William Morris

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William Morris
Born	March 24, 1834(1834-03-24)
Died	October 3, 1896 (aged 62)
Nationality	English
Occupation	Artist Writer
Known for	Arts and Crafts movement British Socialism

William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English artist, writer, and socialist. He was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was one of the principal founders of the British Arts and Crafts movement, a pioneer of the socialist movement in Britain, and a writer of poetry, fiction, and translations from the Icelandic. As a co-founder of the domestic design firm Morris & Co., Morris was influential in the resurgence of traditional textile arts in the wake of the industrial revolution, working across a broad spectrum of techniques including tapestry weaving, dyeing with natural dyes, carpet-making, wood-block printing, and embroidery in the style that became known as art needlework. He is also well known as a designer of wallpaper and patterned fabrics and as the founder of the Kelmscott Press.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life and education 1.2 Artistic influences 1.3 Marriage and family 1.4 Business career 1.5 Socialism 1.6 Later years 2 Writings 2.1 Poetry 2.2 Translations 2.3 Fantasy novels 3 Architecture 4 Painting 5 Textiles 5.1 Embroidery 5.2 Printed and woven textiles 5.3 Tapestry 6 The Kelmscott Press 7 Morris today 7.1 Notable collections and house museums 7.2 Legacy 8 Literary works 8.1 Translations 9 Gallery 10 See also 11 Notes and references 12 Sources 13 Further reading 14 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and education

Born on his family's estate of Elm House in Walthamstow, he went to school at Marlborough College, but left in 1851 after a student rebellion there. He then went to Exeter College, Oxford after studying for his matriculation to the university. He became influenced by the work of art and social critic John Ruskin while there.

[edit] Artistic influences

It was at Exeter that Morris met his life-long friend and collaborator, Edward Burne-Jones. They became strongly influenced by exhibitions of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, Ruskin's "On the nature of Gothic architecture", Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur and the poetry of Tennyson. Morris began to develop his philosophy of eschewing the tawdry industrial manufacture of decorative arts and architecture and favouring a return to hand-craftsmanship, raising artisans to the status of artists, creating art that should be affordable, hand-made, with no hierarchy of artistic mediums.

[edit] Marriage and family

Morris married Jane Burden at St Michael at the Northgate, Oxford, on 26 April 1859. They had two daughters, Jane (called Jenny), who developed epilepsy after a boating accident, and Mary (called May), who herself became a designer and writer. Although of very humble origins and unschooled in youth, Jane Morris underwent a remarkable self-education after her marriage, becoming Morris's intellectual and artistic equal. A striking beauty, she mixed freely with the Pre-Raphaelites and posed many times for Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

[edit] Business career

After graduating from Oxford, in January 1856 Morris became an apprentice to G. E. Street, one of the leading English Gothic revival architects, where he met another lifelong friend, the architect Philip Webb. He abandoned architecture for painting, but soon found himself drawn more and more to the decorative arts. He and Webb built Red House at Bexleyheath in Kent, Morris's wedding gift to Jane.

In 1861, he founded the decorative arts firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown and Philip Webb as partners. In 1874 Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown decided to leave the firm, requiring a return on their shares which proved to be a costly business. Throughout his life, he continued to work in his own firm, although the firm changed names. Its most famous incarnation was as Morris and Company. The company encouraged the revival of traditional crafts such as stained glass painting, hand embroidery, woodblock-printed textiles and wallpaper, and dyeing silk and wool with vegetable dyes, and Morris himself single-handedly recreated the art of tapestry weaving in Britain. His designs are still sold today under licences given to Sanderson and Sons and Liberty of London.

Morris's commissions include the ceiling within the dining room of Charleville Forest Castle, Ireland and interiors of Bullers Wood House, now Bullers Wood School in Chislehurst, Kent.

[edit] Socialism

Morris and his daughter May were amongst Britain's first socialists, working directly with Eleanor Marx and Engels to begin the socialist movement. In 1883, he joined the Social Democratic Federation, and in 1884 he organised the breakaway Socialist League. Morris found himself rather awkwardly positioned as a mediator between the Marxist and anarchist sides of the socialist movement, and bickering between the two sides eventually tore the Socialist League apart. This side of Morris's work is well-discussed in the biography (subtitled "Romantic to Revolutionary") by E. P. Thompson. It was during this period that Morris wrote his best-known prose works, in particular A Dream of John Ball and the utopian News from Nowhere.

[edit] Later years

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 affair. After his departure from the Socialist League, Morris divided his time between the Company, then relocated to Merton Abbey,^[1] Kelmscott House in Hammersmith, the Kelmscott Press, and Kelmscott Manor. At his death at Kelmscott House in 1896 he was interred in the Kelmscott village churchyard.

