Poetry in Pattern: How Society Has Been Imprinted With The Legacy of William Morris

Words by Evie Brett

Artist, poet, novelist, translator, architect, designer and social activist to name a few! The titles that William Morris assumed during his lifetime (1834-1896) were countless and flourishing, and viewed today with a modern lens, several more can be added to the list, namely: revivalist of Medieval tapestry weaving and human antidote to fast-paced capitalism. What initially began as a domestic passion project among friends, quickly blossomed into, what is today, a million-dollar business whose prints adorn anything and everything from posters and pencil cases to table clothes and teapots. Yet, if we push through this burgeoning hedgerow of consumerism, at the products’ crux, still lies Morris’ lifelong-held philosophy: to create a union of art and labour, and in turn, promote the happiness and well-being of society.

William Morris by Frederick Hollyer, 1884.

Born in 1834 in Walthamstow, Essex, Morris' life began in a wealthy, middle-class family, where his father worked as a financier in London. His father died when Morris was just thirteen years old, leaving a comfortable fortune that helped to sustain his livelihood for the rest of his life, this being so even after a large portion of the inheritance was lost as a result of his father’s fragile ventures that, at times, teetered on the edge of legality. Having experienced this privilege, Morris became acutely aware of the problems that festered within society that were not caused by a shortage of money and thus could not be solved with an abundance of it, namely, the inability to find joy in the midst of working life. With this privilege also bloomed the desire to cultivate his artistic passions into a career; a joyous goal, yet one that could only logistically be possible on account of his social standing and financial freedoms.

After studying at the University of Oxford, where his volatile nature granted him the nickname ‘Topsy’ among friends, Morris took an interest in many other artistic pursuits alongside the design and printing of his patterns (for which he is most well-known for today):

Not only did he train as an architect after leaving university, but he was also a portrait painter - his favourite model being a young woman named Jane Burden whom he married in 1859 - and had a successful literary career that bloomed for the majority of his life; his first poem was published when he was twenty-four and he was still pruning his final novel ‘The Sundering Flood’ at the time of his death in 1896. His most famous written work, ‘News From Nowhere’ is a utopian story that functions as an imaginative retelling of how Morris believed society would develop. Based on Marxist principles, the story shifts the focus from profit, an ideal so prevalent within the context of the Victorian Industrial Revolution, to recognising the pure beauty of life, a notion no doubt embodied within the larkspur and acanthus of Morris’ oeuvre.

La Belle Iseult (also called Queen Guinevere) by William Morris, 1858.

Instilled with this philosophy, Morris began to create his family home in Bexleyheath in South East London, a project that proved to sow the seeds for his decorative art business Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co, which was established in 1861. In his home, known as ‘Red House’, every element was to be designed by Morris himself, alongside his friend and architect, Philip Webb, as well as a collection of other artist friends that painted mural scenes on the interior’s walls. From chairs and tables to carpets and soft furnishings, the house was a canvas decorated in Morris’ floral designs; it was both a visual protest against growing industrialisation and a celebration of the beauty that one could seek in nature. Within this project, Morris emphasised the enjoyment of craft and the satisfaction that grew from its tangible outcome. It was Morris’ guiding principle that you “should have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful” that lay at the heart of the 1861 factory. The company, whose name was colloquially referred to as ‘The Firm’, culminated as a partnership with Philip Webb, poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and painter Edward Burne-Jones, and oversaw the production of wallpapers, curtains and household furniture that was initiated within ‘Red House’, with a focus on pleasant working conditions and fair wages - a deep contrast to the horrors associated with the archetypal Victorian workhouse. As a result however, his wallpapers were more expensive than others on the market and thus were limited to customers of the middle and upper classes. In the 1870s, his printed wallpapers of scrolling foliage and undulating leaf forms began to be recommended in many domestic advice manuals and design books, including the Art at Home series (1876-1883) and, at the end of his career, Morris had produced over fifty wallpapers that flourished on the walls of middle-class homes. Following a decline in his health in his sixties, and despite travelling to seek the cleaner air of Norway, William Morris died of tuberculosis in 1896.

Larkspur wallpaper by William Morris, 1874 (left) and Acanthus wallpaper by William Morris, 1875 (right)

Today, Morris’ legacy is widely available for the everyday customer and lives on in its adornment of textiles, wallpaper and crockery, many of which can be seen and purchased at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. His death perpetuated the start of a long relationship between the artist and the museum, a key detail being the company’s commission to decorate the West Dining Room of the South Kensington Museum (renamed the V&A in 1899) which would then evolve to become known as the ‘Green Dining Room’ and today ‘The Morris Room’. I was lucky to visit said room a couple of months ago where it currently houses Kehinde Wiley’s ‘Portrait of Melissa Thompson’ among other works created by Morris himself. In his own words, Wiley takes “the DNA of Morris and build(s) upon it to create hybrids” of his own. Wiley alters the Morris designs, loosening their symmetrically and rigid structure, illustrating how designs of the nineteenth century can be modernised to suit the tastes of the twenty-first. In his designs lies not just the ageless appeal of nature’s beauty, but the ever-pertinent notion of equity that is still so wildly crucial.

The Morris Room at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Portrait of Melissa Thompson by Kehinde Wiley, 2020