Event category: Exhibition

Frank Brangwyn (1857 to 1956) was one of the founders of the William Morris Gallery. Read more about him here.

This exhibition features work collected by the Welsh artist.

Image: Frank Brangwyn with evacuee children at Ditchling

Founded in 1988, The Friends of William Morris Gallery help to maintain the high standards of the gallery.

This exhibition celebrates a decade of its support.

Join The Friends of William Morris Gallery.

Painter and designer Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833 to 1898) became good friends with William Morris at Oxford University.

In 1861, Burne-Jones was one of the six partners Morris worked with to found Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co, which would go on to become Morris & Co. He designed a wide range of items including ceramic tiles and tapestries.

Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell and his wife Margaret commissioned a frieze in five parts for the dining room of Rounton Grange, Northallerton, Yorkshire. The panels depict the story of The Romaunt of the Rose by Geoffrey Chaucer and were based on original pictures drawn by Burne-Jones. The exquisite embroidery was executed by the wife and daughter of Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, Margaret Bell and Florence Johnson, respectively.

Image shows Edward Coley Burne-Jones and William Morris.

Christopher Whall (1849 to 1924) was a British artist and important figure in the history of stained glass in 19th and 20th century Europe.

This exhibition celebrates his work.

Image: Adam and Eve Before God by Christopher Whall.

William Morris pioneered a new and refreshing approach to design and manufacture, championing hand craftsmanship during a time in British history when industrial mass-production was at its peak.

This exhibition shines a spotlight on Morris’s innovative and timeless designs, which continue to be produced today.

Image shows a sample of Strawberry Thief printed cotton.

In 1935, artist and former apprentice to William Morris Frank Brangwyn, signed a trust deed with the then Walthamstow Borough Council to set up William Morris Gallery.

‘The William Morris Gallery and Brangwyn Gift’ opened to the public in October 1950. This exhibition celebrates the gallery’s first half century of bringing the work of Morris, and the people who worked with him and have been inspired by him, to the public.

The Century Guild was an influential association of artists, designers and craftspeople, established by architect and designer Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo (1851 to 1942.) His work features in this exhibition alongside the work of poet, architect, typographer and designer, Herbert Horne (1864 to 1916.)

In 1896 Morris invited Frederick Henry Evans (1853-1943) to photograph Kelmscott Manor, his country home in Oxfordshire. Morris and his wife Jane shared the house with the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti from 1871 to 1874, and it remained a country retreat for Morris and the artists and intellectuals in his circle until his death in 1896.

In 1895, Edmund Hort New (1871-1931) was invited to Kelmscott Manor and went on to provide design work for Morris’s Kelmscott Press.

This exhibition shows work from both men capturing Morris’s home.

Image: Kelmscott Manor by EH New.

An exhibition about Frank Brangwyn’s designs for the Rockerfeller Center and other works.

Find out more about Frank Brangwyn and his role in the founding of William Morris Gallery.

Image: Frank Brangwyn in his studio.

Architect and designer Philip Webb (1831 to 1915) was sometimes known as the Father of Arts and Crafts Architecture. He was a champion of “the art of common building” and a business partner of William Morris. This exhibition celebrates their work.

This exhibition explores the relationship between William Morris and Thomas Wardle and their experimentation with natural dyes and printing techniques and how their interest in colour led them to the textiles of India.

Thomas Wardle, who lived from 1831 to 1909, owned a family silk dyeing business and in 1897 Queen Victoria gave him a knighthood for his services to the silk industry. His collaboration with William Morris, famously known as leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement, flourished into a friendship that lasted until Morris’ death in 1896

The centrepiece of the exhibition at the library is the magnificent Peacock and Bird carpet, donated to the Gallery in 2010 by The Monument Trust.

Distributed is an installation of everyday objects in public buildings around Waltham Forest, including The Mall, Priory Court housing estate, shops along Hoe Street and the William Morris Gallery. These beautiful and functional door sculptures will activate a dialogue with the local community and explore our relationship with the urban environment that surrounds us.

Distributed is a new public art project for Frieze Projects East, and has been commissioned by CREATE and The London 2012 Festival. This series aims to bring the best artists to east London in 2012 by working with each of the six Olympic host boroughs.

‘Consumerism is very lazy. It’s a sort of sugar rush, like eating sweets… Luxury goods are dangled in front of us because people can make money out of them, not because they give any lasting satisfaction.’

On 2 December 2003, Grayson Perry (born 1960) accepted the coveted Turner Prize wearing a lilac babydoll dress. Equally famous for his ceramics and his cross-dressing, he became a celebrity overnight. A self-confessed lover of ‘beautiful things’, his work delights in the possibilities of the decorative surface. Colour, texture and pattern are all used to attract the eye and draw us in. The power of his work lies in the deliberate clash between form and content – between beautiful objects and the challenging, often disturbing subject matter they address.

This exhibition features one of Perry’s most powerful works, a vast tapestry (3m x 15m) exploring the impact of branding and advertising on our everyday lives. Chronicling man’s passage from birth to death ‘via the shops’, Perry captures all the humdrum details of our daily lives. His exploration of the corrosive powers of consumerism throws up some interesting parallels with William Morris, who expressed similar ideas over a century earlier. Both also share a connection to the Walthamstow area, where Perry has had his studio for many years.

With insightful contributions from the artist himself, the exhibition will explore the motivation and inspiration behind the creation of the Walthamstow Tapestry.  In a world where it is seemingly impossible to escape the power of advertising, this work encourages us to consider the feelings and emotions that different brands evoke in our own lives.