[edit] Writings

[edit] Poetry

Morris began publishing poetry and short stories in 1856 through the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine which he founded with his friends and financed while at university. His first independently published work, The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858) was coolly received by the critics, and he was discouraged from publishing more for a number of years. "The Haystack in the Floods", one of the poems in that collection, is probably now one of his better-known poems. It is a grimly realistic piece set during the Hundred Years War in which the doomed lovers Jehane and Robert have a last parting in a convincingly portrayed rain-swept countryside.

One early minor poem was "Masters in this Hall" (1860), a Christmas carol written to an old French tune.^[2]

When he returned to poetry in the late 1860s it was with The Earthly Paradise, a huge collection of poems loosely bound together in what he called a leather strapbound book. The theme was of a group of medieval wanderers who set out to search for a land of everlasting life; after much disillusion, they discover a surviving colony of Greeks with whom they exchange stories. The collection brought him almost immediate fame and popularity.

The last-written stories in the collection are retellings of Icelandic sagas. From then until his Socialist period Morris's fascination with the ancient Germanic and Norse peoples dominated his writing. Together with his Icelandic friend Eiríkr Magnússon he was the first to translate many of the Icelandic sagas into English, and his own epic retelling of the story of Sigurd the Volsung was his favourite among his poems.

Due to his wide poetic acclaim, Morris was offered the Poet Laureateship, after the death of Tennyson in 1892, but declined.

[edit] Translations

Morris also translated large numbers of medieval and classical works, including collections of Icelandic sagas such as Three Northern Love Stories and Virgil's Aeneid, both in 1875, and Homer's Odyssey in 1887.

[edit] Fantasy novels

In the last nine years of his life, Morris wrote a series of fantasy novels – including The Wood Beyond the World and The Well at the World's End – that have been credited as important milestones in the history of fantasy fiction, because, while other writers wrote of foreign lands, or of dream worlds, or the future (as Morris did in News from Nowhere), Morris's works were the first to be set in an entirely invented fantasy world.^[3]

These were attempts to revive the genre of medieval romance, and not wholly successful, partly because he eschewed many literary techniques from later eras.^[4] In particular, the plots of the novels are heavily driven by coincidence; while many things just happened in the romances, the novels are still weakened by the dependence on it.^[5] Nevertheless, large subgenres of the field of fantasy have sprung from the romance genre, but indirectly, through their writers' imitation of William Morris.^[6] The Wood Beyond the World is considered to have heavily influenced C. S. Lewis' Narnia series, while J. R. R. Tolkien was inspired by Morris's reconstructions of early Germanic life in The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains. (The young Tolkien attempted a retelling of the story of Kulervo from the Kalevala in the style of The House of the Wolfings.^[7]) James Joyce also drew inspiration from his work.^[8]

[edit] Architecture

Although Morris never became a practising architect, his interest in architecture continued throughout his life. In 1877 he founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (sometimes known as "Anti-Scrape").^[9] His preservation work resulted indirectly in the founding of the National Trust. Combined with the inspiration of John Ruskin — in particular his essay "The Nature of Gothic" from the second volume of The Stones of Venice — architecture played an important symbolic part in Morris's approach to socialism.

[edit] Painting

In the summer of 1856, Morris moved from Oxford to London, abandoned his architectural training, and under the influence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti pursued a new career as an artist. He had limited success; with Burne-Jones and Rossetti he painted the ceilings of the Oxford Union, but the frescoes disintegrated, and he completed one major oil, La belle Iseult, with his new wife as model. His wide range of other interests took over, and he turned his efforts to poetry, embroidery, illumination and other crafts, and the "Red House" project.

[edit] Textiles

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." ^[10]

It 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.^[11]

[edit] Embroidery

Main article: Art needlework

Morris 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 would remain an important line of business for its successor companies into the twentieth century.^[12]

By the 1870s, the company 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."^[13]

[edit] Printed and woven textiles

Morris was producing repeating patterns for wallpaper as early as 1862, and some six years later 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 also rejected the bright colours of the new aniline dyes and set about to rediscover the nearly-lost techniques for working with natural dyestuffs such as madder and indigo.^[14]

Morris also designed patterns for woven textiles, often producing double-woven furnishing fabrics in which two sets of warps and wefts are interlinked to create complex gradations of colour and texture.^[15].

Morris's textile designs are still popular today, sometimes recoloured for modern sensibilities, but also in the original colourways.

