WILLIAM MORRIS

(1834-1896)
SUBMISSION BY : SNEHA PERIWAL
ROLL NO. : 23
SUBJECT : ART AND DESIGN
SEM : IXTH YEAR: VTH
 INTRODUCTION
• Born: March 24, 1834 - Walthamstow, England
• Died: October 3, 1896 - Hammersmith, England
• Movements and Styles: Arts and Crafts Movement, The Pre-
Raphaelites, Aesthetic Art.
• William Morris (1834-1896), one of the most versatile and influential
men of his age, was the last of the major English romantics and a
leading champion and promoter of revolutionary ideas as poet, critic,
artist, designer, manufacturer, and socialist.
• Training first as a priest and then as an architect before abandoning both
to realize his visions of medieval arcadia in the company of the Pre-
Raphaelites, he moved between artistic and literary media throughout
his life.
WILLIAM MORRIS
• William Morris is best known as the 19th century's most celebrated (1834-1896)
designer.
• He was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts
and methods of production.
EDUCATION

9 Oct 1848,educated at Marlborough college,

there he learned very little about architecture

25 Dec 1851,attended Forest School, here he

lived as a private pupil with the Rev. F. B. Guy,
Assistant Master. Then later to Canon of St.
Alban's, for a year to prepare him for
University.

9 Jun 1852,attended Oxford Exeter College, he

wasn't able to go till 1853 because the school
was too full, he met Edward Jones and joined
a Brotherhood group but at this college he
began to write poems
CAREER AS AN ARTIST
• After school, Morris went to Oxford University to study for the
Church.
• It was there that he met Edward Burne-Jones, who was to become
one of the era's most famous painters, and Morris's life-long friend.
Burne-Jones introduced him to a group of students who became
known as 'The Set' or 'The Brotherhood' and who enjoyed romantic
stories of medieval chivalry and self-sacrifice. They also read books
by contemporary reformers such as John Ruskin, Charles Kingsley,
and Thomas Carlyle. Belonging to this group gave Morris an
awareness of the deep divisions in modern society. It sparked his
interest in trying to create an alternative to the dehumanizing The Adoration of the Magi
industrial systems that produced poor-quality, 'unnatural' objects. William Morris
Date: 1890
• Initially producing paintings in the sweet Quattrocento style of his Style: Romanticism
Pre-Raphaelite contemporaries, most notably Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Genre: tapestry, religious painting
• On graduating in 1856, Morris and Burne-Jones moved to London: Location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Burne-Jones to work as a painter and designer of stained-glass,
Morris to become an architect, a change of direction that was badly
received by his family.
•  In 1857, Morris, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones returned to Oxford to
paint murals on the walls of the Union Library. The same year, Morris
met Jane Burden, a beautiful, working-class girl who began to model
for his and Rossetti's paintings.
LA BELLE ISEULT – PAINTING BY MORRIS
• This is the only completed easel painting that William Morris
produced.
• It is a portrait of Jane Burden, Morris's soon-to-be wife, and it
is believed that he started work on it very early during their
courtship. It was assumed to represent Iseult mourning
Tristram's exile from the court of King Mark.
• The story of Tristram and Iseult (Tristan and Isolde) is a legend
of Celtic origin made famous during the medieval period by
the treatment of Thomas Mallory, on which Morris based his
composition.
• Iseult appears to have recently arisen from her bed, where a
small greyhound lies curled up among the crumpled sheets.
She stands wistfully in her small chamber, her feelings for
Tristram reinforced by the sprigs of rosemary, symbolizing
remembrance, in her crown, and the word 'DOLOURS' (grief)
La Belle Iseult written down the side of her mirror.
William Morris • The narrative of doomed lovers contains all the aspects of
Date: 1858 Medieval romance - thwarted desire, virtue, honor, chivalry -
Style: Romanticism that attracted the Pre-Raphaelites to the literature and art of
Genre: literary painting the period.
In the scene depicted, Iseult is mourning the exile of Tristram - a
knight sent to fetch her from Ireland to marry King Mark of
Cornwall, only for the two to fall in love en route - from her
husband's court
 RED HOUSE,UPTON (1859)
• Morris fell in love with Jane Burden, and by 1859 they were married.
• Around this period, Morris's creative imagination was leading him beyond painting. He was interested in how
the aesthetics and ethics of the Pre-Raphaelites - a love of nature, medieval aesthetics and Gothic
architecture, a hatred of mechanization - might be applied across a wide range of artforms and applied crafts.
• At the same time, the artist yearned for a home outside the city in which he could raise a family. These
ambitions converged in the design of "Red House", completed in 1860 in collaboration with the Gothic
architect Philip Webb. 
 RED HOUSE,UPTON (1859)
• Red House is an architectural masterpiece, encapsulating what became known as the Arts and Crafts aesthetic.
• Its sloping gabled roofs, painted brick fireplaces, and rambling cottage garden epitomized the new paradigm of
beauty which the Pre-Raphaelites had defined in their paintings, but realized those ideals in three dimensions:
this, in a nutshell, defined the Arts and Crafts philosophy.
• Situated close to London, Red House would become the country get-away of Morris's artistic acquaintances for
the next five years.
• After the house was built, Morris and his friends decided to decorate the interiors themselves, establishing
through creative collaboration many of the principles of Arts-and-Crafts interior design. Burne-Jones designed the
stained-glass windows, while Morris created the murals with help from Rossetti and other members of the wider
Pre-Raphaelite circle.
RED HOUSE,UPTON (1859)
• Wall paintings and stained glass by Edward Burne-Jones while Morris created the murals with help
from Rossetti and other members of the wider Pre-Raphaelite circle.
• steep roofs, prominent chimneys, cross gables, and exposed-beam ceilings .
• L shape plan
• Gardens incorporated as part of the house
INSPIRATIONS OF MORRIS DESIGNS
DILIGENT STUDY OF NATURE AND STUDY OF THE
WORK OF THE AGES OF ART:
• The creative approach that William Morris
employed in his designs was revealed in a lecture
from 1874: 'first, diligent study of Nature and
secondly, study of the work of the ages of Art'.
• Morris felt that the 'diligent study of Nature' was
important, as nature was the perfect example of
God's design.
• The 'study of the work of the ages of Art', a
reference to the appreciation of art history, was
equally important as Morris encouraged artists to
look to the past for their inspiration believing that
the art of his own age was inferior. Morris felt
that this would enhance the quality of life for all,
and that artistic activity itself would be seen as a
force for good in society.
WILLIAM MORRIS (1834-1896)
'Windrush' 1881-83
(pencil and watercolour sketch for textile design)
PATTERNS INSPIRED FROM NATURE
• Morris is best known for his pattern designs
which look to nature for their inspiration
• His classic designs are still commercially available
as wallpapers and textiles. They were usually
titled with the names of the flowers that they
depicted such as 'Chrysanthemum', 'Jasmine',
'Acanthus', an d 'Sunflower'. 
• Morris' design for 'Trellis', his first attempt at a
wallpaper design, was based on roses growing
over trellises in the garden at the Red House, his
classic Arts and Crafts Movement home, at
'Trellis' 1862 (pencil and watercolour sketch
Bexleyheath in Kent. for wallpaper design)

