Art is not something which you can take or
leave. It is a necessity of human life.

And what is the meaning of this beautiful decoration which we call art?
In the first place, it means value to the workman and it means the
pleasure which he must necessarily take in making a beautiful thing. The
mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or
finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the
head and the workman's heart. I cannot impress the point too frequently
that beautiful and rational designs are necessary in all work. I did not
imagine, until I went into some of your simpler cities, that there was so
much bad work done. I found, where I went, bad wall-papers horribly
designed, and coloured carpets, and that old offender the horse-hair
sofa, whose stolid look of indifference is always so depressing. I found
meaningless chandeliers and machine-made furniture, generally of
rosewood, which creaked dismally under the weight of the ubiquitous
interviewer. I came across the small iron stove which they always
persist in decorating with machine-made ornaments, and which is as great
a bore as a wet day or any other particularly dreadful institution. When
unusual extravagance was indulged in, it was garnished with two funeral
urns.

It must always be remembered that what is well and carefully made by an
honest workman, after a rational design, increases in beauty and value as
the years go on. The old furniture brought over by the Pilgrims, two
hundred years ago, which I saw in New England, is just as good and as
beautiful today as it was when it first came here. Now, what you must do
is to bring artists and handicraftsmen together. Handicraftsmen cannot
live, certainly cannot thrive, without such companionship. Separate
these two and you rob art of all spiritual motive.

Having done this, you must place your workman in the midst of beautiful
surroundings. The artist is not dependent on the visible and the
tangible. He has his visions and his dreams to feed on. But the workman
must see lovely forms as he goes to his work in the morning and returns
at eventide. And, in connection with this, I want to assure you that
noble and beautiful designs are never the result of idle fancy or
purposeless day-dreaming. They come only as the accumulation of habits
of long and delightful observation. And yet such things may not be
taught. Right ideas concerning them can certainly