A Message from the Master for 2013
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THE ART WORKERS’ GUILD PROCEEDINGS AND NOTES : NUMBER 28 : JANUARY 2014 A MESSAGE FROM THE MASTER FOR 2013 I have enjoyed an interesting year as Master with issues that have arisen in the formal meetings of the Guild and in the many informal discussions at dinners or with sandwiches. The Ordinary Meetings have been gratifyingly well attended and the discussions that followed them lively and provocative. In addition, there were two discussion groups: on apprenticeship and education. Roughly 20 people came together for each of these discussions, some of them members of the Guild, some not – but all united in their concern that important aspects of education and training are undervalued by our education system, dominated as it is by book-learning. Many of us in the Guild have skills that were developed only after we finished formal schooling. Even those of us who took specialised courses in art schools and universities may have been shocked by how remote the teaching was from the real world we have since learned to live and work in. Hand-and-eye skills like drawing, painting, modelling and carving are given very lowly status in the school curriculum. It was clear that many of those contributing to the discussion felt that skills such as these – based on non-verbal understanding – need much more encouragement at secondary-school level, and even in art schools and universities. The discussions returned frequently to the value of the hands-on experience of an apprenticeship. Systems of hands-on training are clearly established in the worlds of engineering, medicine, architecture and so on. But it is clear that apprenticeships in the crafts are difficult to establish, because so many of the potential teachers run small businesses and cannot risk taking on an apprentice. The meetings learned that there are a number of agencies interested in promoting apprenticeships – and some well- intentioned government initiatives. But there is very little help at grass roots-level for young people looking for places with a skilled craftsman or artist – a potter, print-maker, weaver, sculptor, painter, furniture-maker or jeweller. It seemed that the AWG is in a very good position to help – not necessarily as a full-scale ‘market’ for apprenticeships, but rather as a co-ordinator of information and bringer- together of those with shared interests and concerns. There is much more work to be done in this area. It is my hope that the Guild will continue to engage actively in promoting and enabling hands-on training – and in reminding government (and the world at large) that there is much more to learning and education than can be tested by written exams. The other issue before us all is how to make the best use of our building in the future. We now have before us a fully worked out proposal for transforming the inner courtyard to a useful indoor space and at the same time improving access for the disabled. These are improvements that will enable us to continue providing a suitable home for the Guild and the many other groups and organisations that use the building. It is now apparent that this will only be realised if the Guild itself can provide the lion’s share of the necessary funds. Charities and Trusts may be persuaded to contribute, but only in support of the Guild’s own efforts. In 2014 we celebrate the centenary of the construction of the Hall. It is salutary to be reminded that 100 years ago the building was bought and the Hall built entirely with funds contributed by the members and friends of the Guild. We are very fortunate to benefit from their energy, generosity and foresight. We should do the same for the generations that follow us. My year is now at an end. It has been most rewarding in every way and I am extremely grateful to all who have worked to make it lively, entertaining and productive. I may be stepping down as Master, but I have undertaken to act as Chairman of the Trustees for three years to come. Julian Bicknell PROCEEDINGS OF MEETINGS child he saw many of the world’s architectural wonders. At school he enjoyed music and 10 January 2013 geometry – harmony and the relationships of ORDINARY MEETING spaces – and so it was hardly surprising that at Cambridge he would gravitate from engineering GUILD BUSINESS to architecture. There too he would take up stage design and management – an involvement with New Year 2013 was inaugurated in the usual way, visual drama that would recur in his buildings. with George Hardie, outgoing Master, taking the chair. It was announced, to applause, that PM From Cambridge he went to work with Ted Dick Reid had been awarded the OBE and Bro. Cullinan, and from Cullinan’s office to directing Rosie Wolfenden the MBE. the Project Office at the Royal College of Art (RCA) and his own independent practice. There, George Hardie affirmed what an enjoyable year his enterprises included an exhibition of designs it had been, and thanked all those, the officers by the Bugatti dynasty, and the conversion of of the Guild, the full time and the honorary, for the old gaol at Abingdon as a community sports everything they had done to help him. He and the and arts centre – an undertaking that began as a officers then withdrew for his successor, Julian student ideas competition but which ended as a Bicknell, to be invested with the Master’s robes, finished building. But of greater significance for while a collection was made for the Guild Chest his own career was a series of projects at Castle (raising £800). Howard for George Howard, then one of the governors of the RCA. LECTURE MASTER’S NIGHT: ALL SET SQUARE Of these schemes, some were executed and some Master Julian Bicknell not, but the Master would take Castle Howard with him to his next job, with Arup Associates, Reappearing to the acclaim of the Brethren, the where he would meet PM Richard Grasby. At new Master took the chair to speak about his Castle Howard, Granada Television wished to ambitions for his year of office and about his create a set for their serial Brideshead, and George own work. The Master announced as his theme Howard asked Julian Bicknell and Felix Kelly to for the year ‘Invention, Intuition and Intellect’ – design it together. Felix Kelly and the architectural elements that would be richly illustrated in the riches of the library at Castle Howard provided story of his own career. He began, however, by further education and inspiration, besides being pointing out that architects differ from many the occasion for meeting another Past Master, other creators in that they depend on clients Dick Reid. who share their vision and with whom they must develop their concepts, and on colleagues, Castle Howard led, through Felix Kelly, to the builders and craftsmen to bring these concepts realisation of a dream first conceived in a painting into existence. Architects must inhabit a world – the Henbury Rotunda for Sebastian de Ferranti. of persuasion, diplomacy, compromise and team Another early work of his own practice was the work, and in going on to give an account of his design of an organ case for the chapel screen at career the Master paid generous tribute to all of Magdalen College, Oxford, to take a new organ these necessary collaborators. by Noel Mander & Son (for which the Master’s brother designed the pipework and action). The Diplomacy and architecture were in the Master’s geometry of the existing screen was crucial in background: his grandfather had been an architect determining the design of the new work, and and his father a diplomat, and as a Foreign Office complex geometry would be of the essence of 2 many of the schemes that the Master would show. 24 January Some of these were family houses, and the audience ORDINARY MEETING were shown Upton Viva in North Oxfordshire, High Corner in Surrey, Forbes House on Ham GUILD BUSINESS Common, and a number of others. But more Notices were given out, and a new Brother, Susan unlikely were the Master’s buildings in Japan. Aldworth, printmaker, was introduced by Bro. Many are classical and are private clubs, but they Rebecca Jewell. include the buildings of a Shakespeare Theme Park, built some forty miles south of Tokyo out LECTURE of genuine English oak. Shakespeare’s own house, A FRESH LOOK AT PROPORTION New Place, stands again two centuries after its Bro. Richard Sammons original destruction, and his birthplace too has been re-created – although the writer would like to note Bro. Sammons described his subject as ‘Practical that even the original, in Stratford, may actually Proportioning’ – a pragmatic approach free of have been built some years after Shakespeare was abstruse mathematical and harmonic theory, born. The Master had already spoken of his wife’s which appealed greatly to the hands-on, practical work as an art editor and their travels together, members of the Guild. and one product of these Japanese trips was a book on Hiroshige, illustrated with the artist’s It is not possible, in these Minutes, to do justice to own woodblocks and with modern photographs his lucid delivery or to show the clear illustrations of the places Hiroshige depicted. that made his talk so easy to follow. In trying to summarise his explanations without the diagrams, The Master’s fascination with the mathematics the writer is reminded of the legendary Foreign of design has drawn him inevitably to the Italian Office recruitment test – asking a candidate to baroque, and he went on to show a series stand up and describe a spiral, in words alone, of astounding churches by the little-known without using his hands.