Our Daily Bread by Godfrey Blount with Pictures

From The Vineyard, March 1913.  The illustrations to this poem have parallels with Blount's other illustrated song, 'The Song of the Sower' shown in a previous post here.

When the seeds are sown

  They quicken all together,

In soothing showers, and sun,

  And wind and wintry weather.

Our Daily Bread by Godfrey Blount

When the green blades sprout

  From their purple prison,

Little song-birds shout,

  “Jesus Christ is risen.”

Our Daily Bread by Godfrey Blount

When kind people walk

  Where the corn is yellow,

Every sturdy stalk

  Stoops to kiss his fellow.

Our Daily Bread by Godfrey Blount

When the harvest heaves

  With many a golden gable,

All shock-headed sheaves

  Praise God who spreads the table. 

Our Daily Bread by Godfrey Blount

                                                            Give us this day our daily bread,

  And daily honest labour,

That every creature may be fed,

  And learn to love its neighbour.

Our Daily Bread by Godfrey Blount

Luther Hooper - the Peasant Relationship?

I have no written record of Luther Hooper explaining the relationship that Hooper had with the Haslemere Peasants movement, however there are two significant indications:

1. Luther Hooper's sample T.254-1970, the composition of which is very similar to that of Godfrey Blount's deer and tree designs.  The sample is described as "Woven sample of white silk with metal strip and stag and fir tree design mounted in a card frame".   This one of many Luther Hooper samples that were given to the museum by Waldo Lanchester (1897-1978) the puppeteer.  This symmetrical design composition is not one I have seen from other artists at the time.  This is a very simple design for Hooper which is unusual.  The deer in Hooper's weaving are all facing away from the tree, but in Blount's designs they are always facing or eating from the tree.

Luther Hooper sample
T.254-1970, Victoria & Albert Museum

Montage of peasant deer and tree designs by the Haslemere Peasant Arts
movement, from my earlier post here

2. "A group of kindred craftsmen".  In his brief online autobiography (online here), Hooper states that he moved to Haslemere to be with "a group of kindred craftsmen".  He writes "In 1901 I returned to London in order to design for and superintend a small tapestry-weaving industry at Bushey, a branch of weaving I had not hitherto studied: here I remained for rather more than a year and then removed to Haslemere, where there was a group of kindred craftsmen, and set up a few looms assisted by my son and three skilled weavers who had been with me at Ipswich."

Luther Hooper sample
T.14-1999, Victoria & Albert Museum

Some years before moving to Haslemere, he is reported as presenting a paper to the Ipswich School of Science and Art (Ipswich Journal, 21 April 1894, p6) titled 'The Relation and Value of Art Education to Local Industries', in his address, Hooper exhibits many similar opinions to the Haslemere Peasants, at a time when these were not being publicly shared as far as I can see.  Similarities include: the quoting of Ruskin, the reverence of artistic objects made for daily use, the importance of local industry, the influence of the art master in training the taste of the student and advocating the formation of a permanent collection of works with which to train students.

“They knew how much Mr Hooper did to interest them by his productions, as exhibited at the Art Gallery in connection with the Society of which he was president, but they, probably, did not know the high position that gentleman occupied in the art word in designing….Mr Luther Hooper then read a most interesting and valuable paper, and after remarking that education in all its different aspects had for the last half century been on of the foremost subjects of enquiry, argument, and experiment, proceeded to give his idea of what should be the method and character of art education, with a view of showing how the advantages offered by such schools as those existing in Ipswich could be made of most value to students and all concerned. 

Luther Hooper 'Oriental Stripe'
T.23:3-1999, Victoria & Albert Museum

"Opportunities should be given to students of seeing fine examples of all kinds of art productions, and it was in this connection that a permanent collection of fine works of art and handicraft became so useful and important.  No town should reckon itself respectable, not to say advanced, which did not provide a beautiful building for a permanent gallery – (applause) – and devote a considerable amount of thought and money to the gradual collection of objects of really fine art. 

