USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Fifty years of Boston; a memorial volume issued in commemoration of the tercentenary of 1930; 1880-1930, Pt. 1 > Part 48
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Throughout the 90's our architecture was scholarly. It was ornate and magnificent. It was imitative of Europe. To be fit for it, our interior trim and furniture had of necessity to follow traditional models. In domestic furnishing the latest French periods, Louis XIV to Empire, but chiefly Louis XV and XVI, were thought appropriate. In interior trim there was more latitude. Woodwork was quite likely to follow earlier Tudor and Jacobean models as well as the early Renaissance in France and the late in Venice. For ecclesiastical woodwork and furniture the model was Gothic. The problem was to get such woodwork and furniture in this country. This was solved partly by importation, as in the previous decade, but now more by the foster- ing of sınall woodworking and furniture shops, scarcely large enough to be called factories. Such shops had been established in Boston to fill the orders of architects. They worked largely from architects' designs and under archi- tectural supervision. The workmen were for the most part imported, men who had been trained in the craft shops of Europe. Our own craftsmen had been absorbed into the building trades and other manufactories. We had here no facilities for training craftsmen.
As in the 80's the growth of Boston, so now in the 90's the growth of the country afforded designers and craftsmen their opportunity. State capitols, schools, churches, office buildings, rich residences, museums, colleges, hos- pitals, such were the projects by which, with or without architec- tural guidance, our craftsmen and their overlords, the manufacturers and merchants, learned the technical conditions out of which design might grow or on which design might be imposed. Just as public and semipublic buildings absorbed the attention of our architects during this decade almost to the exclu- sion of more modest domestic architecture, so it was in the service of such buildings that the crafts had their most rapid development.
In aspect the furniture, textiles and small manufactured objects of the period, like the architecture, were a harlequinade of styles, in which the soundest
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achievement, though not the most obvious, was the progress toward a mastery of materials and techniques. In the more superficial aspects of decoration the period was imitative and eclectic. The result was confusion and ugliness except in a wealth of details and a few large forms. Imitation was a sound means of learning, just as was the struggle with unruly conditions. The selection of models for imitation seemed either capricious or academic. Yet there was something quite as organic and significant in imitating the palace of the Medici for the New York State Building at the World's Fair in Chicago as there was in crowning Dorchester Heights with the tower of a New England meeting- house. That our domestic taste should have been a strange mixture of the simple and the pretentious, does not seem surprising. That at its most serious it should seek mass and balance in Renaissance or Georgian forms was not bad. That the small house, like the great cathedral, should reflect the Middle Ages indicated something deeper than imitation, something that went far toward justifying the young Ralph Adains Cram in his first confession of faith and Frank Chouteau Brown in his journey in search of the picturesque.
III-1900-1910
In the late 90's and early 1900's there appeared on the European horizon of the decorative arts, toward which American eyes were turned with a devoutly colonial expression of respect, a portentous manifestation, or group of mani- festations, which passed almost unnoticed on this side of the water until they were proclaimed by that watchdog of Boston taste, C. Howard Walker. In the domestic architecture of Paris they had been observed as "novelties" and then were exemplificd or incarcerated in L'Hôtel de l'Art Nouveau. In Vienna, they were "Secession." In the Paris Exposition, they were, I believe, the "expression of materials," notably structural iron and steel. In Germany they were a iniscellaneous assortment of designs for houses, interiors and furniture, by several groups of artists working in quite diverse manners. "New Art" they remained until Modernism supplanted the term. Neither term was particularly happy, but the manifestations were too various to be more aptly designated.
The immediate effect of all this, and there was a great deal of it, displayed at several expositions and written up in many European periodicals, was not particularly attractive to the trained American observer, or to the leaders of design in America. Here was a whole group of movements in design, as unre- lated as the furnishings of an 1880 house, collected under the not particularly illuminating name of New Art. It was not clear how any of these decorative elements was connected with any other; why, if one accepted one, one should therefore accept another. They seemed to have no collective reason for being together and small individual reason for being at all. It was easier to reject the whole business, and that is precisely what America did, Boston most emphatically.
But the rejection of New Art by Boston designers had unfortunate as well as fortunate consequences; or perhaps one should say that it was a symp- tom of a Boston attitude toward design which is of equivocal value. The
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prime necessity in the early 1900's was that we should develop technical facili- ties and should at the same time obtain for our artists and our public a knowl- edge and appreciation of design. It was fortunate that the scarcely intelligible experiments of the late 90's and early 1900's in Europe should not have distracted our students and designers from the thorough study of older Euro- pean art. It was unfortunate that, in rejecting a particular group of original designs, we should have rejected the principle of original creative design itself and accepted instead a standard of careful imitation that is at best colonial, at worst childish, a timid persistence of the pupil attitude into maturity.
