William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and utopian socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement. He founded a design firm in partnership with the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti which profoundly influenced the decoration of churches and houses into the early 20th century. As an author, illustrator and medievalist, he helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, and was a direct influence on postwar authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien. He was also a major contributor to reviving traditional textile arts and methods of production, and one of the founders of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, now a statutory element in the preservation of historic buildings in the UK.
Morris wrote and published poetry, fiction, and translations of ancient and medieval texts throughout his life. His best-known works include The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858), The Earthly Paradise (1868–1870), A Dream of John Ball (1888), the utopian News from Nowhere (1890), and the fantasy romance The Well at the World's End (1896). He was an important figure in the emergence of socialism in Britain, founding the Socialist League in 1884, but breaking with that organization over goals and methods by the end of the decade. He devoted much of the rest of his life to the Kelmscott Press, which he founded in 1891. Kelmscott was devoted to the publishing of limited-edition, illuminated-style print books. The 1896 Kelmscott edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer is considered a masterpiece of book design.
Red House
For several years after his marriage Morris was absorbed in two connected occupations: the building and decoration of a house for himself and Jane, and the foundation of a firm of decorators who were also artists, with the view of reinstating decoration, down to its smallest details, as one of the fine arts. Meanwhile he was slowly abandoning painting; none of his paintings are dated later than 1862.
Red House at Bexleyheath in
Kent, so named when the use of red brick without stucco was still unusual in domestic architecture, was built for Morris to designs by Webb; it was Webb's first building as an independent architect. Red House featured ceiling paintings by Morris, wall-hangings designed by Morris and worked by himself and Jane; furniture painted by Morris and Rossetti, and wall-paintings and stained- and painted glass designed by Burne-Jones.However it contained no wallpaper, printed or woven fabrics, or carpets by the firm, these being manufactured from 1864, 1868 and 1874 respectively.
Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Main article:
In 1861, the
decorative arts firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.(later described by
Nicholas Pevsner as the 'beginning of a new era in Western art ') was founded with Morris, Rossetti, Burne-Jones,
Ford Madox Brown and Philip Webb as partners, together with
Charles Faulkner and
Peter Paul Marshall, the former of whom was a member of the Oxford Brotherhood, and the latter a friend of Brown and Rossetti.
[1] The prospectus set forth that the firm would undertake carving,
stained glass, metal-work, paper-hangings,
chintzes (printed fabrics), and
carpets.
[2] The decoration of churches was from the first an important part of the business. On its non-ecclesiastical side it gradually was extended to include, besides painted windows and mural decoration, furniture, metal and glass wares, cloth and paper wall-hangings,
embroideries,
jewellery, woven and knotted carpets,
silk damasks, and
tapestries. The first headquarters of the firm were at 8
Red Lion Square.
The work shown by the firm at the
1862 International Exhibition attracted much notice, and from 1866 began to make a profit. In the autumn of 1864, a severe illness obliged Morris to choose between giving up his home at Red House in Kent and giving up his work in London. With great reluctance he gave up Red House, and in 1865 established himself under the same roof with his workshops, now relocated to Queen Square,
Bloomsbury.
An important commission of 1867 was the "green dining room" at the South Kensington Museum (now the Morris Room of the
Victoria and Albert), featuring stained glass windows and panel figures by Burne-Jones, panels with branches of fruit or flowers by Morris, and olive branches and a frieze by Philip Webb.
Although already the firms paid manager, in 1874 Morris wished to take sole control of the now profitable firm, but, unsurprisingly, had to buy out other shareholders. This venture into capitalism was a severe test of friendship with Rossetti and Ford Maddox Brown. Throughout his life, Morris continued as principal owner and design director, although the company changed names. Its most famous incarnation was as Morris & Co. The firm's designs are still sold today under licenses given to
Sanderson and Sons (which markets the "Morris & Co." brand) and
Liberty of London.