"Mr Hooper next treated of art education in its relation to local industry.   He gave some striking passages from Ruskin’s works, which pointed a finely-expressed conclusion that the entire vitality of art depended upon its being either full of truth or full of use – that however pleasant, wonderful, or impressive it might be of itself, it must be of inferior kind and must tend to still deeper inferiority unless it had one of these main objects in view – either to state a true thing or to adorn a serviceable one; and in continuation said we might carry this suggestive enquiry through the whole range of manufacture and should find that the best and most useful things are the most beautiful, and that there is a close connection between good workmanship and high artistic excellence.  It is quite a modern heresy and most pernicious to think, as so many people appear to do, that fine art has only to do with the painting of pictures for the enjoyment of the wealthy collector or merely as pieces of furniture whose only office and object is to adorn an otherwise bare space of flat wall.  The greatest masters of art of all ages have given no small portion of their time and devoted some of their best efforts to the designing and modelling of articles for daily use, and in the palmy days of art he who could produce a really fine piece of pottery, jewellery, armour, furniture, ironwork, or carving, was counted worthy of equal honour with men who could paint the portrait of an emperor or a representation of a saint. 

Luther Hooper 'Small Muir',
T.11:2-1999, Victoria & Albert Museum

"Fine art has, or should have, much to do with local industry, and art education, if properly pursued, will promote and improve the productions and manufactures of a neighbourhood.  There is one branch of local industry in this town which has evidently been considerably influenced by art education.  I think no stranger can walk through Ipswich without noticing, as I did when I first came here, a distinctly high character and degree of excellence attained by some local shop-sign painter or painters.  I knew no town where there is so large a proportion of well-painted, original, and finely-lettered shop facias.  There is a distinct character in these, and I should not be surprised to find that these good things are the result of studies began at the Ipswich School of Art.  There are many other industries that might be improved and benefited in every way by a close relationship to art education.  It is not easy to get good artistic printing done in Ipswich, judging from the specimens one sees on bills and programmes, and yet what a delightful and delighting art that of the printer is, and what a fine opportunity it gives for the use of taste and judgment, both in the selection of type and displaying of it.  The same may be said of the kindred art of bookbinding.  I know of few more satisfactory things to possess than a finely-printed and beautifully and fitly-bound book.  One might easily bring many instances to prove that high artistic quality, wedded, as it invariably must be, to good workmanship, is of a distinct commercial value, and I maintain that the relation of the Art School to the manufacturers should be a most kindly and cordial one, and that it is to be the interest of the latter to promote its effectiveness by every means in their power.  In considering the relation of art to local industry, we must remember that the students are divided into two classes, those who intend to take to art in some form or other as a means of livelihood, and those who commence a course of study because they have an aptitude for art, and a sufficient love of it to enable them to endure a certain amount of drudgery in its pursuit, but who do not intend to make it their chief aim. 

Luther Hooper 'Heartsease'
T.10:5-1999, Victoria & Albert Museum

"…The first class (of course the minority), who intend to live by art in some form or other, will be of value to manufacturers as cultivated workers, in whatever branch of handicraft they take up.  But it is the second class that I should like to point out are, or may be, specially of value to local industry, because, knowing and appreciating what is good, they are disposed to demand a high standard of quality in all they purchase, and having some experience of the Application and pains required to reach any degree of perfection in the fine arts, they can appraise at their proper value articles baring evidence of artistic thought and skill.  I have heard manufacturers say that it is no use producing good things, for the public will not buy them; they must be vulgarised or they will not sell.  But thanks to the influence of the Art School the public are beginning to demand a higher standard of excellence, and well-designed things are beginning to have a value in addition to heir artistic one – I mean the value so important to a manufacturer, a monetary one.  …The art master’s business is to train the eye and hand, to enlarge the ideas, and to improve and guide the taste of the student.  I believe technical training can only be of value when it is obtained by the student while taking part in actual work.  …actually valuable work, artistic or otherwise, can only be learnt in the studio, drawing  office, or workshop.  The last thing I have to say – and  am glad of this opportunity of saying it – is, that as I have advocated the formation of permanent collections of works of fine art and handicraft as important helpers in the training of art students”

Luther Hooper sample,
T.13:1-1999, Victoria & Albert Museum

Luther Hooper's other works

I have previously posted about Luther Hooper's weaving, but I have now discovered that he also had a passion for painting.  

detail from Children in Dappled Woodland Sunshine, 1899
from Metropress

The 3 paintings that I've found on the internet attributed to Luther Hooper, seem to vary widely in style.   For someone who was not supportive of industrialisation the subject of Nocturne, a power station, is a surprising one.  The most interesting composition is 'Children in Dappled Woodland Shade', a painting that with the sloping hill and pine trees could be located in Haslemere, with the children potentially gathering plants for dyeing, or bilberry picking, however it is recorded online as being dated 1899 and Hooper moved to Haslemere c.1902.  In 1899 Hooper was living near Ipswich, the terrain depicted in the painting does not look like that of Suffolk, nor of Bushey where he then moved to.  Perhaps he was visiting Haslemere, or perhaps the painting was not painted in 1899, I cannot see the date on the painting, but it may well be there somewhere!  None of these paintings is referred to in the list of paintings below.