The Society of Arts and Crafts of Boston grew out of the exhibitions of objects of the decorative arts held in Copley Hall in 1897 and 1899. The exhibits included jewelry, silver, wrought iron, bookbindings, stained glass, illustrations, bookplates, embroidery, pottery and designs for woven textiles. They attracted attention throughout the country, and indeed the organization of the Boston Society was responsible for the organization of similar societies elsewhere, the formation of the Handicraft League, the cultivation of the crafts by diverse individuals, groups and schools, the development of folk industries and handicraft communities and an impetus to the trade in antiques, especially those of American origin.
Through these agencies, including its own exhibition galleries and traveling exhibits, and the propaganda disseminated through its growing membership and clientele, the Society shaped public taste and encouraged the independent craftsman and the small shop. Some of its members, notably stained glass designers, wood carvers, cabinetmakers, potters, designers and manufacturers of tiles, dyers, silversmiths, pewterers and wrought-iron workers, developed work of the highest grade in sufficient quantity to have a decided influence on the trend of American design in these crafts. Others, such as jewelers, weavers, embroiderers and enamelists, did excellent work and developed profitable small businesses, without, however, having any considerable effect on the general trend of design.
Apart from such direct efforts to develop the decorative arts as were represented by the architectural supervision of shops and the organization of groups interested in handicraft work, the general characteristics of the decade were an advance in historical scholarship, increased technical facility (too often entirely divorced from any scholarship whatsoever) and an extension of the Boston influence over the country. The advance in ecclesiastical wood carv- ing, stained glass and large metalwork kept pace with the extension of a more and more scholarly and expert architecture. For interior decoration the French styles held a leading place, though a debased form of Tiffany eclecticism was widely current. It emphasized the picturesque value of corners and borrowed liberally from the outmoded Eastlake tradition of the pseudo-Gothic. A blurred form of Empire was produced in quantity by the cheaper furniture manufactories, as well as a crudely elaborated form of provincial Tudor and Georgian, traditional in the most modest American dwellings. Overstuffed chairs and sofas covered with extremely bad textiles, a variety of rockers, the much less objectionable Mission designs, and wicker furniture were the better achievements of wholesale manufacturers. Interest in Georgian furniture,
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both English and American, developed with the reversion to Georgian archi- tecture for more pretentious residences. American antiques began to emerge and the better furniture shops added Georgian patterns to their French reper- toire. Italian furniture was falling from popularity as Georgian and Gothic models supplanted Renaissance ones for residential architecture.
On the whole, furniture did better than textile and wall-paper design in this decade. The ideal in wall covering was still late seventeenth and early eighteenth century paneling, lightened with hangings of imported damask and brocade or adorned with low relief and painted ornament in the style of Adam. This ideal could be carried out only in expensive residences. In others, really horrible brocaded wall papers and cheap textiles of large pattern and dubious design were the rule.
The most hopeful sign was the sudden interest in the small house, which had previously been beneath the notice of both architects and decorators. The International Housing Congress held in Washington in 1907 called attention to the largest housing problem, that of the workman on small salary, say $15 a week. Garden City, Sheffield and other group housing projects, some con- ducted by Boston manufacturers, were offered as solutions. There was a plague of "bungalows," meaning cottages with sweeping roofs in the pagoda manner of Frank Lloyd Wright and often plaster walls suggested by the growing popularity of the California Mission style. This mixed Oriental and Spanish influence invaded the Boston district, but more largely Boston solved the small housing problem by apartments and tenements and in the outlying areas by picturesque adaptations of two Gothic types of house, the New England farm- house (Gothic in structure and derivation) and the European house of stucco and half timber. The combination of brick with plaster, stone and half timber, which owed something to contemporary French and German practice, and the borrowing of suggestions for interior treatment from Georgian and Gothic as well as from Renaissance types, created one of the most interesting types of American detached residence. For almost all such houses the furnish- ings and accessories were eclectic. The most pretentious affected a grouping of period styles. The more modest were content with such antiques as might be available and a selection from commercial furniture.
IV - 1910-1920
The changes in the external appearance of Boston during the second decade of the twentieth century, including the war years, do not give a sufficient index to the development of the decorative arts, which was no longer a local but a national matter. These changes indicate a vast and important expansion of the cultural life of Boston, but they were not such as to leave a marked impress on the decorative arts, either locally or nationally. Such changes in the arts as occurred came largely from without. In one particular, the predominating interest in American antiques, supported by the growth of antique shops and the beginnings of wholesale reproductions from American colonial designs, Boston was by geography, history and inheritance a leader. In other particulars Boston opposed a balancing negative force against the leading decorative
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tendencies of the day. Yet, in spite of the limit of height imposed on buildings, for instance, which excluded the towered skyscraper from this district, Boston became predominantly a city of apartment houses, in which the exact number of stories is comparatively unimportant in determining the background and defining the limits of the decorative problem. It is a problem of plain walls, restricted space and temporary conditions. Even in detached houses, the same conditions became more and more predominant. Interesting and beautiful examples are to be found in the residential work of Fiske, Ripley and Le Boutillier, but even in the cheapest contractor-built residences the problem is much the same.
