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Ruskin: Modern Manufacture & Design, The Stones of Venice
1. John Ruskin
“Modern Manufacture & Design”
“Definitions of Greatness in Art”
The Stones of Venice (excerpt)
CCR 711 ::: 10/17/13
Friday, October 18, 13
2. Jana:
I can see this moving toward the arts and crafts lifestyle
movement, or a return to nature or the countryside
away from city factories, convention, and
mechanization, but what does this mean to making?
What does this mean to the craftsman/worksman? The
form and function and decoration of objects? Who got
to make art as craft and by what means? (art seems
positioned as hobby in Ruskin) Was the arts and crafts
movement of the time always positioned as such a
binary? (again, I think of the time: industrialization in the
process of becoming industrialized.) Also, why Gothic
architecture?
Friday, October 18, 13
27. To men surrounded by the depressing and monotonous
circumstances of English manufacturing life, depend
upon it, design is simply impossible. This is the most
distinct of all the experiences I have had in dealing with
the modern workman. He is intelligent and ingenious in
the highest degree-subtle in touch and keen insight: but
he is, generally speaking, wholly destitute of designing
power. And if you want to give him the power, you
must give him the materials, and put him in the
circumstances for it. Design is not the offspring of idle
fancy: it is the studied result of accumulative
observation and delightful habit. ...
Friday, October 18, 13
28. Without observation and experience, no design--and all
the lecturings, and teachings, and prizes, and principles
of art, in the world, are of no use, so long as you don’t
surround your men with happy influences and beautiful
things. It is impossible for them to have right ideas
about colour, unless they see the lovely colours of
nature unspoiled; impossible for them to supply
beautiful incident and action in their ornament, unless
they see beautiful incident and action in the world
about them....
Friday, October 18, 13
29. Inform their minds, refine their habits, and you form
and refine their designs; but keep them illiterate,
uncomfortable, and in the midst of unbeautiful things,
and whatever they do will still be spurious, vulgar, and
valueless. (“Modern Manufacture and Design”)
Friday, October 18, 13
30. In manufacture: we require work substantial rather than
rich in make; and refined, rather than splendid in
design.Your stuffs need not be such as would catch the
eye of a duchess; but they should be such as may at
once serve the need, and refine the taste, of a
cottager. ... It should be one of the first objects of all
manufacturers to produce stuffs not only beautiful and
quaint in design, but also adapted for every-day service,
and ecorous in humble and secluded life. And you must
remember always that your business, as manufacturers,
is to form the market, as much as to supply it.
Friday, October 18, 13
32. You all should be, in a certain sense, authors: you must,
indeed, first catch the public eye, as an author must the
public ear; but once gain your audience, or observance,
and as it is in the writer’s power thenceforward to
publish what will educate as it amuses--so it is in yours
to publish what will educate as it adorns.
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36. •
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Friday, October 18, 13
Characteristics
of the builder
Savageness/Rudeness
Love of Change
Love of Nature
Disturbed Imagination
Obstinacy
Generosity
39. If, as in Gothic work, there is perpetual change both in
design and execution, the workman must have been
altogether set free. (Stones of Venice 142)
Friday, October 18, 13