The pattern shows a medieval influence as it is recalls

the ornamental decoration to be found on
illuminated manuscripts and tapestries. WILLIAM MORRIS
(1834-1896)
'Trellis', 1862
'Trellis' was one of Morris' favourite designs and he (wallpaper
chose it to decorate his bedroom at Kelmscott design)
House in London where he spent his final years.
 THE COMPANY(1860)
• Around 1860s, Morris began to focus his attention on the wallpaper and textile designs which made him
famous, some of which still survive in the red house.
• This collaborative effort led to the founding of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in  1861, known as 'The Firm',
an art and design company that championed hand-craftsmanship and traditional techniques with a strongly
medievalist aesthetic. Members included Rossetti, Webb, and Burne-Jones, as well as P.P. Marshall, Charles
Faulkner, and Ford Madox Brown. Firm focused on  "Fine Art Workmen in Painting, Carving, Furniture and the
Metals“.
• 1862-1867,Morris designs the first of his wallpapers for the Company the firm's medieval-inspired aesthetic
and respect for hand-craftsmanship and traditional textile arts had a profound influence on the decoration of
churches and houses into the early 20th century.and  

A Morris & Co. stained

glass window to a This Green Dining Room (also knonw as the Morris Room)
design by Edward is one of three refreshment rooms created for the South
Burne-Jones installed in Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert
Malmesbury Abbey. Museum) during the 1860s. A commissioned work for “the
firm”.
 THE COMPANY
• However while facing both marital issues and
financial issues morris had to give up red house .
Morris took solace in hard work and metered verse,
and by the 1860s he had become one of the most
famous poets in England publishes poetry including
The Life and Death of Jason and The Earthly Paradise.