Period solutions persisted under architectural influence, and importers and reproduction shops supplied the materials for period interiors. Empire decora- tion almost entirely disappeared and the styles of Louis XIV to Louis XVI were falling into disuse. In their place Tudor and Jacobean interiors enjoyed a fresh popularity, and Spanish and the less ornate Italian styles came into vogue. In the 70's and 80's only the most ornate Venetian style had been affected in the interiors loosely called Italian. The manufacturers of reproductions were now doing a flourishing business. A great deal of the period furnishing was more strictly historical than it had usually been before. Hotels which had previously been content to use very mixed furniture with elaborate interior trim in period styles, now adopted schemes of strict period furnishing. Eighteenth century English and colonial American furniture led all other styles in popularity, if not in richness of effect. A style of interior had developed partly under the influence of California and Spain, partly under that of the Tuscan villa, the characteristic features of which were broad plaster surfaces accented by heavy finish of dark wood beams. In such interiors, Spanish, Italian, Jacobean, and even Gothic furniture showed to better advantage than the lighter styles of the late seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries. Such furniture, moreover, was more in harmony with robust American taste.
The flourishing antique business brought about curious anomalies in inte- rior decoration. The worst instances were simply bad mixtures, with wicker and overstuffed modern pieces juxtaposed with furniture, textiles and bric-a-brac of assorted periods. The elevation of kitchen, farmhouse and frontier furniture to positions of parlor eminence was one of the least appropriate and most laugh- able developments, like the canonization of taproom pewter. Such mixtures also gave opportunity to professional decorators, such as Carl Friend, Robert D. Chandler and Baron De Meyer, to make some order by arrangement and selection where no harmony of style was possible.
The appearance of ecclesiastical Gothic trim and furniture in scholastic and private residences was but one evidence of the deep hold that Gothic influ- ence had on American taste. Detached houses of architectural design were almost without exception Gothic both in the affectation of half timber, plaster and high pitched roofs, and in the picturesque confusion of plan, mass and subordinate members. A taste so profoundly rooted does not easily adapt itself to the conditions of apartment life.
The freshest influences in decoration now came from abroad in the shape of theatrical design and peasant art; the one introduced through the new thea-
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ters, the Russian ballets, the little theater movement, the lavish productions of Broadway, and the other through interest in Europe created by the war, the influx of refugees, the war bazaars. Combined, these influences gave us a fresh sense of color, first applied to mural treatment in theaters, cafés, hotels and restaurants, later to residential use and to the design of textiles for hangings, upholsteries and dress goods. The taste for the childlike, so often pointed out as a characteristic of American genius, found also in these theatrical and peasant designs a sense of the naïve in form which was seen to be effective and was incor- porated in the American decorative repertory. The suddenly and enthusias- tically discovered process of batik enabled our craftsmen to experiment with this new medium of design.
The most influential local development was that of art schools, the classes in crafts and design at the Museum School, for instance, and such private schools as the Fine Arts and Crafts, the Amy Sacker, and the Vesper George, all directed by members of the Society of Arts and Crafts. The interest was largely in poster, illustration, costume and theater design, but there was also interest in interior decoration and in the arts and crafts used for that purpose. There was in Boston, however, no such co-operation with manufacturers in the field of industrial design as developed in New York under the ægis of the Metropolitan Museum, and in Philadelphia and Chicago. In this decade Boston gained new prestige as a leader in the fine arts, literature, music, educa- tion and the theater, but it stood apart from the development of industrial design.
By and large, in the period 1910-20 Boston was dependent for objects of the decorative arts on the department stores, the large furniture stores, the antique and art shops, the professional decorators; in short, Boston was dependent on the artists, craftsmen and manufacturers of other places and other times.
V - 1920-1930
In New York, Chicago, and other cities of America, the development of architecture within the last decade has been accompanied by a development of polychrome ornament in faïence, truly architectural sculpture and carving, cast and wrought metal work, and a treatment of glass and illumination which, together with the development of the structural and ornamental handling of concrete, brick and stone, make it possible to say that there is a style of Amer- ican architecture that is as different from the modernism of Europe as it is from our previous experiments in the older European styles. In comparison with the work in other cities, this architecture has small representation in Boston, but it is here, and its appearance is important.
