Industrial art is making a stand against all cheap orna-
mentation, and it is particularly in an important field, where
bad taste has been allowed to spread and propagate in the
most unhampered and shameless fashion, namely in the
manufacture of porcelain, that the Stockholm artist Alf
Wallander has done pioneer work for us. Wallander was
a good painter, but he realized that the artist's eye and
his capacity for energetic work have a large mission to per-
form in the industrial arts. Vases, lamps, and dishes
fashioned by him disclose new fields conquered for art, while
in the textile industry also, in woven fabrics, he has made
successful innovations. Of greatest moment, however, is
the contribution he has made to the products of the Rör-
strand factories. He died in 1914. In the same field,
Gunnar Wennerberg did a similar service for the porcelain
factories of Gustafsberg.

In textile art, the society Handarbetets vänner (the
Friends of Handicraft) has worked successfully, since 1874,
to preserve and revive old methods of weaving, to collect
patterns, and in general to lift needle work to a higher
artistic level. The most important achievement of the
society is undoubtedly its revival of interest in the art of
tapestry weaving, which in its simpler forms had been pre-
served by our peasantry. The only woven piece of tapestry
with a modern figure motif that was made in Sweden during
the nineteenth century was one woven by the above-men-
tioned society after a design by Carl Larsson. It repre-
sents A Catch of Crayfish, executed with exquisite taste
and skill, both landscape and figures being slightly conven-
tionalized. The tapestry is hung in the Museum of Indus-
trial Arts in Copenhagen.

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