66 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

important silversmiths' workshops of India, the^illustrated trade
catalogues of European firms and stores being employed as the
pattern books upon which their silver plate was being modelled."

The same is true of Ceylon, where "Western influence
is stronger ; every jeweller uses European trade catalogues;
it is now the fashion to melt down old jewellery, the most
"beautiful in design and perfect in workmanship, in order
to nave copies made of Birmingham designs which a
machine has already reproduced a thousand times (the
people want, in their own words, " improved jewellery; "
lout they will find it only where they will last of all turn
for it, and then too late, in the workshop of the hereditary
•craftsman). To take other examples; of Benares brass
work—by which Indian art is typically represented to the
tourist mind—only two pieces were good enough to show
at the Delhi Exhibition.

" All but one or two pieces were bad in design and worse in
execution. They had departed from the fine old patterns that
made Benares famous for its brass wares, most being poor
imitations of swami work or of Boon a copper ware. Many were in
European shapes and purposes." (Sir G-. Watt.)

Enamelling has been called the master craft of India ;
of the most famous centre Sir George "Watt remarks:—

"Formerly every attention was given to effect, and a back-
ground or field colour was regularly employed, most frequently a
rich creamy white. Within the past few decades this has been
discontinued, and complex and intricate designs substituted in
which it can hardly be said there is a field colour at all. The
result is distinctly inferior and may be described as garish rather
than artistic. The utilitarian spirit of the times is also marked by
the production of a large assortment of sleeve links, lockets,
"bracelets, brooches and the like, and the decoration of the backs of
pieces of jewellery, in place of enamelling, being the chief orna-
mentation of charms, sword-hilts, plates, etc,, as in former times."

Notice particularly the degradation of the art from
its application to objects entering into the serious life of
the people of the country, to trivial objects intended
mainly for the passing tourist.