• Later on 10 Oct 1875, Morris dissolved The Firm and

set up Morris & Co, a company that continued The Pond at Merton Abbey by Lexden Lewis Pocock is an
trading for almost 50 years after his death. idyllic representation of the works in the time of William
Morris in Morris and co.

William morris company workers

Have nothing in your house that
you do not know to be useful, or
believe to be beautiful.
- William Morris
TEXTILE AND TAPESTRY DESIGNS
• The first textile designs Morris made were created in the 1860s. and were for embroideries, expressing his
interest in medieval arts and crafts, particularly the medieval wall hangings that he admired as a child. In a
collection off essays by members of the Arts and Crafts movement published in 1893, he wrote that one of the
aims of embroidery should be simply "The exhibition of beautiful material. 
• One of his designs in this historical style, stitched by Jane Morris, won the Morris company an award in an
international competition in 1862. Morris and his workshop began making embroideries for the households of
his friends as well as larger panels for some of the many new churches being constructed in England.
• Morris explained his ideas about textile designs in a group of essays by members of the Arts and Crafts
movement published in 1893. In his essay on textiles, Morris wrote: "The aim should be to combine clearness
of form and firmness of structure with the mystery which comes of abundance and richness of detail...Do not
introduce any lines or objects which cannot be explained by the structure of the pattern; it is just this logical
sequence of form, this growth which looks as if, under the circumstances, it could not have been otherwise,
which prevents he eye wearying of he repetition of the pattern.
• In the same group of 1893 essays, he expressed his views of
tapestry designs. He wrote: "As in all wall decoration, the
first thing to be considered in 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 Medieval Art.  
 TEXTILE AND TAPESTRY DESIGN

Strawberry Thief design (1883) (Victoria and

Albert Museum)
One of the best known of Morris's decorative
textile designs.The pattern, meanwhile, was
Daisy wall hanging by William based on the thrushes that would steal
Tulip and willow design
and Jane Morris for Kelmscott strawberries from the kitchen in his country
(Designed 1873)
Manor (1860) home at Kelmscott Manner

• During his lifetime, Morris produced items in a range of crafts, mainly those to do with furnishing, including over
600 designs for wall-paper, textiles, and embroideries, over 150 for stained glass windows, three typefaces, and
around 650 borders and ornamentations for the Kelmscott Press.
• In the field of textile design, Morris revived a number of dead techniques , and insisted on the use of good quality
raw materials, almost all natural dyes, and hand processing. He also observed the natural world first hand to gain a
basis for his designs, and insisted on learning the techniques of production prior to producing a design.
ARTS AND CRAFT MOVEMENT
William Morris is often seen as the grandfather of the
international Arts and Crafts Movement. In an era of
increasing industrialism and urbanization, he embraced an
idealized vision of the artisanship and cottage industries of
the Middle Ages.
• William Morris believed people should be surrounded by
beautiful, well-made things. This vision inspired the
emergence of the Arts and Crafts movement in the
1860s.
• Morris's lectures and essays on art and his rediscovery of
traditional craft techniques helped spread the Art and craft movement examole reflecting pre raphelite
movement, as did the decorative designs and products featutres
from his company: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
• From a series of notable homes—the Red House, Upton,
Kent; Kelmscott Manor on the upper Thames; and
Kelmscott House, Morris's London house from 1878—he
carried on a prodigious activity as a public speaker,
member of committees and radical organizations, and
leader of the Arts and Craft movement.
• He founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient
Buildings in 1877 and the Kelmscott press in 1890.
The red house an inspiration of art and craft movement
ARTS AND CRAFT MOVEMENT
• The Arts and Crafts Movement (1850-1900) was a reaction
against the Industrial Revolution.
• The 'dark Satanic mills' of the Industrial Revolution .
• The members of the Arts and Crafts Movement included artists,
architects, designers, craftsmen and writers. They feared that
industrialization was destroying the environment in which
traditional skills and crafts could prosper, as machine production
had taken the pride, skill and design out of the quality of goods
being manufactured.
• Characteristics of the Arts and Crafts movement are :
 A belief in craftsmanship which stresses the inherent beauty of The entrance hall at Wightwick Manor
the material. incorporated many Art and Crafts elements
 The importance of nature as inspiration including Morris designed fabric on the wing
chair.
 The value of simplicity, utility, and beauty.
 The movement often promoted reform as part of its philosophy
and advanced the idea of the designer as craftsman.
• For Morris art was the very highest of realities, the spontaneous
expression of the pleasure of life innate in the whole people. 