Image shows detail from The Walthamstow Tapestry © Grayson Perry

Photographer Paul Tucker captures fleeting moments of the William Morris Gallery in transition, the Forest Poets create new work inspired by objects from the gallery’s collection, and printmaker Anna Alcock displays her winning cover design for this year’s E17 Trail Guide.

Image: Anna Alcock

‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful’

In this famous statement, William Morris summed up his belief that art should be part of our everyday lives. He argued that well-designed and expertly-crafted objects could lift the spirit, and inspire both the maker and the eventual owner. Functional items could be made to carry stories and tell tales that enrich daily life. By slowing down and not taking the ‘everyday’ for granted, we can see and experience new things.

Today’s designers and makers continue to explore the role of craft. The William Morris Gallery invited members of the Society of Designer Craftsmen to create new work in response to Morris’s rallying call. This exhibition brings together an extraordinary range of objects which explore the potential of materials, decoration and narrative.

The Society of Designer Craftsmen is a multi-disciplinary society with roots stretching back to the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society.  Twenty-eight members have been shortlisted for this exhibition to present textiles, ceramics, mixed media, metal work and the book arts. They range from the Society’s most prominent names to individuals just starting out in their careers.

List of exhibiting artist: Adam Aaronson (glass), Judith Battersby (ceramics), Amy Cooper (ceramics), Sara Fell (glass and precious metals), Jenny Ford (textiles), Kirsten Glasbrook (textiles), Marion Hewitt (glass), Simon Jewell (furniture), Debbie Lyddon (textiles), Armando Magnino (furniture), Peter Moss (ceramics), Amarjeet Nandra (textiles),  Sandra Owens (ceramics), Sumi Perera (book art), Caroline Rees (glass), Niru Reid (textiles), Sally Reilly (ceramics), Rosalind Roberts (mixed media), Waring Robinson (furniture), Pam Schomberg (ceramics), Diana Springall (textiles), Kate Standen (ceramics), Teresa Strachan (textiles), Sass Tetzlaff (textiles), Susie Vickery (textiles), Jeanne Werge-Hartley (metalwork), Molly Williams (textiles), Stephanie Wright (ceramics)

Image: Nacre by Judith Battersby

The delicate ceramic milk bottles on display in the Tea Room carry a strong message. They represent one of the most infamous government cuts of the 1970s: the withdrawal of free milk from schools.

The bottles are inscribed with people’s personal views about the cuts, drawing parallels with the present day. The bottles are made by Raewyn Harrison, who lives and works in Waltham Forest.

David Bailey’s iconic photographs immortalised 1960s London. When he turned his camera east, he photographed the part of London he grew up in. As he expressed it recently, ‘London’s East End is in my DNA’.

This exhibition brings together intimate portraits of the characters, faces and streetscapes he encountered in the East End during the 1960s.

Image: David Bailey

In this series of paintings, David Mabb champions the history of political protest by bringing together slogans from recent and historical demonstrations. Removed from their context and framed in Morris & Co fabrics, this exhibition presents an opportunity to experience their messages afresh. On display in the Discovery Lounge.

Winner of the 2010 Inspired by Morris group show, Nicola Jarvis returns to the William Morris Gallery with a solo exhibition. A hand-embroidery specialist, Jarvis’s new work includes works on paper and textiles created in dialogue with the techniques and ideas championed by William Morris’s daughter, May Morris. Jarvis’s work will be exhibited alongside rarely seen archive materials offering refreshing new perspectives on May Morris’s career.

Lizzie Hughes’s diverse practice includes installation, video, sound works and performance

Working with the gallery’s archive, Hughes will investigate William Morris’s tireless pursuit of learning and enter into a dialogue with the local community. The amateur interests Hughes as someone often undertaking a solitary pursuit, an autodidact who finds unorthodox and innovative ways to solve problems. The residency will include a public event for amateur craftspeople to contribute to a lasting record of the residency.

Biomedical artifacts such as notes, scans and surgeons’ theatre drawings, are superimposed onto patients’ portraits, forcing a critical reflection on the patient’s and surgeon’s vision of each other. This exhibition is the result of a collaborative project at Whipps Cross University Hospital between Emma Barnard Artist in Residence and Michael Papesch Consultant Surgeon.

The Patient as Paper project is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

On display in the Discovery Lounge.

Living in North East London, the highly skilled designers and makers featured in this exhibition work in all kinds of spaces from tiny garden sheds to kitchen tables and railway arches, yet sell their wares in some of London’s grandest stores. Nicola Tree photographed them in the process of making, capturing the emotion, ritual and intricacy of their craft.

This exhibition will be held in the Tea room and Discovery Lounge.

The acclaimed British fashion designer is known for his extravagant, evocative designs. His sources of inspiration range from pop culture to William Morris and William De Morgan. This exhibition tells the story of one of his latest catwalk creations; from the first concept through to the choice and manufacture of materials and the art of making.

The work was produced during a week long creative project at the gallery, learning digital photography and Photoshop skills and then working in the studio with local artist Errol Reuben Fernandes.

The William Morris Gallery’s Young People’s Programme provides art and craft activities, events and learning experiences for young people aged 16 to 22 free of charge. The programme is curated by the Waltham Forest Young Advisors in partnership with the William Morris Gallery.

An exhibition in the Discovery Lounge.

