Reform

William Morris, Ruskin and the reform of the decorative arts: hand production set against the factory, and the wallpapers, textiles and books that came out of it.

Part of Design

68 moments in this segment.

1. 1859 - Red House, Bexleyheath. Philip Webb designed this house for William Morris in 1859, in red brick with a steep tiled roof and windows placed where rooms needed them rather than where symmetry wanted them. Furnishing it was what led Morris to found a decorating firm the following year.
2. 1860 - Table glass by Philip Webb. Philip Webb drew this table glass for Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, a drinking glass, a bowl and a decanter with the blown, thin-walled simplicity that the firm set against cut and moulded Victorian crystal. James Powell and Sons of Whitefriars blew the pieces.
3. 1860 - Day, angel holding a sun. An angel carries the sun in a stained glass cartoon Morris drew for Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, paired with a companion figure of Night. The firm's glass was one of its first commercial products and its most sustained.
4. 1860 - Night, angel holding a waning moon. The waning moon is cradled against the figure's robe, the lead lines doing the drawing rather than painted shading. Morris and his partners argued that glass should read as coloured light held in a lead net, not as a picture painted on a window.
5. 1862 - King Rene's Honeymoon Cabinet. Oak inlaid with various woods and fitted with painted panels, made by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company for the architect John Pollard Seddon. The painted scenes were divided among Ford Madox Brown, Burne-Jones, Rossetti and Val Prinsep.
6. 1862 - Toilet mirror. Walnut with gesso, paint, gilding and brass, made in England in 1862. The gilded and painted surfaces on a plain carcass are characteristic of the early Morris firm, which treated decoration as applied colour rather than carved relief.
7. 1862 - Design for Trellis wallpaper. The working drawing for Trellis, Morris's first wallpaper, with roses climbing a garden trellis. Philip Webb drew the birds, Morris the plants, and the paper was not issued until 1864 because the firm first tried and abandoned etched zinc plates.
8. 1863 - St Michael and All Angels, Brighton, stained glass 1. The southern west window of St Michael and All Angels (Old Church), Brighton, East Sussex, made by the firm of Morris and Co. in 1863. The left window was designed by Ford Madox Brown and depicts the Archangel Michael, the right window was mostly designed by William Morris (though the face is by Dante Gabriel Rossetti) and depicts the Archangel Raphael.
9. 1865 - Rossetti chair. An ebonised oak armchair with a rush seat, one of the Sussex range and named for Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The firm sold it as an inexpensive alternative to upholstered parlour furniture.
10. 1865 - Sussex armchair. Ebonised birch with a rush seat. The Sussex range was adapted by the Morris firm from a traditional country chair rather than invented, stayed in the catalogue for decades, and was the cheapest thing the company sold.
11. 1867 - St Wilfrid's, Haywards Heath glass 1. Detail of the south aisle west window of St Wilfrid's Church, Haywards Heath, West Sussex. It was made circa 1867 by Morris & Co. from a design by Ford Madox Brown. It depicts Noah.
12. 1868 - Leyswood perspective. Richard Norman Shaw's perspective of Leyswood in Sussex, reproduced by Hermann Muthesius in Das englische Haus. The tile-hung gables and massive chimneys established the Old English manner that dominated English country building in the 1870s.
13. 1870 - Ariadne and Phyllis ceramic panels. Two figures from Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, designed by Edward Burne-Jones and painted on tile. The subject came from the medieval literature that the Morris circle read as a source of form rather than as antiquarian decoration.
14. 1870 - Sussex Chair, manufactured by Morris & Company, London, c. 1870, ebonized oak with rush seat - Huntington Art Museum - San Marino, CA -
15. 1870 - St James Brighouse 003. "crucifixion" window believed to have been designed by William Morris and executed by Edward Burne-Jones. It was restored in 2017 and gives the opportunity to inspect the detail of the Pre-Raphaelite artwork much closer than it could have been seen in its original church setting. It came from the church of St James, Brighouse which opened in 1870, closed in 1972 and was demolished c.1992, to be replaced by housing. The source names Stephen Craven.
16. 1872 - Music tiles. Three pairs of hand-painted earthenware tiles showing figures with instruments, attributed by the museum to Edward Burne-Jones and made by Morris and Company. Dutch blanks were bought in and painted in the firm's workshop, a compromise the firm did not advertise.
