William Morris
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.
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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.
Textiles Portrait of William Morris, aged 53! First published 1899 (photo c. 1887)! William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English artist, writer, textile designer and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and English Arts and Crafts Movement.
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Born in Walthamstow, Essex to a wealthy middle-class family, Morris studied Classics at Oxford University, where he came under the influence of medievalism. There he became a close friend of artist Edward Burne-Jones and joined the Birmingham Set. After university he trained as an architect, married Jane Burden, and became close friends with artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti and architect Philip Webb. Webb and Morris designed a family home, Red House in Kent, where the latter lived from 1859 to 1865, before relocating to Bloomsbury, central London. In 1861, Morris founded a decorative arts firm with BurneJones, Rossetti, Webb, and others: the Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. The firm profoundly influenced the decoration of churches and houses into the early 20th century.
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.”
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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:
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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 Handicraft
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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.
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He was also fond of hand knotted Persian carpets and advised the South Kensington Museum in the acquisition of fine Kerman carpets.
Detail of Art Needlework embroidery "Artichoke" in wool on linen