases a third to promote some desired action.

Illustrations should be simple and convincing. A little unusualness is refreshing but an overstrenuous effort to astonish will often defeat its own end by leaving no clear impression. Illustrations should be tidily arranged so that they do not disturb the reading and should be so placed as to be in clear relation to the relevant part of the text.

Straightforward photographs and pen drawings are usually the best suited to this purpose.

Exaggeration is not convincing. Elaborate retouching of photographs gives an unreal impression.

Lithography & Posters

In the consideration of Posters and other single sheet graphic announcements, which are usually produced by Lithography, very much the same qualities are to be looked for as have been outlined for the consideration of printed decorations, economy of means, directness of aim, with stress on dramatic and forceful composition and the simple use of the process selected for reproduction.

The message of the drawing must be capable of instant comprehension by everyone who may see it, whether trained in the matters of design or not.

Involved conceptions which render the message “in code” are apt to draw full appreciation from the trained eye but to miss the mind of the uninitiated majority.

Character in drawing, and the clever selection of vital and salient details are the essence of the problem.

The selection of a harmony of definite colours balanced and arranged with clarity and used with a minimum of controlled overlapping of one colour, and another, will produce clear prints, particularly when full advantage is taken of the vigorous natural qualities of Lithographic drawing qualities which are no less useful in good book decoration."