17. 1872 - Edward coley burne-jones e william morris per morris & co, vetrata con san giovanni battista, 1872
18. 1873 - Love is enough. Or the freeing of Pharamond. A Morality. @media only screen and (max-width:719px){ } html.skin-theme-clientpref-night html.skin-theme-clientpref-night @media screen and (prefers-color-scheme:dark){html.skin-theme-clientpref-os html.skin-theme-clientpref-os } Love is enough. Or the freeing of Pharamond. A Morality. Artist William Morris Author William Morris Title Love is enough. Or the freeing of Pharamond. A Morality. Object type Arts and crafts cloth book cover design Date 1873 date Dimensions 152 × (5.98 × 7.75 × 0.59 in) Collection British Library Place of creation London: Ellis & White, 29 New Bond Street. 1873.
19. 1873 - Love is enough - BL 1578 8073 both covers and spine - Americn Edition. (max-width:719px){ } html.skin-theme-clientpref-night html.skin-theme-clientpref-night @media screen and (prefers-color-scheme:dark){html.skin-theme-clientpref-os html.skin-theme-clientpref-os } Love is enough. Or the freeing of Pharamond. A Morality. [Author’s Edition.] Artist William Morris Author William Morris Title Love is enough. Or the freeing of Pharamond. A Morality. [Author’s Edition.] Object type Arts and crafts cloth book cover design Date 1873 date Dimensions 124 × (4.88 ×.
20. 1875 - Design for Carnation printed textile. Kate Faulkner drew this watercolour design for a printed cotton for Morris and Company around 1875. Faulkner and her sister Lucy worked on tiles, wallpapers and gesso for the firm from its earliest years and are routinely left out of accounts of it.
21. 1876 - Pimpernel wallpaper. Pimpernel sets a large acanthus scroll behind smaller flowering stems so that two layers of pattern read at once, a device Morris used to keep a repeating paper from flattening. He hung it in the dining room of his own house at Kelmscott House, Hammersmith.
22. 1876 - Tile panel for Membland Hall. Morris designed this tile panel for Membland Hall and William De Morgan executed it, De Morgan having developed the lustre and coloured glazes that the Morris firm could not fire itself. The two worked in adjacent premises for several years.
23. 1876 - Sigurd the Volsung p389 detail. William Morris's Sigurd the Volsung told of Dwarf-Rings and swords wielded by dead kings. Tolkien read it avidly while he was a student. Detail of page 389. Dated to 1876.
24. 1880 - Settee by George Jack. George Jack designed this walnut settee for Morris and Company in about 1880. Jack became the firm's chief furniture designer and is the name behind many pieces still sold under Morris's, a displacement common in the firm's later catalogue.
25. 1880 - Hall at Dawpool. The galleried hall at Dawpool in Cheshire, built about 1880 by Richard Norman Shaw and plated in Muthesius's Das englische Haus. Muthesius was sent to London by the Prussian government to study why English domestic building was ahead of Germany's.
26. 1880 - Wineglass (one of three). British, London; Wineglass; Glass. The source names Philip Webb. Dated to 1880.
27. 1882 - Brer Rabbit printed textile. Morris registered this indigo-discharge cotton in 1882, the rabbits and birds locked into a mirrored repeat around a central stem. He had spent years reviving indigo vat dyeing at Merton Abbey after rejecting the aniline colours the trade had adopted.
28. 1882 - David's Charge to Solomon. Burne-Jones designed the figures and Morris the colour and foliage of this window at Trinity Church, Boston, installed in 1882. American commissions were a substantial part of the firm's glass output in its later decades.
29. 1882 - USA Massachusetts Boston Trinity Nativity-detail-1. "The Worship of the Shepherds" window at Trinity Church, Boston, designed by Edward Burne-Jones and executed by William Morris, 1882. The source names Rebecca Kennison.
30. 1882 - USA Massachusetts Boston Trinity Nativity. 1882. The source names Rebecca Kennison.
31. 1888 - A Dream of John Ball frontispiece. Edward Burne-Jones drew this frontispiece in April 1888 for the first book edition of Morris's A Dream of John Ball, a narrative set during the 1381 English rising. Adam delves and Eve spins in the banner across the foot.
32. 1889 - Marvels and perils of the wood, in The Roots of the Mountains. Extract from William Morris's 1889 The Roots of the Mountains, describing "The marvels and perils of the wood" (page 22).
