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(Assignment) ARTICLE SUMMARY Ashbee Arts and Crafts men have a rough time as they find the mindset of Englishman influenced by themechanical conditions of modern life which tries to measure art by machine. However, Arts and Crafts being the basic educational needs of the community, craftsmen should be ensured stable economic basis. Though some craftsmen realize their role in modern industry in establishing standards in public service, the impending economic revolution in England will ruin their situation further. They will find this book useful in finding a way for them. Simultaneously engaging in other basic works, like cooking and working in land reducing the use of machines will keep them self-supporting. This book narrates the success story of a group of English craftsmen who took to labor with the aid of some capitalists which can be used as a guide for others. Though there was acute commercial depression, the Guild of Craftsmen successfully functioned when they worked in group minimizing the use of machines. 2. Ceastlake It is ironic to see how awkward the beauty concept of many people is as the design of household items is concerned. Many of the objects in our everyday use are poorly designed, which, often, are unsuitable to practical use and pathetic in artistry. Far from being progressive, we have gone backward in the quality of manufacture and design. Fields like metal-work, joinery have all ruined in artistic quality due to the eagerness to reduce labor and increase price but the general public is still unaware of it. It is possible to bring the universally accepted principles of good design into practice. The design of the item should indicate the purpose, and the character of ornament should depend on the nature of material and the use of the article. In industrial art, beauty and use are closely associated though it is not so for partially educated ones. In fact, real art sticks to the simplest and most practical shapes. 3. Greenough Horatio Greenough wrote ‘ The Travels, Observations, and Experience of a Yankee Stonecutter’ under the pseudonym Horace Bender in which he argued beauty in architecture means the fitness to function. Architect theorists like Louis Sullivan and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe adopted his doctrine of functionalism and his comparison of design evolution to biological evolution later led to a new pattern of design. All natural objects follow the law of adaptation but modifications are only according to necessity. By adopting the laws of apportionment, distribution, and connection in all construction as they are seen in nature, the actual beauty can be achieved. 4. Jones Owen Jones, in ‘ Grammar of Ornament’ argued that the ornament of civilized nations is enfeebled while that of savage tribes is vital and beautiful. He was more in favour of idealized and conventionalized ornaments rather than the ones closely copied from nature. The savage ornaments are beautiful because they are true to their purpose while that of civilized world superadded ornament to ill-contrived forms. In the Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations 1851, India made the biggest contribution which was similar to countries like Tunis, Egypt, and Turkey with regard to design and elegance. On the other hand, European works exhibited awkward misapplication of every bygone style of Art which could not serve the present day purpose. Arabian and Moresque ornament shared similarity with that of India though the Indian style was more flowing and less conventionalized due to Persian influence. The people are weary of the repetition of styles and hence it is high time to reproduce natural form in ornaments but we have to seek from nature like the Egyptians and the Greek. 5. Veblen Thorstein Veblen in his book, ‘ The Theory of the Leisure Class’ tries to explain why handcraft objects are considered more beautiful than mass-produced ones. According to him, aesthetics are inextricably connected to monetary value. According to him, the more ill-adapted an item is, the more people will prefer it. Sometimes, expensiveness of an item decides its beauty. It is common tendency to appreciate honorific character in the name of beauty. Though machine-made products are better than handmade ones in practical use, hand labor gains more pecuniary reputability as it is honorifically more wasteful. Though hand-wrought things bear visible imperfection and do not serve their purpose well as compared to machine-made ones, one can see the exaltation of he defective as advocated by John Ruskin and William Morris.