Contemporary double of Jane Morris, Dutch artist Margje Bijl, shows a series of self-portraits, staged and photographed in William and Jane Morris’s former homes. Referring back to Jane’s life story, Margje Bijl makes Jane’s environment her own. The exhibition marks the centenary of Jane’s death in January 1914. See more of Margje’s work on her website: www.reflectionsonjanemorris.com

An exhibition in the Discovery Lounge.

Taking inspiration from Celtic art patterns and lettering forms, calligrapher Diana Furlong shows two contrasting series of artwork. Furlong uses scale by zooming in and out to differentiate between modern and traditional gilding and illumination skills.

This exhibition is held in the Tea Room as part of the E17 Art Trail.

A philanthropic organisation founded in the UK during the late 1800s, the Association’s main objective was to train working class men and boys from rural areas. The trainees would learn crafts that had once flourished but were close to extinction, thus providing them with a worthy pastime and means of earning a living. At the time blacksmithing was still a thriving trade, however today it is estimated that there are only 2,000 blacksmiths working professionally in the UK.

The sculptures on display, a set of potentially functional hinges, take their form from the psychological tests devised in the 1920’s by Hermann Rorschach. The tests exploit the human desire to find form in pattern and abstraction. The main title of the work is taken from a review of Morris’ work which featured in the 1899 annual exhibition held by the Arts and Crafts Exhibition. The critic suggested that the skilfully subdued tones of Morris’ tapestries and carpets were similar to the colours of historic textiles, faded over hundreds of years; “…a Morris tapestry, if it survive for three hundred years, will be but a ghost of a ghost”.

For Hughes, the phrase “ghost of a ghost” echoed her own response to a potentially beautiful door hinge concealed under decades of paint in the Gallery’s Learning Centre. Hughes has spent the last twelve months studying blacksmithing and is conscious that ironmongery, once considered highly decorative, is becoming increasingly invisible. The scultpures simultaneously draw attention to quality craftsmanship hidden all around us and pay homage to the dedicated group of blacksmiths both amateur and professional who are keeping this ancient tradition alive.

The artist would like to thank Richard Pace and Neil Stuart of Design Blacksmith

This exhibition takes place in the Story Lounge.

Morris and the Amateur Craftsman: slideshow of research from Lizzie Hughes’s residency

During her residency, Lizzie researched the notion of the amateur craftsman in relation to Morris’s legacy. The slideshow juxtaposes images that Lizzie discovered in the archives of the Gallery alongside images of craftwork produced locally by people who contributed to a study day at the gallery in November 2013.

William Morris Gallery Artist in Residence programme

Lizzie Hughes lives and works in Leytonstone. The Artist in Residence programme is open to artists who live or work in Waltham Forest. Shortlisting takes place annually in January.

About Lucille Junkere

Lucille Junkere is a textile artist and dyer. Her work combines millinery skills perfected at the London College of Fashion with the fluid character of machine embroidery. She is concerned with the social and environmental impact of the textile industry and uses textile waste, water based inks, natural fibres and dyes in her work.

In the Caribbean, Lucille researched the loss of textile traditions through colonialism. She then started a deeper exploration of her own cultural ancestry through the history and use of indigo dye. Her residency at the gallery is part of her personal and artistic journey.

About the residency

During her residency Lucille will focus on the relationship between William Morris, Thomas Wardle and indigo, their skill in mastering the complexity of the indigo dye vat, their descriptions of the dye process and their meticulous artistic approach to documenting their samples and dye experiments.

Lucille has called her residency All Blues inspired by the title of a track from the album Kind of Blue by Miles Davies. The lyrics and melody capture the beauty and complex, painful history surrounding natural indigo dye. Blues music was the spiritual connection between the indigo plant, grown in many southern American slave plantations, and the West African slaves who sang of their suffering as they worked on the cotton that the indigo dyed. These songs became known as “the Blues”.

Having worked in late 1970s New York as Ralph Gibson’s assistant as well as  assisting Mary Ellen Mark and Robert Mapplethorpe, Deborah Baker’s work now resides much closer to home. Her ongoing series In Paradiso has developed alongside the planting of her woodland garden, which Baker designed and established over the last eight years. Many of the plants are rare and unusual. She continually photographs the area to capture the metamorphosis of their growth and development in the garden.

Challenging clichéd representations of plants, Baker’s photographs are beautiful, richly coloured, sensuous, and otherworldly. Each image captures the varied conditions of light and time of day to depict the cycle of growth and decay. In the final stages of image development, Barker uses digital montage and layering techniques to increase perception of space and create intense visual resonance.

Baker gives each image a hybrid title created from fragments of the names of the actual plants photographed, which are recognisable and purposely disordered in their representation.

An exhibition in the Discovery Lounge and Tea Room.

Image: Deborah Baker.

The exhibition features prints created under the expert guidance of Mr Smith’s Letterpress Workshop.

The prints form a quote taken from William Morris’s Art & Socialism, delivered first as a lecture and then published in a pamphlet in 1884:

“It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall he worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do; and which should he done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious.”

Mr Smith’s Letterpress Workshop

Mr Smith’s Letterpress Workshop is run by Kelvyn Laurence Smith, who creates beautifully crafted contemporary printed matter using traditional wood and metal type. From limited edition artworks to a range of commercial commissions for British Airways, Marks & Spencer and Pret A Manger, Mr Smith’s Letterpress Workshop was set up following a career teaching graphic design at art institutions across the UK.

The gallery got the chance to host Mr Smith after winning the public voting stage of Connect10, a competition that teams up museums with contemporary artists to run an event during Museums at Night.

