ART OR CRAFT?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 505, 25 February 1949, Page 17

ART OR CRAFT?

Reviewed by

J. C.

Beaglehole

PRINTING TYPES: A_ Second Specimen Book. The Caxton Press, Christchaérch, 1948. Price 15/OW charming is divine typography! And when the Caxton Press really lets itself go (if any may refer to that excellent mingling of technical accomplishment and ingenious wit as "it"), as it has done in this second of its specimen books, how beguiling, how eminently satisfactory is the result! Not uniform perfection, certainly because uniform perfection eludes humanity. But nevertheless very eminently satisfactory. This must indeed be one of the pleasantest picture-books issued anywhere in 1948. For it is a picturebook, though a useful picture-book-a series of very charming pictures of what can be done with bits of metal and different coloured inks if the doer has accomplishment and wit. It is something else, however-it is, also, a very cheering sign of maturity, somewhere in New Zealand, in the practice of a very complicated and exacting craft. Let us call printing a craft rather than an art, and keep away from the high-falutin’.. Let us think of it as functional, conveying somebody’s meaning as efficiently and clearly to the reader as possible; and yet one will see from this took how essential to efficient functioning is grace and right proportion and even what may seem a bit of superercgatory finish. One can see, also, here and there, how inessential and even disturbing is ornament, how right proportion and harmonious grace, the nice balance of white and bleck, carries its own ornament triumphantly, tos the routing of the adventitious. Consider, for confirmation of this, the two conjoint pages 10 and 11; consder the noble effect of a few lines of Perp~tua capitals ageinst the comic 19th Century decorated Tuscan and that ilk. In the end perhaps it is the chaste that has the most lasting «ffect, the least mannered is also the best mannered. .Anyhow in prose; verse may be a different matter; verse, like the Donne Sonnet on page 52, can take the Blado italic and the Bensemann heading, and be adorned. (In parenthesis, this revivwer may ferhaps say that he wishes more use were made in this country of Mr. Bensemann’s magnificent handwriting.) ’ Mr. Glover, of the Caxton Press, has done what other printers ought to do, he has assembled enough type in a number of handsome faces to keep on turring out interesting (and therefore functional) jobbing work, and to keep his books lively. His Casion Old Face, and Poliphilus and Perpetua ere really podsends to the eye wearied with the usual New Zealand routine. But all the type in the world won’t do much good without a sense of proportion, without a feeling for space, without balance; and _ for those things one must admire the work of’ the Press, as well as for Mr. Glover’s tact and discrimination in assembling his bits of metal. There is a good deal more one could say-it would be interesting, if only to oneself to give a detailed critique page by page, but one

would produce a long article full of technicalities, ‘and the book itself deliberately avoids technicalities. Let the modest blurb on the dust jacket therefore be quoted, the book is "an anthology of agreeable quotations just as much as a parade of printing types," and it is very successfully agreeable. Anybody who cares for printing, by the way, should get hold of a four page folder which advertises this book, its first page, Caslon roman and ita‘ic, in ‘black and red, is as good a picce of work as the world has seen in this generation.

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS ; AFTERMATH. By Hans Habe. Harrap. English price, 10/6. HIS is the sort of novel it is difficult to take very seriously. Superficially it is realistic, does not sentimentalise love too grossly, although it does sentimentalise national aspirations, and unwinds an interesting though tenuous, spool of plot. It is about an ex-German writer and an American lawyer serving in the American army in Germany at the end of the war and afterwards and chroricles their friendship and loves. Its incidental observations, on the continuance of Nazi ideology in Germany, if ‘true, are horrifying. But it remains the sort of bock which corresponds to the short stories published in The Saturday Evening Post, a commercial product, deftly turned out, which it would le naive to consider as art. VOICES SAINT JOAN OF ARC. By V. Sackville-West. Michael Joseph. English price, 12/6 ‘THE reprinting of this 12-year-old eppraisal of Saint Joan of Arc and her bricf and magnificent appearance in history is timely. Saint Jcan served in the forefront of a resistance movement as memorable as that of 1949 to 1944 and was Opposed most venomcusly by collaborationist. elements in her own country. She was to the French a sort of talisman; or even a mascot; to herself a_divinely-ordained instrument. It was her claim to mystical powers which kindled the suspicions of the orthodox and helped to bring about a martyrdom which was also, in her enemies’ view, a political necessity. Mis SackvilleWest’s biography is full, closely documented, scholarly, feir, and intensely a

moving.

David

Hall

(continued on next page)

| Book Reviews

STERNLY FACTUAL PORT CHALMERS: GATEWAY TO OTAGO. By H. O. Bowman. 15/-. Otago Centennial Publications. RUN, ESTATE AND FARM. By W. H. Scotter. 45/-. Otago Centennial Publications, INCE both ef these books are Otago Centennial " Historical publications, they have, naturally, enough, several points in common. Both are sternly factual, baldly informative products of careful and exhaustive research. Mainly of local interest, they deal extensively with subjects outside the scope of general history. Their illustrations are wellchosen and always to the point. It is*not hard to believe Mr. Bowman’s statement that he found enough material to fill a book more than twice the size of Port Chalmers. Some of his pages are so thickly studded with facts as to assume the aspect of a glossary, and it seems a pity, that this burden of information could not have been lightened to some extent by the use of appendices. In a narrative marred here and there by slipshod or ill-phrased sentences there emerge passages of genuine historical importance, In this respect a chapter on the waterfront deserves special mention, Personally I was profoundly interested to learn that a local. shipbuilder’ had conceived the idea of an unsinkable ship as early as 1876, and that "the finest whisky in New Zealand was distilled in the Lower Harbour in the early days." With sound literary judgment Mr. Bowman concludes his book with a very pleasant description of some of the human oddities who used to Scoauent the port in times \ gone by. Mr. Scotter’s history of the Kakanui and Waiareka valleys, though it runs within narrower limits, is a better written book than the other, but the author’s system of annotation, which entails constant reference to a list of abbreviations, _|is somewhat trying to the reader. The district’s transition from a pastoral to an agricultural state is described with a wealth of fact and a rigid economy of phrase. A chapter is devoted to the evolution of local government with biographical. notes on some of the more distinguished county councillors, but Mr. Scotter’s most creditable performance is his well-balanced and thoroughly adequate account of the founding and growth of the district’s various townships. Jt is to be hoped that something on these lines may be written about the townships of Canterbury when the centenary of that province shall arrive.

R. M.

Burdon

| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS PRACTICAL HOME NEEDLECRAFT IN PICTURES. By Dorothy M. Cox, Odhams Press Ltd., London. 12/3. (Our copy from Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd.). ‘ HIS is a thoroughly well-organised reference-book, which contains all the information the industrious housewife is likely to need, and far more instruction than the majority will have time to take advantage of, All instructions are given as for hand-sewing, but much of the plain-sewing section at least is equally useful as a guide to machine work. The text is clear, and the book is copiously illustrated in line and halftone, but it is a pity that an occasional plate in colour could not have been added to the embroidery’ section,