Themes
Impressive against expressive art
Wilde's disagreement with the lecturer is the core of the piece. 'These handicrafts are not primarily expressive arts; they are impressive arts.' A material that 'always suggests and always conditions its own decoration' is no place for a message to the world. Poetry and painting aim at 'annihilating their material'; the crafts aim at 'glorifying it.' In a binding, he concludes, art expresses 'not the feeling of the worker but simply itself.'
Tradition over the individual
Against Cobden-Sanderson's claim that design must 'come from the man himself', Wilde argues that 'good decoration is always traditional. Where it is the expression of the individual it is usually either false or capricious.' He sees a danger in 'lofty claims for handicraft': they try to give the crafts 'the province and motive' of poetry, painting and sculpture, which they do not have.
The worker and cheapness
Wilde reports without dissent the lecturer's social argument. The worker is 'diminished to a machine', the employer 'bloated into a millionaire' is the slave of the public, and the public is the slave of 'its pet god, cheapness.' The bookbinder of the future is to be an educated man with 'freedom for his fancy and leisure for his thought.' The phrase echoes Morris's attack on 'the vile god cheapness' three weeks before.