[edit] Tapestry

Morris long dreamed of weaving tapestries in the medieval manner, which he called "the noblest of the weaving arts." In September 1879 he finished his first solo effort, a small piece called "Cabbage and Vine".^[16][17]. Shortly thereafter Morris trained his employee John Henry Dearle in the technique, setting up a tapestry loom at Queen Square. Dearle executed Morris and Co.'s first figural tapestry from a design by Walter Crane in 1883^[17].

Dearle was soon responsible for the training of all tapestry apprentices in the workshop and partnered with Morris on designing details such as fabric patterns and floral backgrounds for tapestries based on figure drawings or cartoons by Burne-Jones (some of them repurposed from stained glass cartoons)^[16] and animal figures by Philip Webb. Suites of tapestries were made as part of whole-house decorating schemes, and tapestries of Burne-Jones angels and scenes from the Arthurian legends were a staple of Morris & Co.

[edit] The Kelmscott Press

In January 1891, Morris founded the Kelmscott Press at Hammersmith, London, in order to produce examples of improved printing and book design. The books were designed to make reference to the methods and techniques he used, which he saw as traditional methods of printing and craftsmanship, in line with the Arts and Crafts movement as a whole, and in response to the prevalence of lithography, particularly those lithographic prints designed to look like woodcut prints. He designed clear typefaces, such as his Roman 'golden' type, which was inspired by that of the early Venetian printer Nicolaus Jenson, and medievalizing decorative borders for books that drew their inspiration from the incunabula of the 15th century and their woodcut illustrations. Selection of paper and ink, and concerns for the overall integration of type and decorations on the page made the Kelmscott Press the most famous of the private presses of the Arts and Crafts movement. It operated until 1898, producing 53 works, comprising 69 volumes, and inspired other private presses, notably the Doves Press.

Among book lovers, the Kelmscott Press edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, illustrated by Burne-Jones, is considered one of the most beautiful books ever produced. A fine edition facsimile of the Kelmscott Chaucer was published in 2002 by the Folio Society.

[edit] Morris today

[edit] Notable collections and house museums

• The William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, England, is a public museum devoted to Morris' life, work and influence. There are permanent displays of printed, woven and embroidered fabrics, rugs, carpets, wallpapers, furniture, stained glass and painted tiles by Morris and his associates. In April 2007, The Guardian newspaper reported that funding for the Gallery was threatened by cost cutting by the London borough of Waltham Forest. A campaign to avoid the reduction in opening times and dismissal of key staff is underway.^[18]
• The Morris Room at Victoria and Albert Museum was designed by the firm in the 1860s as the "green dining room", and features stained glass windows and panel figures by Burne-Jones, panels with branches of fruit or flowers by Morris, olive branches and a frieze by Philip Webb. The V&A's British Galleries house other decorative works by Morris and his associates.^[19]
• Wightwick Manor in the West Midlands, England, is a notable example of the Morris & Co. style, with original Morris wallpapers and fabrics, De Morgan tiles, and Pre-Raphaelite works of art, managed by the National Trust.
• Standen in West Sussex, England, was designed by Webb between 1892 and 1894 and decorated by Morris & Co. It features Morris carpets, fabrics and wallpapers.
• The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California acquired the collection of Morris materials amassed by Sanford and Helen Berger in 1999. The collection includes stained glass, wallpaper, textiles, embroidery, drawings, ceramics, more than 2000 books, original woodblocks, and the complete archives of both Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. and Morris & Co.^[20] These materials formed the foundation for the 2002 exhibit William Morris: Creating the Useful and the Beautiful.

[edit] Legacy

The Morris Societies in Britain, the US, and Canada are active in preserving Morris's work and ideas.

The influence of William Morris lives on in modern interiors and architecture. Companies such as Harvest House and Stickley Furniture continue to sell Arts and Crafts-style pieces.

A fountain located in Bexleyheath town centre, named the Morris Fountain, was created in his honour and unveiled on the anniversary of his birth. Also in Bexleyheath, Morris' home Red House was opened up to the public by the National Trust in 2004.

[edit] Literary works

• The Hollow Land (1856)
• The Defence of Guenevere, and other Poems (1858)
• The Life and Death of Jason (1867)^[21]
• The Earthly Paradise (1868–1870)
• Love is Enough, or The Freeing of Pharamond: A Morality (1872)
• The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of Niblungs (1877)
• Hopes and Fears For Art (1882)
• A Dream of John Ball (1888)
• A Tale of the House of the Wolfings, and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse (1889)
• The Roots of the Mountains (1890)
• Poems By the Way (1891)
• News from Nowhere (or, An Epoch of Rest) (1890)
• The Story of the Glittering Plain (1891)
• The Wood Beyond the World (1894)
• Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair (1895)
• The Well at the World's End (1896)
• The Water of the Wondrous Isles (1897)
• The Sundering Flood (1897) (published posthumously)

