School of Design.

Mr. Felix Summerly's "Art Manufactures," that Francesco Francia was a goldsmith as well as a painter, that designs for crockery are attributed to Raphaël,-that Leonardo da THE dissensions in the School of Design are Vinci invented necklaces,-and that Holbein still unsettled. The Board of Trade, with a designed brooches; but the advertisement Cabinet Minister for its President, has had too omits to tell us that Flaxman designed teamuch to do with the general stagnation in pots and coffee-pots, cream-jugs and sugarmanufactures and in money to attend to the basins, for Messrs. Rundell and Bridge,-and petty disputes of the masters, the duties of the that Baily's "Eve" was originally designed for Director, and the real necessities of the School. the cover of a soup tureen. Nor should the In this general neglect the new five-shilling School of Design forget that Hogarth was appiece, in every way a superior work of art to prenticed to a silver-plate engraver, Raeburn anything of the kind since Simon's time, has to a goldsmith, Chantrey to a carver and been suffered to remain the mere curiosity of gilder, and that Stothard was apprenticed in a collector's cabinet; while a plentiful stock of Spitalfields to learn to draw patterns. Great clumsy ill-designed five-shilling pieces (cart- minds rise above the accidents of birth. wheels as they are called) are still in circula-Gainsborough was the son of a clothier-Barry tion. It is true that the ruder coin answers all of a seafaring person (a captain, it is said, the purposes for which it was intended; but on trading between Cork and England)-Romney this principle a wooden trencher or a willow-pat- of a carpenter-Bacon of a cloth-workertern plate is just as good for venison or roast beef Lawrence of an innkeeper-Flaxman of a as the best piece of porcelain or Worcester-dealer in plaster casts-Blake of a hosier; shire ware which the ingenuity of Messrs. whilst Bird ornamented tea-trays, and Jackson Copeland and Garrett, or the skill of the School began life as a country tailor. But the School of Design, can produce even for the same money.

of Design, we repeat, was not established as a hot-bed to the Royal Academy, nor should it now be metamorphosed into such. Students of real talent for the higher walks of art will cease to work uninterruptedly for Spitalfields or Manchester, for Storr and Mortimer, or Jennens and Bettridge,-just as Stothard rose from patterns for silk to designs for "Robinson Crusoe" and Rogers's "Italy"-Chantrey from carving and gilding to modelling the bust of Scott, the statue of Watt, and the monument of the "Two Children" at Lichfield-and Flaxman from multiplying casts, like Sarti or an Italian boy, to glorious designs for the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey.'

But though the Board of Trade is otherwise employed, we trust the interval has not been without its use in inducing the Director to assume less of a tea-party communion with the masters who are under him, and the masters to understand that the school was started "for the teaching of design with a view to the improvement of those branches of manufacture which are susceptible of ornament:"-in other words, not to rear up artists to paint Transfigurations, Peter Martyrs, and St. Jerome's, but for the improvement of candlesticks and racing cups-door-handles and door-knockers-fenders and fire-irons-jewel-cases and commu- When the school is newly modelled, we nion plate-table bells and chess-men-tea- would urge the enlargement of the number of pots and sugar basins-book-covers and examples and the formation of an extensive decanter-stoppers--letter-weights and inkstands library of books of prints. Pupils learn more -silks and lace-carpets and shawls; to unite from casts and prints, and the things themmanufacturing skill with artistic skill-to con- selves, than from all the lectures that are nect the best art with familiar objects of daily likely to be delivered. Lectures were of use use-and to accomplish better works of art before the general dissemination of books lesin gold, silver, bronze, iron, porcelain, parian, sened their importance. An inattentive wood, papier-mâché, china, glass, leather, listener who loses the thread of the discourse woollen, linen, cotton, silk, lace, wall-paper, never recovers it; while the reader who nods and other materials of manufacturing use, over a book may return, if he chooses, to the whether in Sheffield or Britannia metal, or place where he first nodded. Nor are lectures some new and unknown mixture: "part iron of average excellence such every-day producand part clay," or part gutta percha-that in tions as committees and sub-committees seem this way the skill of the whole school, in its willing to consider. Look at the lectures of three classes of form, colour, and ornament, the several professors of painting at the Acamay be directed solely and entirely to alter demy-Barry, Opie, Fuseli, Phillips, and and improve our Paisley shawls, our Coventry Howard-how little there is in them! Flaxman, ribbands, our Spitalfields silks, our Nottingham it is true, deserves to be heard upon the subject and Honiton laces, our Manchester prints, our Axminster and Kidderminster carpets, our Worcestershire and Sheffield wares, our Dunstable bonnets, our Belfast linen, our Chelsea china, even our Windsor chairs and our Birmingham buttons. We wish to see the produce of the school-not in frescoes in Westminster Hall, or oil pictures at the Royal Academy or British Institution, but in the shop-windows of every great city and town in the empire.