This exhibition takes place in the Story Lounge.

For Jeremy Deller, William Morris’s art and politics are inseparable, both being expressions of his rage against the excesses and iniquities of Victorian Britain.

In English Magic, the Turner Prize-winning artist brings Morris “back from the dead”, encouraging us to turn the mirror on ourselves and ask questions of the society in which we live.

English Magic was commissioned by the British Council for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2013. The UK tour of the exhibition is supported by the Art Fund – the national fundraising charity for art.

The tour is the first of its kind and will enable audiences across the country to see the exhibition at the William Morris Gallery, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery and Turner Contemporary, Margate in 2014.

Image: We sit starving amidst our gold, painted by Stuart Sam Hughes, 2013. © Cristiano Corte

At the start of World War 1, more than a million Belgian refugees fled the advancing armies, seeking sanctuary abroad. Around 250,000 made it to England – one of the largest groups of refugees in British history – and found a sympathetic welcome. Local relief committees formed all over the country, raising funds to sustain them during their time in exile.

The exhibition takes its title from a poster designed by Frank Brangwyn (1867-1956) for the Belgian & Allies Aid League. “Will you help these sufferers from the war to start a new home”, it asks. “Help is better than sympathy.”

Bruges-born Brangwyn, already a well-known and successful artist before 1914, became a prolific poster-maker during the war and his designs became synonymous with First World War propaganda. Many present the horrors of the war, while others aim to recruit soldiers and vilify the enemy.  One propaganda poster in particular was so violent that the German Kaiser allegedly put a price on Brangwyn’s head.

Help is Better Than Sympathy presents some of Brangwyn’s best known posters, including ‘The Retreat from Antwerp’, alongside lesser known work. Shown together they offer an opportunity to examine Brangwyn’s attitude to the First World War, and the Belgian refugees in particular, using the gallery’s rich collection.

Find out more about Frank Brangwyn by exploring the Frank Brangwyn permanent exhibition or by browsing the collection online.

The exhibition is kindly supported by Farrow & Ball’s Islington showroom and the Heritage Lottery Fund

Both shows focus on Brangwyn’s concern for Belgium, and the powerful propgaganda posters the artist created to support the war effort.

The Belgian & Allies Aid League poster and the Rebuilding of Belgium poster highlight the little known story of Belgian refugees in Britain.

Image: David Brangwyn, William Morris Gallery.

Find our more about Help is Better Than Sympathy: Frank Brangwyn and the First World War here.

Jane Morris (née Burden, 1839-1914) was the wife of William Morris, and the favoured model of Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882).

In his maturity, Rossetti drew and painted Jane with an obsessional intensity and she was cast in many literary and mythological roles, including Dante’s Beatrice, Pandora, Proserpine and Astarte.

Whether in direct or symbolic guise, Jane’s features are depicted with a sombre intensity that offer a glimpse into Rossetti’s troubled soul. The exhibition, marking the centenary of Jane’s death, brings together compelling and rarely seen drawings and pastel studies of Jane by Rossetti, shown with images of Jane as herself, and explores her life and interests beyond modelling.

Jane was a talented embroiderer, linguist and musician and played a role in the family business Morris & Co. The recent publication of her letters (The Collected Letters of Jane Morris, edited by Jan Marsh and Frank C. Sharp, 2012), gives an unparalleled insight into her interests and personality, balancing the sullen and silent impression that Rossetti’s paintings have immortalised.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the leading member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His depictions of Jane Morris ensured that her face became the iconic image of Pre-Raphaelite womanhood.

A touring exhibition in partnership with Bradford Museums and Galleries.

The exhibition is kindly supported by Farrow & Ball’s Islington Showroom.

Image: detail of painted portrait of Jane Morris, Bradford Museums and Gallery.

Each work in Tangled Yarns examines a different episode in the cotton trade’s complex – and often brutal – history, combining found fabrics with painting, stitch or print. Using both narrative and more abstract approaches, Alke Schmidt reveals how the trade is intertwined with issues of race and gender, exploitation and violence.

The earliest story is that of the violent campaign by English weavers against imported Indian cotton in the early 18th century, when gangs attacked women wearing patterned cotton gowns or petticoats. Elsewhere, classic William Morris prints have been subverted to remind us how Morris & Co, through its supply chain, was linked to the cotton mills of 19th century Lancashire. Recent events explored by Schmidt include the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building, which killed 1,138 Bangladeshi garment workers.

Each piece incorporates a different fabric, chosen for its association with the story being told and used as a canvas, sculptural medium or object in itself.

Schmidt deliberately cultivates the tension between the works’ provocative subject matter and their delicate, often decorative, appearance.

Rather than presenting a definitive political statement, she invites us to consider the contradictions and ambiguities of a trade that spans centuries, and every part of the globe.

The exhibition and associated educational programme is kindly supported by Arts Council England.

Special thanks to Morris & Co for supplying fabrics used in the show.

The work was developed at the gallery in August 2014 and involved exploration of Alke Schmidt’s art work from the exhibition Tangled Yarns and William Morris’s interest in employment rights.

This exhibition will take place in the Discovery Lounge.

The Victorian age, the legacy of Empire and the global textile trade are central themes in the work of Yinka Shonibare.

In this new exhibition, the internationally acclaimed British Nigerian artist turns his attention to William Morris. By inviting Waltham Forest residents to help recreate photographs of Morris’s family, he encourages viewers to reflect on the realities of equality in both Morris’s time and our own.