[edit] Translations

• Grettis Saga: The Story of Grettir the Strong with Eiríkr Magnússon (1869)
• The Saga of Gunnlaug the Worm-tongue and Rafn the Skald with Eiríkr Magnússon (1869)
• Völsung Saga: The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs, with Certain Songs from the Elder Edda with Eiríkr Magnússon (1870) (from the Volsunga saga)
• Three Northern Love Stories, and Other Tales with Eiríkr Magnússon (1875)
• The Odyssey of Homer Done into English Verse (1887)
• The Aeneids of Virgil Done into English (1876)
• Of King Florus and the Fair Jehane (1893)
• The Tale of Beowulf Done out of the Old English Tongue (1895)
• Old French Romances Done into English (1896)

[edit] Gallery

Edward Burne-Jones-designed and Morris & Co.-executed Nativity windows (1882), Trinity Church, Boston.	Edward Burne-Jones-designed and Morris & Co.-executed The Worship of the Shepherds window (1882), Trinity Church, Boston.	Detail from Edward Burne-Jones-designed and Morris & Co.-executed The Worship of the Shepherds window (1882), Trinity Church, Boston.	Acanthus wallpaper, 1875
Panel of ceramic tiles designed by Morris and produced by William De Morgan, 1876	Snakeshead printed textile, 1876	Design for Windrush printed textile, 1881-83	Grafton wallpaper, 1883
Kennet printed textile, 1883	Detail of Woodpecker tapestry, 1885	Detail of design for Bullerswood carpet, 1889	Acanthus embroidered panel, designed Morris, 1890

[edit] See also

• Arts and Crafts movement
• Eco-socialism
• Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
• Victorian decorative arts
• Social Democratic Federation
• Socialism
• Socialist League

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] Sources

• Carpenter, Humphrey: Tolkien: A Biography, New York, Ballantine Books, 1977, ISBN 0-04-928037-6
• Coote, Stephen: William Morris: His Life and Work, Smithmark Publishers, 1995, ISBN 1-85833-479-9
• de Camp, L. Sprague: Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy, ISBN 0-87054-076-9
• Fairclough, Oliver and Emmeline Leary, Textiles by William Morris and Morris & Co. 1861-1940, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, 1981, ISBN 0-89860-065-0
• Hammond, Wayne and Christina Scull: The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 2006, ISBN 978-0618391134
• Parry, Linda, "Textiles", in The Earthly Paradise: Arts and Crafts by Wiliam Morris and his Circle in Canadian Collections, edited by Katharine A. Lochnan, Douglas E. Schoenherr, and Carole Silver, Key Porter Books, 1993, ISBN 1-55013-450-7
• Parry, Linda, ed.: William Morris, Abrams, 1996, ISBN 0-8109-4282-8
• Parry, Linda: William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement: A Sourcebook, New York, Portland House, 1989 ISBN 0-517-69260-0
• Parry, Linda: William Morris Textiles, New York, Viking Press, 1983, ISBN 0-670-77074-4
• Parry, Linda: Textiles of the Arts & Crafts Movement, Thames and Hudson, revised edition 2005, ISBN 0-500-28536-5
• Thompson, E.P. (2nd edtion, 1976) William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, Pantheon, ISBN 0-394-73320-7
• Waggoner, Diane: The Beauty of Life: William Morris & the Art of Design, Thames and Hudson, 2003, ISBN 0-500-28434-2

[edit] Further reading

• Goodway, David. Anarchist Seeds beneath the Snow: Left Libertarian Thought and English Writers From William Morris to Colin Ward (2006).
• Marsh, Jan (2005). William Morris and Red House: A Collaboration Between Architect and Owner. National Trust Books. ISBN 9781905400010. 
• Pinkney, Tony. William Morris in Oxford: The Campaigning Years, 1879-1895 (2007).
• Watkinson, Ray [1967] (1979). William Morris as Designer. London: Trefoil Books. ISBN 0862940400. 

[edit] External links

Sources

• Works by William Morris at Project Gutenberg. Plain text and HTML versions.
• Works by William Morris at Internet Archive. Scanned books, many illustrated.
• Works by William Morris at The Online Books Page.
• The William Morris Internet Archive (marxists.org)
• Biography by J. W. Mackail (Dictionary of National Biography, 1901)

Other

• William Morris and his Circle
• William Morris Stained Glass
• The William Morris Gallery (London Borough of Waltham Forest)
• The William Morris Society
• William Morris Tiles and Textiles
• William Morris Exhibition
• A Morris and De Morgan tile panel at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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