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The South Kensington system was the informal name for a syllabus and system for teaching art, developed in the 1850s in the "South Kensington schools", forerunner of the Royal College of Art in London. The system was spread throughout the United Kingdom, and then to most of the English-speaking world, and to last well into the next century.

The controversy at the school was partly about the Headmaster and his teaching methods, but reflected issues about the aims of the school in terms of the balance between fine art and applied and commercial art and design; these questions were to remain a perennial bone of contention for at least another century, and are a recurring theme in Christopher Frayling's 1987 history of the College. The new teaching methods implemented by Burchett were themselves to become a matter of controversy.

The school had been founded in 1837, as the Government School of Design, occupying part of Somerset House on the Strand, until the space was needed for the Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages. It became the National Art Training School in 1853, moving to the equally palacial setting of Marlborough House,^[1] thanks to Prince Albert. In 1861 it moved again to buildings adjoining (and now absorbed by) the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, and long after Burchett's death it became in 1896 The Royal College of Art. It is often referred to as the "Government Art School", and later the "South Kensington Schools", in the 19th century (the school was at various points divided into different sections, such as the "Female School", and there were also science schools run by the Science and Art Department, hence the plural).

The main art school in London was the Royal Academy Schools, which were also in Somerset House until 1867. They were established decades before the Government School, to provide a full training in Academic art; by the 1830s the majority of successful English artists had trained there. The Government School was funded by the Board of Trade, and intended, at least by them, for different purposes, though precisely what these were remained a political battleground for decades. The school was not founded to train academic painters; this at least was clear, although in fact many ex-students became just that. The Government had recognised that British industrial design was falling behind that of the Continent, and believed that the training of designers was worth public subsidy. Later, a national network of schools to train students in applied art and design was established, and the central London school was both to be the flagship of the network, and to train teachers for the rest of the schools.^[2]

After the internal disputes of the 1840s, the school acquired a firm sense of control and direction when in 1853 the Government placed it under the control of Henry Cole, for whom the Science and Art Department was set up, with a large tract of land, and much of the large profit from the 1852 Great Exhibition to spend. Cole was an extremely dynamic figure, with some training as a painter, and experience as an entrepreneurial designer of china. He made the young painter Richard Redgrave, master of botany at the school since 1847, responsible for the superintendence of the national system, and appointed Burchett as Headmaster of the London School.

Together these three evolved the "South Kensington system", a highly specific syllabus, set out by Redgrave, for the teaching of art, which was to be dominant in the UK, and other English-speaking countries, at least until the end of the century, and not to entirely vanish until the 1930s.^[3] The full course was divided into twenty-three stages, most with several sections. Different types of students were to take different combinations of stages: "machinists, engineers and foremen of works" should take stages 1-5, and then skip to the final 23rd stage, "Technical Studies", whilst designers and "ornamentalists" took most stages. Burchett's published lectures reflected the system, and were widely used as text-books for it; how far he was involved in devising it cannot be said. ^[4]

The system had critics from early on. In 1854, when the system was hardly yet in operation, Charles Dickens published Hard Times, whose most famous scene involves the "Government Inspector", a figure parodying Cole:

'Suppose you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it? .... Girl number twenty,' said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of knowledge. Sissy blushed, and stood up. 'So you would carpet your room - or your husband's room, if you were a grown woman, and had a husband - with representations of flowers, would you?' said the gentleman. 'Why would you?' 'If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,' returned the girl. 'And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?' 'It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They wouldn't crush and wither, if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy - ' 'Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn't fancy,' cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. 'That's it! You are never to fancy.' 'You are not, Cecilia Jupe,' Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, 'to do anything of that kind.' 'Fact, fact, fact!' said the gentleman. And 'Fact, fact, fact!' repeated Thomas Gradgrind.

'You are to be in all things regulated and governed,' said the gentleman, 'by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don't walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don't find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use,' said the gentleman, 'for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.' ^[5]

John Ruskin was equally unrestrained: "the Professorship of Henry Cole .... has corrupted the state of art-teaching all over England into a state of abortion and falsehood from which it will take twenty years to recover".^[6] In 1871 he founded the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford.

Women pupils were taught at least partly seperately, and their life classes consisted of drawing a man wearing a suit of armour. The Royal Academy Schools did not accept women students until 1861, although there were other alternatives for women.

Self-prtrait notes Amateur: Plath, pushkin, princess on WP, nowell. Alberti,

Image:Boethius initial consolation philosophy.jpg Image:Le Bal des Ardents.jpg

The Chinese invention of Woodblock printing, at some point before the first dated book in 868 (the Diamond Sutra) produced the first print culture in the world: "it was the Chinese who really discovered the means of communication that was to dominate until our age.."^[7]. It was better suited to Chinese characters than movable type, which the Chinese also invented, but which did not replace woodblock printing. Even the Western printing press, introduced in the 16th century, took until the 19th to become dominant in China.

Despite it being claimed by some scholars that printing must have been spread from China to Europe, possibly through the Middle East, there is no good evidence that Chinese movable type printing of text ever spread beyond East Asia. Woodblock printing for textiles, on the other hand, preceeded text printing by centuries in all cultures, and is first found in China at around 220,.^[8] then Egypt in the 4th century^[9] , and reached Europe by the 14th century or before, via the Islamic world, and by around 1400 was being used on paper for old master prints and playing cards. "^[10][11] Johannes Gutenberg's printing press developed from 1440 can be traced back to European sources and techniques, such as agricultural presses from the Roman age. The lack of known intermediaries and profound technical differences suggest that Gutenberg's invention was done independently.