Elsewhere the development of architecture and art schools, industrial organizations and the extension work of museums has materially altered the quality of design in many industries, most notably in textiles and small acces- sory ornaments of the apartment. The post-war development of the dye and paint manufactories and of certain of the metal industries specializing in house- hold equipment has provided colorful furnishings and accessories, usually neither traditional nor affected in design. If we had done as well in radio cabi-
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nets as we have done in kitchen, office and bathroom furnishings, we should have done fairly well. Where is Boston in this development? Of over thirty manufactories established in this art center during the past year, in only one was the element of design at all important. That was an art novelty company!
Early in 1930 there was a meeting in the Chamber of Commerce to organize "art week." It was a serious effort to solve important problems and the effects to date have been encouraging, but the actual discussions at this meeting were both funny and pathetic. There were present representatives of the chief museums and art schools, together with merchants and manufacturers. The ignorance they displayed of each other's work was lamentable. One industrial leader had prepared a list of things he would like the museums to do, just for one week. He wanted the Museum of Fine Arts to open its doors to the public. He wanted it to provide free guidance through the galleries. He begged for a few lectures by members of the Museum staff. I wondered whose fault it was that he was so entirely unaware that the Museum of Fine Arts had been doing all those things for about fifty years.
One manufacturer confessed that he had waked up to the fact that he needed art in his product. He was glad to meet folks who had art because he wanted to find out how to get it. Another manufacturer had art in his product already. The product was bed and table linen. He had discovered that it wouldn't sell on price and quality. The public didn't care about price and quality any more. It wanted art. So he had dyed his linen all colors of the rainbow, and now he had an art product. More than one displayed a belief that art meant color, paint or dye, and had no appreciation of the fact that design goes deeper than the surface, deep into the structure of things, deep into their use.
In 1924 the Metropolitan Museum opened the American wing. In 1928 the Philadelphia Museum opened its new building with a display of period interiors. In the following year the Boston Museum of Fine Arts opened its wing of Decorative Arts, also a series of period interiors set off by small study collections. Other museums of the country have followed suit. The immediate and most obvious result has been to flood the shops with a quantity of factory-made period furniture at prices not excessive, considering the difficulty of reproducing period furniture under factory conditions, but both excessive and silly when one considers either factory processes or the purpose and use of furniture and the general conditions of inodern life. It serves its most useful purpose by crowding previous furniture of worse design into bargain sales and tending to crowd the "antique" dealer out of business altogether.
Museum collections of objects of the decorative arts are valuable labora- tories for the industrial and craftsman designer, the more valuable when whole interiors consistent in style are shown. But there is another point. Museums are storehouses of the past. Neither today nor tomorrow will long endure an apartment, much less a more stately residence, that looks like a museum !
In 1925 the Exposition Universelle des Arts Industriels Modernes was held at Paris. American artists and manufacturers were invited to exhibit and were obliged to decline. They were making nothing of modern design!
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ROOM FROM HAMILTON PALACE, SCOTLAND
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DETAIL OF THE GARDEN COURT (Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts)
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An attempt has been made to remedy that defect in the last five years. There has been more imitation of foreign work. There have been some original designs. There have been imported examples of modern work on display in the Museum of Fine Arts and in the shops, together with domestic imitations, and a small residue of good domestic designs.
The problem before American artists and manufacturers today is the same as the problem of 1880 so far as design goes, except that now we have the material means and the technical facility. It is, in the words of the Society of Arts and Crafts, to bring designers and workmen into mutually helpful relations and to encourage workmen to execute designs of their own.
EDITORIAL NOTE
The reader may have remarked that individual names are scarcely mentioned in Mr. Code's thoughtful paper. Even so distinguished a worker in stained glass windows as Charles J. Connick and so famous a book-designer as Daniel B. Updike are not singled out for special notice. This is not because of the scarcity of decorative artists in Boston. One might almost say it is because of their abundance. Moreover, the authorship of articles in this field is sometimes so composite that it is not easy to select a chief designer without ignoring others whose skill was necessary to the perfection of his product. Painting and sculpture are now individual and personal arts, but in these crafts it would seem that we are back in the period of co-operative effort and relative anonymity which produced the European cathedrals. This in an age of exploited personalities and clamorous advertising is so unusual as to be worthy of remark. In one particular, at least, the machine age reverts to the methods of the handicraft era.
Fortunately Mr. Code makes it clear in his paragraphs on the Society of Arts and Crafts that the work of our Boston craftsmen, both those who have achieved personal celebrity and others less widely known, stands on a high plane of excellence. To mastery of the processes involved not a few of our decorative artists add originality of conception and a true creative touch, and, as he bears witness, their work in many fields has exerted a nation-wide influence.
The excellence of their product was signally demonstrated in the Tercentenary Fine Arts and Crafts Exhibition held in Horticultural Hall from July 7 to July 31, 1930. Of the four halls used two were devoted to painting and sculpture and one to an arts and crafts exhibit, while the fourth was fitted up as a miniature chapel, with stained glass windows (all actually in process of construction at the time), wood carvings, sculpture and appropriate ecclesiastical accessories.
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