T

Photograph by Joseph Brown

a

HROUGHOUT the entire European industrial art awakening in the latter part of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century, wherein the great economic significance of the craftsman in furnishing models, ideals, and inspirations for the machine has been recognized, America has maintained most surprising attitude of apathy and unconcern. In our manufacture of utilities capable of artistic expression we have been content to follow along as a weak and ineffectual echo of the great forward march of the arts abroad. This has not only barred us from international competition, but has crowded us out of the markets at home. Furthermore, we have been satisfied to depend almost entirely on the trained foreign workman for whatever skilled craftsmanship we did employ.

At present, when the prop of our European dependence is gradually slipping from beneath our feet, we are confronted

with two alternatives: either we must suffer a falling off in the artistic quality of the objects of our daily surroundings to which we have become educated, or we must seize this opportunity to make one of those brilliant recoveries through which the consequences of American short-sightedness have frequently been evaded. The possibilities of the latter course depend, however, upon a much more intelligent comprehension and utilization of the craftsman resources in this country than already exists.

"There are real craftsmen living today, and in this country, and turning out exquisite work after the ancient fashion," says Mr. Ralph Adams Cram. In little shops up narrow, winding streets, in modest homes, in skylight studios, and murky back rooms of the city, there are American men and women dedicating their wholesouled efforts, fine intelligence, and broad artistic training to the making of beautiful things, things which are beginning to demonstrate to the older nations our possibilities of that independent and individual artistic expression in which they have long found us wanting, and which will do more to preserve for posterity those finer intimate qualities of our national character than all our architecture and painting, and making them with what sacrifices and against what narrow and crushing impediments only inspired prophets of an unrecognized faith can know.

While almost every city has its points of craft interest, and Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Syracuse, and Philadelphia stand out as centers of certain unique and important activities, the greatest number of master craftsmen may be found in the small area that lies more or less definitely between New York and Boston.

But that is not at present the object of our quest.

When the object of our quest is made known to the sprightly mistress or the boyish-faced master, it causes considerable rummaging in an anteroom. Then across the studio is suddenly flung a fairy curtain of soft and lustrous silk representing a primitive garden wherein lithesome maidens sport with gentle fawns over the daisycovered sward, or string garlands under the silver birch-trees; and another where an imperturbable goddess, mistress of the fates of men, gazes out across a sky of melting gold and blue; or where little houses mingle their pagoda roofs with the tree-tops, and hills and waterfalls form a panel for the sky.

As a starting-point, let us venture in the direction of that little spot of ghosts, memories, and Bohemians that a great city has enveloped without destroyingGreenwich Village. We find ourselves amid a queer maze of crooked streets and old houses, some renovated, with charming, apple-green doorways or ivory-painted porticos; some left tumbly and weatherbeaten, projecting over the thoroughfares with the benevolent curiosity of the old houses of Amsterdam or Bruges.

They seem impossible, and Mr. Meyer smiles indulgently when asked how they are done. The process, called batik, he learned as a boy in Java, and is accomplished by painting out in molten beeswax

various portions of the design before each

separate immersion of the fabric in the dye-pot. The characteristic crackle, brought about by the cracking of the wax

and the various colors breaking through,

gives a strikingly beautiful effect, while the silk loses nothing of its quality or tex

Our objective point, the studio of Mr. Pieter Meyer, is on Tenth Street, opposite the building where the Society of American Painters and Sculptors was born. One hesitates a moment before plunging into the dark hallway and up the rickety stairs, but when the top is gained, light pours in reassuringly from above. If one knocks timidly, he may not be heard, for the studio preserves the cordial atmosphere of an Old World atelier, where work is freely interspersed with sociability, and where fellow-artists feel at liberty to drop in at any time for advice-or cigarettes. If the season is propitious, there will be interesting-looking girls in smocks engaged in carrying out some of Mr. Meyer's ideas in decorated furniture.

ture.

It had always been Mr. Meyer's ambition to bring a touch of romance and beauty into the modern home by the application of modern decorative ideas to the wonderful old decorative process, and a few years ago he embarked on the enthusiastic adventure in conjunction with Mr. Bertram Hartmann, a fellow-artist. While a few of the results found their way into the collections of men and women who appreciated their significance in the development of modern decorative art, and one furnished the inspiration for the decorative scheme of an entire residence, wherein it hangs lone sentinel of the great dining-hall, it was soon discovered that New York's appreciation of batik could not be aroused sufficiently to keep the studio kettle boiling or supply cigarettes to neighborly visitors. The beautiful fabrics were consigned to a shelf in the