In October 1960 the Gwen Mullins Trust had organised a conference on the theme The apprenticeship of craftsmen in established workshops and the relationship of training to present art school practice. Together, the trustees had contributed to a summary report of the discussion compiled by Muriel Rose. It stated: ‘...although “art” is now recognised as a necessary part of the school curriculum, the crafts are as yet little understood or regarded in general or training college education, and suffer particularly from the expectation that one person can reach adequately a number of unrelated crafts. This implies acceptance of superficial knowledge, of acquaintance with several crafts, rather than the depth of insight through continuous experience of one craft - a view contrary to the personal experience of all present’.19 An exhibition review in 1986 referred to Timeless Textiles as one of a series of ‘almost infuriatingly high-quality exhibitions mounted by the Department of Textiles’.20 The reviewer challenged a perception that he saw reflected in the exhibits - that ‘industrial production, which has removed the element of drudgery from utilitarian manufacture and led to a revolution in the living standards of the vast majority, is linked to a loss of standards and values’.21 In reply, Ella McLeod wrote: ‘I rejoice that we can all afford to buy the cloth of our machine age...But now that material goods of all kinds are far cheaper relative to earning power than in pre-industrial times, we discard and replace, not treasure and mend. (Who would now patch a grain sack?). There has been a revolution in values’.22 Examples of industrially-produced textiles were not excluded from the exhibition. The machine ‘can produce cloth as good as the industrial designer envisages and which the consumers make economically viable’.23 Crucially,
MURIEL ROSE: A MODERN CRAFTS LEGACY
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