• WIGHTWICK MANOR - a house built and furnished under the

influence of the arts and crafts movement.
THE MEDIEVAL CRAFTS GUILD THE CENTURY GUILD
• The medieval crafts guilds were groups of artists, • The Century Guild was the first of the craft
architects, and craftsmen who formed an alliance
to maintain high standards of workmanship,
guilds to form. It was founded in 1882, under
regulate trade and competition, and protect the the influence of William Morris, by the
secrets of their crafts. architect and designer A.H. Mackmurdo.
• The guilds were usually composed of smaller • In 1884 the guild published a quarterly
workshops of associated crafts from the same journal called 'Hobby Horse' to promote their
town who banded together into larger groups for aims and ideals. In particular, they
their own protection and prosperity.  championed the craft of printing as an art
form which inspired Morris to found the
Kelmscott Press.

WILLIAM MORRIS
(1834-1896)
'African
Marigold', 1876 The Journal of the
(pencil and Century Guild
watercolour Hobby Horse
sketch for textile (Edition No1,
design). April 1884)
LITERALLY CAREER
• While Morris spent a majority of his life as an architect and working with textile designs, he was also a writer. He
wrote fiction, poetry and translated several ancient and medieval texts into English.
• Morris's literary career had commenced at Oxford, where he wrote prose romances for the Oxford and
Cambridge Magazine. 
• His fame was confined to a small circle of admirers until The Earthy Paradise (3 vols., 1868-1870) established him
as a major romantic poet. He chose the device of legendary poems from classical and medieval sources recited
by Norwegian seamen who had sailed westward to find the earthly paradise.
• In 1868 Morris took up the study of Icelandic, published a translation of the Grettis Saga with the assistance of
Eiríkr Magnússon (1869), and visited Iceland in 1871 and 1873.
• Morris also translated The Aeneids (sic; 1875), the Odyssey (1887), Beowulf (1895), and Old French
Romances (1896). He regarded as his finest literary achievement Sigurd the Volsung, and Fall of the
Niblungs (1876), his own retelling in verse of the Icelandic prose Volsunga saga, a version J. W. Mackail (1899)
described as "the most Homeric poem which has been written since Homer.“
• When it came to prose, Morris wrote a lot of fantasy fiction,
mainly novels. These novels were The Wood Beyond the
World and The Well at the World’s End. These novels served
as inspirations for many authors in the later part of the 1900s.
• Many modern authors were heavily inspired by Morris’s
works. C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia is said to have
been drawn from The Wood Beyond the World. J. R. R. Tolkien
also admitted having been influenced by Morris’s

The Wood Beyond the World

 KLEMSCOTT PRESS
• Produced high quality hand-printed books to be seen
and cherished as objects d'art .
• Ran for seven years and closed in 1898, two years after
the death of Morris .
• One of his final attempts to preserve the old
relationships between the artist and his art and his
society
• Founded in 1891
WILLIAM MORRIS
• Never a financial success as their beautifully hand- (1834-1896)
crafted books were too expensive to Morris and Co. 'Typefaces', 1897
Exhibition catalogue. London: The Fine produce at a (printed page)
profit Art Society with Haslam & Whiteway Ltd., 1979.
• 'I began printing books with the hope of producing
some which would have a definite claim to beauty, while
at the same time they should be easy to read and
should not dazzle the eye......I found I had to consider WILLIAM MORRIS
(1834-1896)
chiefly the following things: the paper, the form of the 'The Nature of Gothic'
type, the relative spacing of the letters, the words, and Kelmscott Press 1892
the lines; and lastly the position of the printed matter on (Title Page from 'The
Stones of Venice' by
the page'.- WILLIAM MORRIS. John Ruskin)
 SOCIALIST / POLITICAL CAREER
• 10 Oct 1883, Morris had become a socialist after becoming
disillusioned with Gladstone's Liberal Government.
• Morris joined the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) and
began contributing articles to its journal Justice. was soon
in dispute with the party leader, H. H. Hyndman. Morris
shared Hyndman's Marxist beliefs, but objected to
Hyndman's nationalism and the dictatorial methods he
used to run the party.
• 1884-1890, Publishes Art and Socialism and A Summary of
the Principles of Socialism.
• In December 1884, Morris founded the Socialist League
 (SL) with other SDF defectors and Becomes deeply
involved in political activism,
• and is arrested in connection with free speech
demonstrations.
• Morris was passionate in denouncing the "bullying and the cover of the Socialist League's
hectoring" that he felt socialists faced from the police, and manifesto of 1885 featured art by
on one occasion was arrested
. after fighting back against a Morris
police officer; a magistrate dismissed the charges
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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william-morris
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