ARTS AND CRAFTS
"THAT "revolution in aesthetics" which, according to Mr, Milner Gray, has only recently affected industry has perhaps had longer to affect the home, and certainly Osbert Lancaster’s satire and Ernest Plischke’s precept and example have already done a great deal towards the re-marriage of Beauty and Utility in the place where they matter most. But it is one thing to read about good furniture and good textiles and to see them illustrated in the dull or glossy pages of newspapers or magazines and quite another to have them displayed where they can be handled (judiciously of course) and their impact directly experienced. The gallery recently opened in Wellington by Helen Hitchings should prove a boon to all those who are interested in good craftsmanship. Helen Hitchings has spent the last year touring New Zealand in search of exhibits for her gallery. The general effect is remarkably pleasing, and far removed from the stigma of the artycrafty. The gallery itself. is large and airy. The walls are hung with pictures (continued on next page)
(continued from previous page) by known and some as yet scarcely known New Zealand artists. The furniture (all by Plischke) has more uniformity. The fabrics (hand-printed by May Smith, Pearl White, A. R. D. Fairburn and other artists) are bold and individualistic, but capable of more harmonious miscegenation than the editors of home-decorating magazines would give them credit for. The pottery is exciting both in finish and shape, though the cups may appear a little heavy to the minority nourished aesthetically on Sevres and Spode, The illustration on the opposite page shows only a corner of the gallery. On another wall are shelves containing a fascinating collection of smaller objects -glazed buttons, ashtrays, ornaments, wooden bowls and platters, cigarette boxes, jewellery, and decorative tiles, in another corner one or two gangling but attractive stuffed toys, and a heap of hand-woven floor rugs. Miss Hitchings’s experiment would seem already to have justified itself on aesthetic grounds. Her idea of providing a central clearing-house for all types of New Zealand art is one for which all those who have had to balance their
ideas of what is good against their awareness of what is available will be grateful.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 521, 17 June 1949, Page 16
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372ARTS AND CRAFTS New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 521, 17 June 1949, Page 16
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