When Lucile Douglass, artist at forge, was asked by Dr. Ralph A. Ward, China Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, to leave Now York for China to organize thei lantern. slide and colouring department of the China Cen-ten ary Movement, the proposal looked like a long jump to a strange field.
To create something out of no-tung in a foreign land was a chal-Jenge that appealed to Miss Douglass. The Orient had long been beckoning to her and she accepted the invitation, only stipu-Jating that. she should work with Chinese: women both because of her constant interest in the feminist movement and because of thet limited occupational field hitherto open to women of the East.
A thorough artistic training and study under famous masters all over the United States and Europe, together with experience gained by helping to develop the colouring department of the Centenary in New York and Nashville, was all this organized had to work with in coming to Shanghai. There was no department, no equipment, no tradi tion when she landed in August 1920 but by November of the same year a promising little workshop was tucked away under the eaves of a one-time residence at 4 Quinsan Gardens, Anyone whose breath and courage do not fail him may find, afta' mounting three flights of stairs, a businesslike studio, or an artistic business office, which ever term you prefer (And here one may parenthetically remark that the animate ing spirit of this attic is one of those white blackbirds, an artist with a genius for organization.)
Tf you climb these stairs in winter you will discover a cosy fire blazing, with a long-nosed brass kettle singing ov the hearth or in spring the breezes from the open dormer windows fan the big bowls of flowers that sit about the rooms. Always there is that sense of comradeship that working in a common craft produces. Slides are turned out in surprising quantities but there is no effect of drudgery, rather the satisfaction of artistic expression.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.