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beyond a certain indispensable amount was bestowed,partook more or less of the character of a specific workof art, identified with the producer as an artist, and re-producible only by a reiteration of the original processby the same or equally competent hands.
It is not difficult to anticipate the effects which thesubstitution of machinery for hand labour must produceon this aboriginal character of industry. However greatthe improvement likely to arise, both with respect toquality and cheapness, in the fabrication of objects ofutility, it was inevitable that, for a time at least, a dete-rioration should take place in ornamented manufactures.The old relation, or rather identity, between the artistand artificer must cease to exist under a system, in whichthe application of ornament depended no longer solely onthe skill of individual artist-workmen, but on the capabi-lities of mechanism, or chiefly so. The influence oftaste, accordingly, had to be exerted by new methods,which, from the necessities of the case, could only developthemselves slowly.
Iu the first place, the earliest efforts of machine labourare directed to the production of objects in their simplestand least ornate form. Imperfection of machinery, andthe primary purpose of machine labour, viz., cheap andextensive production, both tend to impose this condition,and to impart to manufactures a mechanical and unartisticcharacter. It is not only the interest of the manufac-turer, but matter of necessity, in the first instance, toexclude whatever cannot be easily and cheaply executed;and thus, on the application of machinery to any newbranch of industry, there occurs in almost every case aninterval during which the services of the designer arereduced to their minimum, even if they are not, for thetime, virtually dispensed with. But apart from this con-sideration, it is to be remarked, secondly, that the appli-cation of machinery brings with it new difficulties in theway of taste. On the one hand, the conceptions of thedesigner are not, as before, limited solely by his skill as aworkman. The capabilities of each particular process ofmanufacture have now to be studied; and the adaptationof design to these, forms, of itself, an art of considerabledifficulty and of slow acquirement, fettered as it is byquestions of economy in execution, and embarrassed andimpeded by continual improvements, or, at least, changesin the machinery or process employed. On the otherhand, the mise en jai>riqne and the finishing processes, ifthey do not necessarily in most cases fall into the handsof persons artistically disqualified, do so, at least, in thefirst instance; and this obstacle to the due execution ofornamental work not only becomes inveterate by use, buthas mistaken views of economy in favour of its perpe-tuation.
It is, at least, a fact, that while the application of or-nament to many hardware manufactures has graduallybecc-ine more extensive and of a higher order, the charac-ter of the individuals employed in the workshops, withrespect to artistic intelligence, has not been proportion-ably elevated. They, for the most part, retain the ideasbelonging to the primary, mechanical, and generallyunartistic condition of manufactures. While our de-signers have advanced, those who execute or finish theirdesigns have remained stationary; hence the appearance,of which the Jury have so frequently had occasion tonotice instances, of a mechanical high polish, which hasobliterated or spoiled the details of form or surface,evidently intended by the designer.
This is not, however, an evil peculiar to the hardwaremanufactures of this country. In France , in particular,some years ago, the artistic ignorance of the workmenemployed in the chiselling and finishing of bronze andother metallic wares, was found to be so serious an ob-stacle to improvement, that it was considered necessaryto establish a school for the express purpose of affordingto artificers instruction in drawing and modelling, com-bined with the practice of chasing, chiselling, and finish-ing castings in metal. And it may be noticed, that theTrades* Schools of Prussia and Bavaria are expresslybased on a recognition of the principle, that if the modernexigencies of manufacture require a separation betweenthe designer and artificer, the influence of the former can
in no other way be duly maintained, than by teaching tothe artificer so much of the design as will enable him toappreciate the intentions of the designer; and to the de-signer, so much of manufacturing processes as will secuiethe practicability and fitness of his designs.
The Jury are, however, by no means inclined to takea discouraging view of the position of the ornamentedhardware manufactures of the United Kingdom . Therewas no reason to expect, on general grounds, that anentirely new system of manufacture should be perfectedotherwise than gradually, or be exempt from the charac-teristics of progress which have always marked theadvancement of art and iudustry. All experience wouldhave been belied, had the progress of England, the parentof this new system, been other than it has. Our indus-trial system has been gradually and entirely remodelled.Step by step as machinery, and the various reproductivefacilities of modern times, made their encroachments onthe old methods of hand labour, we were, in everv case,as it were thrown back on the primitive condition oflabour. That very want of skill and inexperience which,in early stages of society, oblige men to busy themselvessolely or chiefly about the necessary, the useful, or theconvenient, restrained the earlier efforts of machinelabour, and gave it the same bias. And if we considerthe vast commercial advantages reaped by this countryfrom unornamented machine-made wares, and that thedeterioration of the ornamented sorts was, and is now, toa large extent, commercially speaking, of no importance,because counterbalanced in the eyes of the majority ofpurchasers, by other qualities more easily appreciated,we shall be at no loss to account for the present generalinferiority of British hardware, in point of taste, to thatof some other countries. It is obviously an inferiority,not so much positive and permanent, as arising out of aparticular stage of progress. Commercial interest hasnot yet, in this country, forced on manufacturers theconsideration of questions of taste, to the same ex-tent as has been the case elsewhere. It is only, indeed,
I within conparatively a few years, that the national suc-: cess in the market has been generally even suspected toI be endangered by want of taste.
I If, then, the due adjustment of the mechanical and theartistic elements of perfection in manufacture is a pro-! blem yet to be solved in this country, it is because thepoint of progress has not yet been reached at which itssolution becomes possible; if that solution has been post-poned beyond what may appear a reasonable period, it isbecause the mechanical element, bringing with it newand unheard-of advantages, commercial and utilitarian,has been borne along on an overwhelming tide of success,
| and carried beyond its proper bounds, closing up for thetime, or obstructing more or less the avenues to the in-fluence of taste. If due means for securing that influencehave not been used, or only partially so, it is because thecommercial necessity lor using them has been either notfelt at all, or felt partially. But there is nothing un-j healthy in this state of things; the utmost that can be* said, is, that the manufactures of the United Kingdom ,with respect to taste, are in a state of transition. Theartistic element has begun to assert its claims ; and if itsworking is for the present uncertain, irregular, vague,and unequal; if British manufactures exhibit for thepresent, at once the most successful and the most abortiveattempts at ornamentation; if the means used to obtaindesigns are often erroneous and illegitimate, and theinodes of working them inadequate, it is the consequenceof a state of transition resulting from the introduction ofa new, and in some respects, antagonistic element, whichhas not yet secured its position.
These observations will, in part, have anticipated someof the remarks which, in the second place, the Jury haveto make on the general aspect of the objects contributed, to Class XXII., by the more eminent continental nations,j It must be noticed, however, in addition, that as the in-dustry of the United Kingdom owes its existence toprivate enterprise, so its course has been determinedsolely by commercial demand, and the current of inge-nuity. Fiscal regulations may have impeded its exten-sion in certain directions; but its condition is, to no