The free exhibition will be accompanied by an extensive education and events programme.

Image copyright the artist. Courtesy of the artist, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and The Church of England Record Centre. Commissioned by William Morris Gallery.

This exhibition is the result of textile artist Lucille Junkere’s residency at the gallery.

All Blues examines the complex, often painful, history of indigo dye. On display is a sample book documenting Junkere’s artistic journey into this complex and culturally significant colour.

This exhibition takes place in the Discovery Lounge.

With words like ‘twerk’ and ‘selfie’ making entries for the Oxford English Dictionary it is clear that textspeak has moved beyond the confinement of a computer screen. In a series of etchings and floral tributes, Adam Hogarth considers the impact on the English language.

An exhibition in the Discovery Lounge and Tea Room.

William Morris and Russian artist El Lissitzky both wanted to change people’s lives through their art. While Morris saw beauty in the past, Lissitzky sought a new visual language for the future.

In this work, British artist David Mabb celebrates the utopian ideas of these two men through their seminal book designs: Morris’s Kelmscott Chaucer and Lissitzky’s For the Voice, a revolutionary book of poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky considered one of the finest achievements in Russian avant-garde bookmaking.

Comprising 30 canvasses, Announcer takes over the gallery space, interweaving and contrasting the two designs so that Morris and Lissitzky’s graphics are never able to fully merge or separate.

Want to know more? See our Tumblr for images, quotes and short articles relating to Announcer.

Announcer is a touring exhibition from Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea.

Enraged by the Government’s downgrading of art in schools, the artist decided to fight back. In this exhibition we follow his campaigns, from his furious painting, Letter to Michael Gove, to the launch of the Art Party and his attempt to be elected to parliament in 2015.

Combining film, placards, sculpture, banners and even his slogan-covered campaigning van, this exhibition makes the case for creativity. All schools should be art schools. Music makes children powerful.

The show includes a new film Art is Your Human Right: why can’t politics be more fun? and presents the artist’s hopes and fears for the future.

Young artists aged 16 – 22 exhibit original art work exploring art that sends a message, inspired by artist activists William Morris and Bob and Roberta Smith.

Furniture and household objects have been transformed into beautiful works of art alongside more traditional pieces in this diverse exhibition. As the title suggests, the exhibition references the daily lives and experiences of young people living in London.

The work was developed at the gallery in August 2015 by nine young people, Grace, Elly, Sherazade, Joe, Christina, Ray, Esin, Theo and Tina, taking part in a week-long creative project led by artist Della Rees.

Image: Eat Your Cereal, Ray 2015.

Social Fabric explores how the printed and factory-woven textiles of eastern and southern Africa mirror the changing times, fashions and tastes of the region.

Bringing together kanga from Kenya and Tanzania, and shweshwe from southern Africa, the exhibition reveals how these fabrics express the social, political, religious, emotional and even sexual concerns of the people who wear them.

The varied patterns and inscriptions are thought provoking and sometimes humorous. They convey an unspoken language, expressing thoughts and feelings which cannot always be spoken out loud. Worn in both secular and sacred contexts, the fabric plays a central role in all major rite-of-passage ceremonies in women’s and, in some cases, men’s lives.

The exhibition will reveal how these types of wearable cloth mirror the convergence of African tastes and patronage with strong historical and contemporary trading ties from across the globe. It will also explore how the cloth is used to celebrate influential people and great occasions, such as Josina Machel, Nelson Mandela or the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

The exhibition also features contemporary art and fashion inspired by the textiles in the show. South African artist Lawrence Lemaoana uses kanga to explore the notion of power in post-Apartheid South Africa. Kapwani Kiwanga’s sculptural work draws our attention to how African fabric is not only a decorative object but also a medium for expressing the main concerns of society. The bold graphic print on the designs of London based fashion label CHiCHia was inspired by chief designer Christine Mhando’s favourite proverbs and sayings sourced from Tanzanian kanga.

A British Museum touring exhibition. Supported by The British Museum and The Dorset Foundation.

Image: Nelson Mandela, South Africa, 2008 (c) Trustees of the British Museum.

As a young man, Frank Brangwyn (1867-1956) travelled extensively through southern Europe and to the North African coast, recording the landscapes he encountered. He also journeyed to South Africa, painting the old towns and farms around Cape Town.

This small display combines oils and watercolours from the gallery’s collection with important loans from private collectors, depicting scenes in North and South Africa, Italy and Spain. They were painted in the 1890s when Brangwyn was in his twenties and making a name for himself in the salons of Europe.

Following a visit to the William Morris Gallery and Lloyd Park, students at Chelsea College of Art created a wallpaper sample book, on display in the Discovery Lounge.

The Fruity Birds design shown above is by Le Xi.

Ceramicist Clare Twomey transforms the gallery into a live studio, where members of the public will work as apprentices on a William Morris-inspired tile panel; an ambitious installation that will bring his ideas to life.

Twomey is planning to create a vast tile panel embellished with Chrysanthemum, one of William Morris’s most compelling and intricate designs. Over 68 days, 68 volunteer apprentices will work on the piece. Every day, a new apprentice will work alongside a skilled master painter, slowly transforming the tiles from one state of beauty to another. Visitors will be able to watch this process slowly unfold.

The exhibition is a response to William Morris’s approach to making. Like the would-be apprentices, Morris learned his skills through practice and concentration. Skills need to be constantly passed on and shared, from one person to another, to retain their vitality. Twomey’s installation will explore how practising a skill can connect us through time and space to other people. As Morris observed, ‘The past is not dead, but living in us.’ You can view a film in which the artist explains the idea behind the exhibition in more detail at the gallery or online.