Suffolk Painters describes Hooper as: "A member of the Ipswich Art Club 1884-1901 exhibiting from East Bergholt, Suffolk in 1884, five watercolours 'Barden Tower and Moors, near Bolton Abbey', 'Church of the Trinity, Falaise, Normandy', 'Old River, East Bergholt', 'Barden Tower from the North' and 'Stoke Church' and in 1885 had eleven watercolours on show including 'Nayland from the River', 'Valley Farm, Flatford', 'Old Castle, Little Wenham', 'Old River Bridge, East Bergholt', 'The Grove, Capel', 'Road by Hintlesham Hall', 'Old House, Flatford', 'Nacton Heath, near Decoy', 'Spring Time', 'Barns at Stratford St Mary' and 'The Church Porch, East Bergholt' and continued to exhibit and at their 1974 centenary show his watercolour 'Man goeth Forth to his Work' was on display. He also exhibited six works at the Society of British Artists 1870-1882 including a 'View in Devon', ‘Morning Grey’ and ‘Twilight’ and five works at the Royal Academy 1879-1891 including views in Nayland and East Bergholt churches, Suffolk and ‘A Shepherd Boy’s Pastime’ and ‘The Bird-Scarer’s Breakfast’. "

Perhaps Luther Hooper knew Henry George Hine the Vice President of the Royal Institute, and Maude Egerton King and Ethel Blount's father, which might have been a motivation behind moving to Haslemere.

The Thames Embankment,
Luther Hooper
from http://www.askart.com/artist/Luther_Hooper/11107852/Luther_Hooper.aspx#

‘Nocturne’ by Luther HooperLots Road power station, Chelseafrom Pinterest

Children in Dappled Woodland Sunshine, 1899
from Metropress

Compton, Watts Artist's Village - some parallels Part 1

Limnerslease
Watts, M.S., George Frederic Watts: Volume 2, Hodder & Stoughton, 1912

The nearest Arts and Crafts movement to Haslemere was at Compton, what is now called Watts Gallery Artist's Village, online here.  Compton is a short distance away from Haslemere, just off the A3 outside Guildford, a distance of twelve miles.  Here the celebrated Victorian painter G.F. Watts lived with his wife Mary Seton Watts in their house, Limnerslease, that they built in 1891.  Mary established the Compton Pottery (1904) and spearheaded the creation of the unique Watts Chapel (1898), the Watts Gallery (1903).

The Haslemere Peasant Arts movement definitely knew the Watts.  Although how well they knew each other, and how much they shared the same beliefs is not documented.  Godfrey Blount and Ethel Blount were on the General Committee of the Healthy and Artistic Dress Union when Mary Seton Watts, "Mrs G.F. Watts" was a Vice-President, as can be seen from the photograph below - Mrs G.F. Watts being the last Vice-President listed, the Blounts being the second and third General Committee members, after Mrs Janet Ashbee.  I have posted more about the Blounts and the Healthy and Artistic Dress Union in this post.

The Dress Review,
listing of the Healthy and Artistic Dress Union committee
January 1904

So what parallels are there?

1. The Watts' enterprises involved the local community, as did the Haslemere Peasant Arts movement.  The Compton Cemetery Chapel is renowned to have been decorated by all inhabitants of Compton village.

2. The Watts were husband and wife as artists, as with Godfrey and Ethel Blount.  

3. The Home Arts and Industries Association (HAIA).  Prior to her marriage, Mary had been a committee member of the HAIA and G.F. Watts was "the biggest financial supporter of the movement" (Bills, Mark, An Artists' Village: G. F. Watts and Mary Watts at Compton, Philip Wilson Publishers, 2011).  We know that the Kings and Blounts exhibited for the HAIA.  There is not a great deal of information available about the HAIA, perhaps because the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society which seemed to have the more renowned Arts and Crafts makers has eclipsed their memory in history.  The Art Workers Quarterly said of the HAIA in 1904 that the HAIA 'is a society for teaching the working classes handicrafts such as wood carving, inlaying, metal repousse, basket weaving, leather work, book binding, and for encouraging these and others such as lace, embroidery spinning, weaving, pottery etc, by means of an annual exhibition' (from Arts and Crafts metalwork web).  

