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THE ARTISTIC CRAFTS SERIES
OF TECHNICAL HANDBOOKS
EDITED BY W. R. LETHABY
DRESS DESIGN
DRESS DESIGN
AN ACCOUNT OF COSTUMEFOR ARTISTS & DRESSMAKERSBY TALBOT HUGHES · ILLUSTRATEDBY THE AUTHOR FROMOLD EXAMPLES · TOGETHERWITH 35 PAGES OF HALF-TONEILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LTD.
Bath, Melbourne, Toronto, and New York
Reprinted 1920
GENERAL PREFACE TO THE SERIES[xi]
In issuing this volume of a series of Handbooks on the Artistic Crafts,it will be well to state what are our general aims.
In the first place, we wish to provide trustworthy text-books ofworkshop practice, from the points of view of experts who havecritically examined the methods current in the shops, and putting asidevain survivals, are prepared to say what is good workmanship, and to setup a standard of quality in the crafts which are more especiallyassociated with design. Secondly, in doing this, we hope to treat designitself as an essential part of good workmanship. During the last centurymost of the arts, save painting[xii] and sculpture of an academic kind, werelittle considered, and there was a tendency to look on "design" as amere matter of appearance. Such "ornamentation" as there was wasusually obtained by following in a mechanical way a drawing provided byan artist who often knew little of the technical processes involved inproduction. With the critical attention given to the crafts by Ruskinand Morris, it came to be seen that it was impossible to detach designfrom craft in this way, and that, in the widest sense, true design is aninseparable element of good quality, involving as it does the selectionof good and suitable material, contrivance for special purpose, expertworkmanship, proper finish and so on, far more than mere ornament, andindeed, that ornamentation itself was rather an exuberance of fineworkmanship than a matter of merely abstract lines. Workmanship whenseparated by too wide a gulf from fresh thought—that is, fromdesign—inevitably decays, and, on the other hand,[xiii] ornamentation,divorced from workmanship, is