33. 1890 - Socialist League Commune anniversary poster. A Socialist League handbill for a meeting marking the Paris Commune anniversary, set in the jobbing wood and metal types of a small London printer. Morris helped found the League in 1884 and paid for its paper, Commonweal.
34. 1890 - Frederick Hollyer Burne-Jones and Morris 1890. (left) and William Morris (right) in the garden of Burne-Jones's home the Grange, Fulham, 1890.
35. 1890 - The Earthly Paradise. A Poem. @media only screen and (max-width:719px){ } html.skin-theme-clientpref-night html.skin-theme-clientpref-night @media screen and (prefers-color-scheme:dark){html.skin-theme-clientpref-os html.skin-theme-clientpref-os } The Earthly Paradise. A Poem Artist William Morris Author William Morris Title The Earthly Paradise. A Poem Object type Arts and crafts cloth book cover design Date 1890 date Dimensions 155 × (6.10 × 8.58 × 1.25 in) Collection British Library Place of creation London: Reeves and Turner, 196 Strand. 1890. Edinburgh and London: Ballantyne Press, Ballantyne, Hanson.
36. 1891 - Kelmscott Press colophon. The press mark Morris used to sign his books, a device of intertwined foliage carrying the Kelmscott name. He founded the press in 1891 in Hammersmith after a lecture by Emery Walker on letterpress printing convinced him the craft could be recovered.
37. 1891 - The wood beyond the world. Detail of the wood engraving designed by Edward Burne-Jones for the frontispiece of William Morris The wood beyond the world (Kelmscott Press, 1894). The Kelmscott Press, founded by William Morris in 1891, is probably the most influential and certainly the most famous of all private presses. Morris revived the traditional crafts of hand-printing and handmade paper in England, and took the concept of book design to a new level.
38. 1892 - The Book of the Order of Chivalry. Ramon Llull's thirteenth-century treatise, reissued by the Kelmscott Press in Caxton's English translation. Morris designed the border and the opening initial, and the type is his Golden, modelled on Nicolas Jenson's roman of 1470.
39. 1893 - Staff of the Kelmscott Press. The compositors, pressmen and Emery Walker, fourth from the left standing, who produced the Kelmscott books on hand presses. The press employed a working staff even as Morris argued publicly for craft against industrial production.
40. 1893 - Voysey House wallpaper factory. C. F. A. Voysey designed this wallpaper works at Barley Mow Passage, Chiswick, for Sanderson and Sons. The white glazed brick and grid of windows are unusually plain for an 1893 industrial building in London.
41. 1893 - East window, Rottingdean. East window, St Margaret's Church, Rottingdean, East Sussex. It was designed by Edward Burne-Jones and produced by Morris & Co. in 1893.
42. 1893 - Virgin Mary window, Rottingdean. 's parish church, Rottingdean, East Sussex. It was designed by Edward Burne-Jones and made in 1893 by Morris & Co.
43. 1894 - The Wood Beyond the World. The frontispiece and opening page face each other as a designed spread, the woodcut balanced against a bordered text block. Burne-Jones drew the figure and Morris the decoration, a division of labour the two had used since the 1860s.
44. 1894 - Justitia. Justice stands with a sword and scales in a window Burne-Jones designed and Morris and Company manufactured between 1894 and 1895. The drapery is drawn in lead lines with painted modelling kept to the faces and hands.
45. 1895 - Kelmscott Beowulf. A. J. Wyatt supplied the translation and Morris the verse rendering, decoration and type for this Kelmscott Beowulf. The double-column setting in Troy type with a foliated border shows how far Morris pushed the page as a single designed unit.
46. 1896 - Laudes Beatae Mariae Virginis. Printed in black, red and blue at the Kelmscott Press, this page of Stephen Langton's hymn uses the Troy type Morris cut after studying fifteenth-century Venetian and German models. The border and initials were drawn to sit tight against the text block rather than float around it.
47. 1896 - Kelmscott Chaucer. The Kelmscott Chaucer ran to 556 pages with 87 woodcuts after Burne-Jones, and took four years. Morris drew every border and initial himself, which is why the book is usually treated as the culminating object of the reform argument about printing.
48. 1896 - The Well at the World's End. Morris wrote the romance and then designed the book that carried it, with woodcut illustrations after Edward Burne-Jones. The Kelmscott Press printed it on handmade paper in the year Morris died.