In a letter to The Spectator (1 November 1919, p13) Lady Mary Lovelace describes "Beginning in 1884, under the presidency of Lord Brownlow, with about 40 branches and 320 students spread all over the United Kingdom, the progress of the Association has been rapid and continuous, and included in the year 1913 200 classes with about 5,000 students. Th9 handicrafts taught are as follows Simple carpentry, wood-carving, inlaying and veneering, wrought-iron work, hand-beaten silver and other metal work, basket-work, rush matting, hand-weaving and spinning, carpet and rug-making, toy-making, lace-making, embroidery, smocking, knitting, pottery, plain and ornamental leather-work, bookbinding, stencilling, &c., &c....Two great men, John Ruskin and G. F. Watts, were from the beginning in heartiest sympathy with the work of the Association. In a small volume called Plain Handicrafts Mr. Watts wrote : " The rush of interest in the direction of what are understood RS worldly advantages has trampled out the sense of pleasure in the beautiful, and the need of its presence as an element essential to the satisfaction of daily life, which must have been unconsciously felt in ages less absorbed in acquiring wealth for itelf alone, proved by the fact that in everything done or used then, there was an apparent touch of the artistic sense, in buildings, in costumes, in pageants, in all things from a temple to the meanest utensil. Our Art Congresses would have been in old times as needless as congresses to impress on the general mind the advantages of money-making would be in these. The necessity to make all classes acquainted with the written language by which human thought is conveyed is now universally felt; the object of plain handicraft is to widely open the book of nature. The boy encouraged to imitate some natural object will ever after see in that object something unseen and unknown to him before, and he will find the time he formerly did not know what to do with (a state of being that continually drives thousands to the congested Metropolis) henceforth full of pleasurable sensations."

Before their marriage in 1884-1885 Mary Watts had organised an evening clay-modelling class at a boys' club in Whitechapel.  She described her pupils as 'chiefly shoe blacks'.  In June 1886 she was elected to the Council of the Home Arts.  Once married, G.F. Watts became a major donor to the movement, contributing £1,000 in 1895 and painting special commissions to fund the movement (Bills, ibid).  In 1895 Mary set up a Home Arts clay-modelling class in her studio at Limnerslease.  

4. Mary Watts trained at the Slade c.1873, before Godfrey and Ethel Blount's time there.   They shared a love of John Ruskin, "both Mary Watts and her husband were great admirers of Ruskin.  The 1938 probate inventory of Limnerslease lists many of his books, and when a servant purloined one in 1890, Watts asserted: 'He could have taken nothing from me that I value more." (Bills, ibid.).

The Great Studio, Limnerslease,
The Victorian Web

5. Limnerlease, designed by the architect Sir Ernest George had a particular emphasis on the studio, referred to by Bills (ibid.) as "the studio home".  The Blounts and the Kings also had a strong emphasis on home-working on the loom; when living at Foundry Cottage Blount is thought to have used the next door house, Meadow Cottage, as a studio, and at St Cross, buildings in the garden.  Watts had a different level of studio home, the studio at Limnerslease is an enormous room designed to accommodate his massive painting 'The Court of Death' (c.1870-1902, Tate), which is described as "intended for the chapel of a paupers cemetery.  In this 4.5 metre x 3 metre painting, Death is shown as an enthroned angel, holding a baby which shows, according to Watts that, 'even the germ of life is in the lap of Death'.  The allegorical nature of G.F. Watts' work seems to exhibit similarities with the novels of George MacDonald, Greville MacDonald's father.  Also, I wonder if Maude Egerton King's father, Henry George Hine, the Vice President of the Royal Institute of Watercolours, was acquainted with Watts?

Those familiar with the al fresco working on Kings Road, Haslemere post, will appreciate the joy of seeing Watts also working outside, below.  

G.F. Watts at work upon the statute of Lord Tennyson, August 1903
Watts, M.S., George Frederic Watts: Volume 2, Hodder & Stoughton, 1912

6.  Both movements attracted visiting artists and notables to the area.  Bills (ibid.) describes Limnerslease as attracting "many of the most notable continental musicians came to play to Watts at Limnerslease.  And it was not just musicians, authors too visited the shrine, as well as leasding figures of the age such as William Gladstone.  It was also a place where people stayed to have their portrait painted by one of the most sought-after portraitists of the day.  Mrs Josephine Butler, for whose heroism he [Watts] had a deep veneration was painted at Limnerslease where she came to stay" (ibid).  I wonder if the Dolmetsches visited?  Josephine Butler was an acquaintance of the MacDonalds as Greville describes "my parents' intimacy with such protagonists of the feminist movement as the beautiful and devoted Josephine Butler…" (MacDonald, Greville, Reminiscences of a Specialist, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1932).