We are reminded by the advertisement of

of sculpture, and the "Discources" of Reynolds are equally excellent with his pictures. How, then, in an economical school, as the School of Design must necessarily be, are we to look for lectures of importance? The council cannot afford a sufficient bribe to artists to dedicate their time to the composition of a lecture; and if a long apprenticeship to design be necessary for the formation of objects of every-day use, surely an artist (unused to composition) cannot expect to leap forth a lecturer

because the council consider lectures of greater consequence than they really are.

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2 is the same as Fig. 1, the only difference being that the part under the tongue or top side appears curved when folded.

In the new arrangements, the school at Somerset House should be made the head school to which students are introduced who have done and can do something. You may obtain good masters to teach good scholars; but few artists (artists in the proper sense of the word) will stoop to the drudgery of teaching the eyes and noses of the art to boys newly breeched whom parental partiality or caprice has sent to the school to be made something or nothing of. The career of the students at Somerset House should be pretty clearly ascertained before they are admitted; and then it would be desirable that each should name the particular branch of art for which he is desirous of making his designs, that the director may afford him every facility for studying the best examples in that line, witnessing with his own eyes the manufacturing processes in use, and ascertaining the expenses (a point of importance) of the several processes. Every manufacturer throughout the three kingdoms would afford to a student introduced by the director all requisite means of inspection. It is the manufacturer's interest to improve and perfect his designs,-that his own market may be wider and the market of his competitors still narrower than it is. Were this done, we The only difference between this and the should cease to hear of artists designing for preceding consists in its having both sides of manufacturers when ignorant of the processes each end curved, and also in both top and employed, and of the additional expenses bottom being alike. which" undercuttings," as they are called,

invariably entail.-Athenæum.

Envelopes.

Or late years these useful and elegant adjuncts to the writing-desk have arrived at what we should almost be inclined to call the highest pitch of perfection—although there is no saying how far invention has yet to go.

Their manufacture is exceedingly simple, and gives employment to a great number of both sexes. They are cut out by means of punches, and their sides fastened together with gum.

We present diagramic illustrations of four varieties, the dotted lines on each showing the method of folding; the ends being in all cases turned over first, and then the bottom, the top or tongue being left open in order to insert the letter.

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 is an envelope of the simplest form.

Fig. 3.

Fig. 4.

Fig. 4 is the same as Fig. 2, the shape of the tongue and the peculiar pattern of both ends being alone altered.

RUSSIA AND FOREIGN ARTISANS.-It is stated, that the Russian Minister of the Interior has interdicted the entry into the empire of every foreign workman, unless he can show that he has been expressly invited by an artisan or manufacturer established in Russia, who has taken the engagement to give him work; and the police authorities have been enjoined not to deliver any permission to reside to foreign workmen, unless a domiciled Russian shall undertake to be responsible for their conduct in every respect.

A HINT FOR THE ROYAL ACADEMY.-The council of the Royal Manchester Institution have announced their intention of opening an evening exhibition of the works of modern artists, the charge for admission to which is fixed at twopence.

London: Published at the Office of SPORTING LIFE, 17, Holywell-street, Strand (where all communications to the Editor are to be addressed); and to be had of all Booksellers.-Saturday, November 6, 1847.

Printed by W. COOLE, Lumley Court, Strand.

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