Main Entrance to Kelmscott Manor
Kelmscott Manor
In 1869, Morris and Rossetti rented a country house, Kelmscott Manor at
Kelmscott,
Oxfordshire, as a summer retreat, but it soon became a retreat for Rossetti and Jane Morris to have a long-lasting and complicated liaison. The two spent summers there, with the Morris children, while Morris himself traveled to
Iceland in 1871 and 1873. Kelmscott Manor remained an important retreat and symbol of simple country life for Morris in later years. It was the model for "the old house by the
Thames" in Morris's News from Nowhere. The house and gardens are now owned by the
Society of Antiquaries of London, and is open to the public on Wednesdays and Saturdays in the summer. The garden and its flora were a particular inspiration to Morris in his textile designs.
Textiles
Cabbage and vine tapestry, 1879
Furnishing textiles were an important offering of the firm in all its incarnations. By 1883, Morris wrote "Almost all the designs we use for surface decoration, wallpapers, textiles, and the like, I design myself. I have had to learn the theory and to some extent the practice of
weaving,
dyeing and
textile printing: all of which I must admit has given me and still gives me a great deal of enjoyment."
Morris's preference for flat use of line and colour and abhorrence of "realistic" three-dimensional shading was marked; in this he followed the propositions of Owen Jones as set out in his 'The Grammar of Ornament' of 1856, a copy of which Morris owned. Writing on tapestry weaving, Morris said:
As in all wall-decoration, the first thing to be considered in the designing of Tapestry is the force, purity, and elegance of the silhouette of the objects represented, and nothing vague or indeterminate is admissible. But special excellences can be expected from it. Depth of tone, richness of colour, and exquisite gradation of tints are easily to be obtained in Tapestry; and it also demands that crispness and abundance of beautiful detail which was the especial characteristic of fully developed Mediæval Art. -
Of the Revival of Design and HandicraftIt is likely that much of Morris's preference for medieval textiles was formed — or crystallised — during his brief apprenticeship with G. E. Street. Street had co-written a book on Ecclesiastical Embroidery in 1848, and was a staunch advocate of abandoning faddish
woolen work on canvas in favour of more expressive embroidery techniques based on
Opus Anglicanum, a
surface embroidery technique popular in
medieval England.
He was also very fond of hand knotted
Persian carpets and advised the
South Kensington Museum in the acquisition of fine
Kerman carpets.
Embroidery
Main article:
Art needleworkMorris taught himself embroidery, working with wool on a
frame custom-built from an old example, and once he had mastered the technique he trained his wife Jane and her sister Bessie Burden and others to execute designs to his specifications. "Embroideries of all kinds" were offered through Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. catalogues, and church embroidery became and remained an important line of business for its successor companies into the twentieth century. By the 1870s, the firm was offering both designs for embroideries and finished works. Following in Street's footsteps, Morris became active in the growing movement to return originality and mastery of technique to embroidery, and was one of the first designers associated with the
Royal School of Art Needlework with its aim to "restore Ornamental Needlework for secular purposes to the high place it once held among decorative arts."
Printed and woven textiles
Design for "Tulip and Willow"
indigo-discharge wood-block printed fabric, 1873
Morris's first repeating pattern for wallpaper is dated 1862, but was not manufactured until 1864. All his wallpaper designs were manufactured for him by Jeffrey & Co, a commercial wallpaper maker. In 1868 he designed his first pattern specifically for fabric printing. As in so many other areas that interested him, Morris chose to work with the ancient technique of
hand woodblock printing in preference to the
roller printing which had almost completely replaced it for commercial uses.
Morris took up the practical art of dyeing as a necessary adjunct of his manufacturing business. He spent much of his time at
Staffordshire dye works mastering the processes of that art and making experiments in the revival of old or discovery of new methods. One result of these experiments was to reinstate
indigo dyeing as a practical industry and generally to renew the use of those vegetable dyes, like
madder, which had been driven almost out of use by the
anilines. Dyeing of wools, silks, and cottons was the necessary preliminary to what he had much at heart, the production of woven and printed fabrics of the highest excellence; and the period of incessant work at the dye-vat (1875–76) was followed by a period during which he was absorbed in the production of textiles (1877–78), and more especially in the revival of carpet-weaving as a fine art.However, his first carpet designs of 1875, were made for him industrially by commercial firms using machinery.
Morris's patterns for woven textiles, some of which were also machine made under ordinary commercial conditions, included intricate
double-woven furnishing fabrics in which two sets of
warps and
wefts are interlinked to create complex gradations of colour and texture.
Sedat Arda
Hussein Chalayan, Ambimorphous AW 2002