Josephine Elizabeth Butler (nee Grey) by G. F. Watts, 1895
National Portrait Gallery

7.  A community of buildings was built to further the values of the cause.  In 1895 Mary had the support of the parish council to purchase land and erect a memorial chapel.  A wood-fire bottle kiln was built in Limnerslease's grounds, across the lane from the cemetery, with the advice of William De Morgan; "every aspect of Compton's cemetery chapel would be a symbolic celebration pf spiritual and material life, from birth to death and beyond, from the distinctive ground plan of the Eternal Circle intersected by the Cross of Faith, the intricate terracotta mouldings on the building, and the wooden door and its iron hinges to the glorious painted gesso interior." (ibid.)  The pottery produced there used the local clay from the iron-rich seam running through the grounds of Limnerslease.  This gave the pottery a distinctive terra-cotta hue. Locals were taught to model the terracotta tiles for the chapel at her Terra Cotta Home Arts classes run at Limnerslease.  It is said that the Watts Chapel was built by all the residents of Compton village, Mary listed 73 modellers plus 4 permanent staff in her book of the chapel which she dedicated to the HAIA founder, Eglantyne Jebb.

Mary Watts and her students making gesso panels for the Watts Chapel
at Limnerslease
Source: BBC

The infrastructure for the Watts Chapel helped to establish the Compton Pottery.  Underwood (Underwood, Hilary, 'Compton Pottery', An Artists' Village, ibid.) writes:

"The specialist kiln-burner left when the exterior of the chapel was finished, but the successful clay-modelling class continued.  During the chapel project it had met twice a week with thirty or forty pupils aged from ten to sixty.  Mary Watts re-employed the kiln-burner to fire their work, and provided him with a wheel to make additional pots to offset his wages.  Orders grew and 'several of the younger members of the class were so attracted by the artistic nature of the work that they expressed a desire to devote their whole time to it.

Potters' Arts Guild booklet
source: BBC

8.  The creation of a guild and a local industry.  Around 1900 Mary Watts decided to turn the successful class into a Home Arts 'developed industry', which would provide paid employment for its workers."  A house was built for the new pottery manager.  James Nicol from the Cumnock Pottery in Ayrshire.  Mary Watts had written to Nicols "offering him a 'delightful village industry - beautiful things beautifully made, by people in beautiful country' (ibid).  In 1904 the pottery was constituted as the  Potters' Arts Guild, similar to the many guilds established by the Haslemere Peasant Arts movement.   "Half the profits were retained by the guild as capital but credited to the individual worker's accounts, paying interest and available to them on departure" (ibid).  The pottery closed in 1951.  There is an interesting short film on the Compton Pottery in 1933 available at Pathe here.  The sitting fairy statute in the film, or one remarkably like it, was until recently by the entrance to the Watts Gallery.

Compton Pottery building
Source: BBC

Limnerslease, the Watts' home,
Compton, Surrey

Haslemere Educational Museum's Peasant Arts Christmas Card

Haslemere Educational Museum have made the bold step of printing a European Peasant Arts Collection Christmas card, of a slipware bowl from Germany.  It's a lovely festive card, which I hope they sell many of.  They are being sold in the museum shop at £4 for 10 cards.

Haslemere Museum Christmas Card, 2017
Slipware bowl from Germany

Haslemere Museum Christmas Card, 2017
Slipware bowl from Germany

Decorative Arts Society - Arthur Romney Green

The new issue of the Decorative Arts Society Journal, no. 41 (2017) includes a marvellous article by Neil Hyman on Arthur Romney Green 'Obscure Geometry: patterns of influence in the work of Arthur Romney Green'.

I have had the pleasure of meeting Neil during a number of his visits to Haslemere when he was researching this article including photographing the Arthur Romney Green (ARG) panelled oak chest at St Bartholomew's Church and visiting ARG's old workshop.  Both of which are shown in the article.  Neil believes that ARG's time in Haslemere had a significant influence on ARG's artistic style, which is a fascinating insight.

The Decorative Arts Society Journal 41, 2017

There is more on the Society and Journal, which is published annually, on their website here.

Haslemere Arts & Crafts Weekend has Begun!

Eric Knowles' lecture this evening was great and very entertaining.  It was interesting to see him have some slides on our Haslemere peasants!  I'm looking forward to tomorrow's lectures in the morning and my Peasant Walk in the afternoon.