Page:Arts & Crafts Essays.djvu/434

 translation of old styles and translate Nature instead?

Think of the gain to the "Schools," and to the designers themselves, if we elect to take another starting-point! No more museum-inspired work! No more scruples about styles! No more dry-as-dust stock patterns! No more loathly Persian-tile quilts! No more awful "Zoomorphic" table-cloths! No more cast-iron-looking altar cloths, or Syon Cope angels, or stumpy Norfolk-screen saints! No more Tudor roses and pumped-out Christian imagery suggesting that Christianity is dead and buried! But, instead, we shall have design by living men for living men—something that expresses fresh realisations of sacred facts, personal broodings, skill, joy in Nature—in grace of form and gladness of colour; design that shall recall Shakespeare's maid who 410