49. 1897 - House at Castle Morton. Published in The Studio in 1897, this Voysey house shows the low horizontal roughcast walls, buttressed corners and long bands of casement windows that became his signature. He rejected historical ornament while keeping traditional materials.
50. 1897 - Fireplace at Frensham. A Voysey inglenook with built-in seating, published in The Studio. The fire surround, panelling and metalwork were designed as one, which is what distinguished the Arts and Crafts interior from a decorated room.
51. 1897 - Cottages at Elmesthorpe. Six cottages Voysey designed for the Earl of Lovelace at Elmesthorpe near Leicester. Estate cottage commissions gave Arts and Crafts architects their chance to apply the vernacular argument to housing built for wages rather than for patrons.
52. 1897 - Walnut Tree Farm garden front. The garden elevation of Voysey's Walnut Tree Farm at Castlemorton, with a roof carried low over roughcast walls and chimneys treated as the principal vertical accents.
53. 1897 - House and studio, St Dunstan's Road. Voysey's studio house in West Kensington, built for the artist W. E. F. Britten, with a broad north studio window filling most of the upper facade. It is one of the few urban buildings he completed.
54. 1897 - Tree of Jesse window, Rottingdean. 's Church, Rottingdean, East Sussex. It was produced in 1897 by Morris & Co. to designs by Edward Burne-Jones.
55. 1898 - Norney Grange, Shackleford. Norney Grange in Surrey, a listed Voysey house of 1898. The bowed bay and the sloping buttressed walls are recurring Voysey devices, used here at a domestic scale that his followers copied for four decades.
56. 1898 - David Healey Memorial Window from the Unitarian Chapel, Heywood, Lancashire, by Edward Burne-Jones and John Henry Dearle, mfr. Morris & Co, c. 1898, glass, lead- Huntington Art Museum - San Marino, CA -
57. 1900 - Blackwell, Bowness-on-Windermere. Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott's house above Windermere, completed in 1900 and plated in Das englische Haus. Baillie Scott designed the plasterwork, the glass and the fitted furniture, and the house survives with much of it in place.
58. 1900 - House at Edgerton. Edgar Wood built this house at Edgerton near Huddersfield. Wood worked out of Manchester and is the clearest English link between Arts and Crafts building and the continental Jugendstil that Muthesius was reporting on.
59. 1900 - Plan for Cold Ash. Leonard Stokes's plan for a house at Cold Ash near Newbury. Muthesius printed plans alongside elevations throughout Das englische Haus because he judged the English advance to lie in planning rather than in style.
60. 1901 - Windyhill, Kilmacolm. Charles Rennie Mackintosh built Windyhill at Kilmacolm for William Davidson in 1901, harled and almost without ornament. Muthesius reproduced it as evidence that the Scottish work was the most radical part of the British movement.
61. 1902 - Rottingdean glass 1. 's Church, Rottingdean, East Sussex. It was made in 1902 by Morris & Co. It depicts Saint Martin.
62. 1904 - Hill House plan. Mackintosh's plan for the Hill House at Helensburgh, built for the publisher Walter Blackie and finished in 1904. The L-shaped arrangement pushes the service wing back and lets every principal room face the garden.
63. 1910 - St Giles's, Wrexham glass 5. Stained-glass window in St Giles's Church, Wrexham, North Wales. It was made in 1910 by Morris & Co. from designs by Edward Burne-Jones.
64. 1910 - House at Penn. Buckinghamshire, by Charles Francis Annesley Voysey, Architect. From The Studio Yearbook 1910.
65. 1913 - Garden Corner drawing room. The drawing room at Garden Corner, Chelsea, as published in The Studio Yearbook. Voysey designed the panelling, the fitted furniture and the fireplace together, with the horizontal picture rail holding the whole room to one line.
66. 1920 - C. F. A. Voysey in the 1920s. (1857, 1941). Architect, designer. Platinum print given to the NPG 1984.
67. 1921 - War memorial window by J. Henry Dearle. John Henry Dearle designed this memorial window for Morris and Company in 1921, twenty-five years after Morris died. Dearle had joined as a shop assistant in 1878, was trained by Morris, and his designs were sold under the Morris name for decades.
68. 1927 - South Lancing glass 1. & Co. in 1927.