This exhibition is funded through Art Happens, the Art Fund’s crowd-funding platform, and we would like to thank all funders for their support.

A World to Win: Posters of Protest and Revolution shows a spotlight on how political activists around the world have used posters to mobilise, educate and organise.

The exhibition will present around 70 posters drawn from the national poster collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Showcasing the work of diverse artists, graphic designers and print collectives it will include new acquisitions gathered from recent outbursts of protest in the UK, Russia and the Middle East.

Making or displaying a poster is in itself a means of taking political action, while for many social and political movements, posters have represented an important form of cultural output. The show will feature posters made by the Atelier Populaire during the student protests in Paris in 1968, as well as examples from the Russian, Chinese and Cuban Revolutions.

The exhibition will also host artist Ruth Ewan’s A Jukebox of People Trying to Change the World, an ongoing collection of over 2000 idealistic or political songs collated by Ewan and disseminated via a CD jukebox.

Exhibition organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

NowhereSomewhere is a two-screen film installation inspired by William Morris’s utopian novel News From Nowhere. Fowler explores the resonance between Morris’s vision and Organiclea, a food growing co-operative based in Waltham Forest where she herself is a gardener. The footage, shot over the autumn and winter season is combined with fragments of gardeners reading from News From Nowhere.

On a second screen, as the new growing season arrives and seeds are planted for the coming year, community members reflect on their own dreams for an imaginary future London.

This visually engaging piece of work includes 16mm film, hand-processed by Fowler at Organiclea using an ecological formula. She worked on site in a temporary film lab, and experimented with natural dye to create the film.

The installation is accompanied by Fowler’s seed packet project, in which she invited gardeners and others around the Borough to share their visions for the city of the future on empty seed packets.

The final film was created in collaboration with sound artist Andrej Bako.

Rosalind Fowler is an artist and filmmaker with a background in visual art and anthropology. Her work explores the politics and poetics of place and belonging in the contemporary English landscape through the prisms of folk culture, alternative communities, science fiction, pre-history and dreams.

Her work has been shown widely, including at the ICA, William Morris Gallery, BFI, Plymouth Arts Centre, Milton Keynes Gallery, Pumphouse Gallery, BBC Birmingham, and  Fundação Manuel António da Mota in Porto.  She was the 2015-16 artist in residency at the William Morris Gallery.

Supported by Arts Council England.

A Fellow of the Society of Designer Craftsmen, potter Pam Schomberg uses porcelain, stoneware, or a combination of both to make marks and impress pattern into rolled out slabs of clay, with made or found tools. Colour is included at all stages, with the use of oxides, slips, glazes and on-glaze lusters.

‘As a potter you feel you know what you are making, but things can change dramatically from when they go in a kiln to when they come out after firing. Nothing is ever quite as expected, there is always a surprise when the kiln door opens and the contents shine back at you…’

For further information visit: www.pamschomberg.com

Inspired by the themes and techniques of our exhibition A World to Win: Posters of Protest and Revolution, each young artist developed their individual response during a week-long project exploring the gallery, meeting artists, curators and designers and learning new printmaking skills led by artist Della Rees.

The result is a resounding endorsement of the creative talent of young people, their individualism and their thoughtful engagement with the world around them. The art works comment on current events including the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox and the media’s relationship to society, while evoking a strong sense of community and an impression of the world as they would like it to be.

An exhibition in the Discovery Lounge, curated by the William Morris Gallery Young Curators Group.

Image: Hey Have Ya Heard? by Khalil

The Fox and the Star is a beautifully crafted tale of loss, friendship and discovery from award-winning illustrator and author Coralie Bickford-Smith. This exhibition will tell the fascinating story of the book’s conception and production, with original illustrations and rarely seen proofs. Taking inspiration from William Morris’s Kelmscott Press, every physical detail of this modern classic, from the cloth binding to the carefully chosen paper, has a ‘definite claim to beauty’.

This exhibition will appeal to all ages, from serious book lovers to families who will be able take part in hands-on activities. William Morris’s Kelmscott Press edition of Reynard the Fox, one of Coralie’s key inspirations, will also be on display.

Coralie Bickford-Smith graduated from Reading University where she studied Typography and Graphic Communication, and currently works in-house at Penguin Books. Her designs for the covers of the Penguin Classics clothbound series have attracted international acclaim and refer back to the world of Victorian book bindings.

In 2015 Coralie wrote and illustrated her own book, The Fox and the Star, which was published by Penguin and won Waterstone’s Book of the Year.

Kindly supported by Fullers Builders, Walthamstow.

Image credit: Thomas Lehman

Each scene in photographer Red Saunders’ work is carefully planned and lit, using costumed models in the style of tableaux vivants (living pictures).

John Ball the Hedgerow Priest, the Peasants Revolt 1380 and William Cuffay and the London Chartist 1842 will be displayed outside in front of the Gallery and light up the entrance. Rediscover their extraordinary stories, and the contribution they made to bring about change.

Supported by Impressions Gallery.

Sheer Pleasure – Frank Brangwyn and the Art of Japan examines Brangwyn’s love of Japanese art and his collaborative relationships with Japanese artists and patrons.

Brangwyn donated his collection of Japanese prints and paintings to the gallery. They have rarely been displayed and the exhibition includes highlights such as woodblock prints by Utagawa Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai and a carefully restored decorative screen.

