Mr. Morris told some delightful stories about old tapestry work from the days when in the Egyptian tombs the dead were laid wrapped in picture cloths, some of which are now in the South Kensington Museum, to the time of the great Turk Bajazet who, having captured some Christian knights, would accept nothing for their ransom but the ’storied tapestries of France’ and gerfalcons.  As regards the use of tapestry in modern days, he pointed out that we were richer than the middle ages, and so should be better able to afford this form of lovely wall-covering, which for artistic tone is absolutely without rival.  He said that the very limitation of material and form forced the imaginative designer into giving us something really beautiful and decorative.  ’What is the use of setting an artist in a twelve-acre field and telling him to design a house?  Give him a limited space and he is forced by its limitation to concentrate, and to fill with pure loveliness the narrow surface at his disposal.’  The worker also gives to the original design a very perfect richness of detail, and the threads with their varying colours and delicate reflections convey into the work a new source of delight.  Here, he said, we found perfect unity between the imaginative artist and the handicraftsman.  The one was not too free, the other was not a slave.  The eye of the artist saw, his brain conceived, his imagination created, but the hand of the weaver had also its opportunity for wonderful work, and did not copy what was already made, but re-created and put into a new and delightful form a design that for its perfection needed the loom to aid, and had to pass into a fresh and marvellous material before its beauty came to its real flower and blossom of absolutely right expression and artistic effect.  But, said Mr. Morris in conclusion, to have great work we must be worthy of it.  Commercialism, with its vile god cheapness, its callous indifference to the worker, its innate vulgarity of temper, is our enemy.  To gain anything good we must sacrifice something of our luxury—­must think more of others, more of the State, the commonweal:  ’We cannot have riches and wealth both,’ he said; we must choose between them.

The lecture was listened to with great attention by a very large and distinguished audience, and Mr. Morris was loudly applauded.

The next lecture will be on Sculpture by Mr. George Simonds, and if it is half so good as Mr. Morris it will well repay a visit to the lecture-room.  Mr. Crane deserves great credit for his exertions in making this exhibition what it should be, and there is no doubt but that it will exercise an important and a good influence on all the handicrafts of our country.

SCULPTURE AT THE ARTS AND CRAFTS

(Pall Mall Gazette, November 9, 1888.)