Good Design To Increase Exports

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31119, 23 July 1966, Page 16

Good Design To Increase Exports

Improved industrial designs would improve New Zealand’s export trade, Professor H. J. Simpson, head of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury, said yesterday when opening an exhibition of the decorative and lively arts in Christchurch. Professor Simpson said that New Zealand manufacturers took too much for granted and if the physical beauty of products were improved, they would be in a better position to compete on the international market. The Japanese were especially fine industrial designers. Everyday appreciation of things of beauty was one of the greatest contributions made by the aesthetic movement last century. Anything well made, engineering products such as cars and aeroplanes, was art without qualification, he said. It was becoming recognised that art was an important part of life and at the moment there was a bill before the New Zealand Parlia-' ment for the establishment of a design council, Professor Simpson said. New Zealanders, as a whole, were almost totally ignorant of art. Art was too often regarded as a savage animal which should be caged in a gallery. 150 Rugby Jerseys Professor Simpson said that the exhibition would help to some extent to break down prejudices. Even the Rugby jerseys displayed were based on medieval heraldic costumes. There were 150 assorted Rugby jerseys spread out in line after line across the roof—in the company of two yachts and seven kites—to give the gallery the colour-

ful atmosphere of a bazaar. The exhibition has been mounted by the Canterbury Society of Arts at the Durham street gallery and is sponsored by the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council.

“It’s a hopeful exhibition,” one of the organisers, Mr P J. Beaven, explained. “It will try to show how decorative objects brought together can make an environment so much livelier and so much more cheerful.” The exhibition, which is open to the public until August 2, includes exhibits of pottery, glassware, furniture, marine fittings, wallpapers, and pop paintings, and examples of commercial art and packing design. Many of the exhibits are from overseas, and are on loan to the society. Others are selections from the World Craft Exhibition, which was assembled in Geneva and shown in Wellington recently. Mr P. J. Beaven was assisted by Messrs G. Martin and T. Field. N.Z. Alternatives “There will always be a shortage of overseas funds and a limit to the quantity of well-designed things that we can import so we must make more things here —and better things,” said Mr Beaven. “The whole exhibition is by professional people who either make their living making or designing the things we are showing, or else are properly trained to make them. “We want to show that the materials are available in New Zealand and could be worked by people here to form , a new tradition—a special New Zealand tradition—of good design. “Unless we use our creative people more thoroughly the shortage of overseas funds will make our surroundings more drab.”