During the 1910s, Brangwyn met the Japanese artist Yoshijiro Urushibara (1888-1953) in London. Their meeting led to a remarkable example of collaborative printmaking, combining the exuberant bravado of Brangwyn’s designs with the subtle and distinctive techniques of Japanese printmaking. The exhibition explores the collaborative process, with sketches, notes and key block prints, as well as displaying some of their most successful works, such as The Devil’s Bridge and the ambitious Bruges series.

It also tells the story of Brangwyn’s relationship with his patron Kojiro Mutsakata, and their ill-fated plans to create an art gallery in Tokyo.

To complement the exhibition, we have invited painter and printmaker Rebecca Salter RA to display her work in one of our first floor galleries. Having studied at Kyoto City University of the Arts, and having lived in Japan for six years, Salter studied the art of Japanese woodblock printing extensively. She creates prints in collaboration with the Sato Woodblock Workshop in Kyoto, one of just a few surviving in an industry in slow decline. Salter’s work offers scope to compare the complexities of collaboration between designer and maker, artist and patron, Britain and Japan.

Supported by the Decorative Arts Society Collection Access Grant 2016.

Image credit: the Estate of the Artist, William Morris Gallery

The artist Clare Mitten’s reimagining of A Factory As it Might Be – William Morris’s vision for how beautiful factories would act as centres of education and creativity – is influenced by Victorian science fiction and bio-inspired technology.

PLANTWORKS explores the relationship of Morris to industrial manufacturing through drawings and paintings of plant specimens, translated into a collection of cardboard models, before transforming back into 2D motifs.

PLANTWORKS is generously supported by the Arts Council and Bow Arts Trust.

Walthamstow School of Art cultivated some of the most influential creative talent of the 1950s and 60s. Leading names in art, fashion, music and film studied and taught here – including Pop Artists Peter Blake and Derek Boshier, musician Ian Dury, filmmakers Ken Russell and Peter Greenaway, and fashion designers Celia Birtwell, Marion Foale and Sally Tuffin.

The exhibition will explore this radical era at the school, showing the early work of these seminal artists and designers and revealing how they were encouraged to explore their creative imagination, taking art and culture in radical new directions.

This incredible era at the school has never been explored or researched in depth, despite the fact that all the leading players cite their time in Walthamstow as key to their later development.  For the first time, the early work of these influential artists and designers will be brought together in one exhibition, to show how it was in the art schools of post-war Britain, rather than the universities, that the benefits of a free, universal secondary education were most evident.

The exhibition will capture the energy, excitement and dynamism of these young artists, teachers and designers as they first started out in their careers. The exhibition will reveal personal testimony and original work created by the pupils and teachers during their time at the school, as well as personal photographs and archival material, film, music and ephemera from the period.

This landmark exhibition explores the life and work of May Morris, the younger daughter of William Morris and one of the most significant artists of the British Arts and Crafts movement. May Morris: Art & Life is the most comprehensive survey of May’s work to date, bringing together over 80 works from collections around the UK, many of which have never been on public display.

May Morris: Art & Life has been funded through Art Happens, the Art Fund’s crowdfunding platform.

The exhibition will coincide with the publication by Thames & Hudson of May Morris: Arts & Crafts Designer, which is co-authored by curators at the William Morris Gallery and the V&A.

Gayle Chong Kwan’s The People’s Forest is an exhibition of new photographic and sculptural work exploring the history, politics, and people of London’s ancient woodland, Epping Forest.

The exhibition is the culmination of Chong Kwan’s two-year engagement and research investigating the Forest as a liminal threshold between rural and urban, as a site of historic and recent protest, as a shared and contested resource, and the conflict between capital and common.

Recent exhibitions at the gallery have emphasised Brangwyn’s international connections; his interest in Belgium, his journeys through Europe and South Africa, and his passion for Japanese art.  But these interests are reflective of the opportunities offered by London, the city in which he lived.

This display focuses on Brangwyn’s relationship with the capital; where he learnt his trade and how its energy drove his work.

Tatsuo Miyajima is one of Japan’s foremost contemporary artists. Through his work he explores the concept of time, incorporating original material made around the establishment of Greenwich Mean Time in 1884 with his trademark “Miyajima numbers”. For his latest work, Miyajima has collaborated with William Morris, using his iconic Bird fabric from 1878 to create a new work in the series.

Supported by the Japan Foundation

Tapestries have always told stories. In this exhibition 16 women artists from the UK, USA, Norway, Canada, New Zealand and Japan weave the stories of our time: the possibilities, the hopes and lost chances.

Woven tapestry is formed from the most basic construction: using a loom, the maker forms a design through tightly packed horizontal threads (the weft), which cover vertical threads (the warp). To weave a tapestry is an intensely intimate act; the weaver must concentrate on tiny areas at a time, building shape upon shape of imagery, colour and narrative until the final, and usually large scale, work is completed. Historic examples of tapestry range across time, and across cultures, including the 4th or 5th century Coptic (Egyptian Christian) tapestries with their bold imagery, the highly complex early 16th century European tapestries telling the story of The Lady and The Unicorn, right up to the present day. In each historical instance, tapestry has always been used to tell stories of the time.

Using traditional hand woven tapestry techniques that connect us to the past, the artists included in ‘Weaving New Worlds’ have drawn on contemporary images and events, personal dreams and feelings, bringing the art form into the 21st century through their vibrancy and subject matter.

The tapestries range in subject matter, from reflections of rural mythologies, to floods and urban decay. The featured artists are notable for continually pushing the boundaries of their craft, and in some cases this is the first UK presentation of their work. Norwegian artist Mari Meen Halsøy has been working for the last eight years in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, a city marked by violence and political unrest. For decades bombed buildings with countless bullet holes have stood as monuments to the ravages. Halsøy weaves, on site, patches for the ‘wounds’ of the buildings, as an act of metaphorical and actual healing. Her tapestry Snipers Room is exhibited here for the first time in the UK.

Also on display is British artist Pat Taylor’s portrait of Kim Jong-un, taken from her recent series of tapestry portraits. Preoccupation with physiognomy has been a constant theme in her work, stimulated by current and sometimes physically distant events. By using physiognomy as the linchpin, stories are expressed through the landscape of the subject’s face.

American artist Erin M. Riley will present a new work in this exhibition, reflecting a thematic change from her ‘Selfie’ series and the sexually explicit tapestries for which she is well known. Her work Head On references her childhood in which she grew up in a town in Cape Cod, Massachussetts, that had a markedly high rate of drunk driving accidents and related deaths, causing her to make a significant choice from a young age not to drink. Always at the heart of the work is the human condition, the artists offering us both a utopian and dystopian view – the choice is ours.

Curated by Lesley Millar, Professor of Textile Culture and Director of the International Textile Research Centre at the University for the Creative Arts in collaboration with National Centre for Craft & Design and William Morris Gallery.

A catalogue of the exhibition is available here

Image: Ripples & Ribes by Jennie Moncur, 2015 ©The Artist

“Patterns and words and pictures, pictures and words and patterns, I don’t want them to live apart and segregated. It’s always been my aim to somehow weave them all together to keep each other company, nobody in the world should have to feel alone.” – Rob Ryan

A solo exhibition of work by renowned fine artist Rob Ryan, featuring highly patterned original papercuts and limited edition silkscreen prints created in response to the William Morris Gallery’s collection. To accompany the exhibition, Rob has designed and produced a range of exclusive merchandise for the Gallery shop. The range includes ceramics, glassware and a limited edition lasercut.

William Morris was a key figure in the development of domestic garden design, helping to popularise the Arts and Crafts garden among the artistic middle class in England and the US. His gardens at Red House and then Kelmscott Manor supplied endless inspiration to Morris, his family and friends.

The Enchanted Garden explores how Morris’s contemporaries and subsequent generations of artists – from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Bloomsbury Group – have responded to the allure of garden spaces, using them as stages for the magical, menacing and romantic.

Many works in the exhibition reference real gardens that still enchant visitors today, including Morris’s Red House and Kelmscott Manor, which supplied endless inspiration for him, his family and friends.

Featured artists include Claude Monet, Lucian Pissarro, Edward Burne-Jones, Stanley Spencer, Beatrix Potter, Cicely Mary Barker, Roger Fry and Vanessa Bell.

The exhibition is organised by the Laing Art Gallery in association with the William Morris Gallery.

Image: Claude Monet, Water-Lilies, Setting Sun, c.1907 © National Gallery, London

Lola Lely (designer and textile artist), Laura Anderson (sculptor and woodcarver) and Harriet Warden (illustrator and printmaker) come together to seek ways in which the designs and traditional processes synonymous with William Morris can find artistic form and relevance in the contemporary and culturally diverse setting of Walthamstow in 2019.

Local printmaker Kirsten Schmidt is inspired by our connection to nature, and the urban spaces where we can make these connections.

This exhibition celebrates the artist’s respondes to Lloyd Park, home of William Morris Gallery, and other green spaces in the borough.

Madge Gill was born in Walthamstow and spent most of her years living in East London.

A self-taught, visionary artist, she created meticulous artworks, many of which she attributed to Myrninerest, her spirit-guide that she came to embody.

This landmark exhibition in her home town brings together drawings, newly uncovered large-scale embroideries, textiles and archival objects, many of which have never been exhibited before.

Accompanying Madge Gill is an exhibition by the celebrated French “outsider” artist Marie-Rose Lortet, whose work has been greatly influenced by Gill’s. On display will be Lortet’s distinctive embroidered masks and fabric sculptures.

In 1942, Chairman Mao Zedong declared that all art should serve the worker, peasant and soldier. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76) this policy was vigorously implemented.

Images of the leader appeared everywhere: bold, colourful posters combined text and image to promote political messages. The predominant colour was red – colour of the revolution – and when Mao was shown, it was always amid a glowing light.

Traditional landscape styles were reimagined and now incorporated symbols of modern and industrial achievement. Even the traditional folk art of the delicate papercut, used to decorate windows at home, promoted ‘Mao Zedong Thought’.

This exhibition displays a selection of Cultural Revolution propaganda posters, revolutionary landscapes, images of the leader and intricate papercuts all of which were collected in China during the 1970s.

This is a touring exhibition organised by the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

Haiku Adventure: The Craft of Games explores the intersection between traditional Japanese woodblock prints and videogames – two different media separated by centuries and yet linked by a common sensibility.

Small Island Games present the development of their ‘indie’ title Haiku Adventure, juxtaposing its creative process with its artistic influence: the ukiyo-e prints of Edo-era Japan. The display follows on from the Gallery’s 2017 exhibition, Sheer Pleasure: Frank Brangwyn and the Art of Japan, which was formative to the game’s conception.

This exhibition showcases original Japanese prints alongside interactive game displays and an overview of the development process, allowing visitors to experience a modern adaptation of an ancient craft.

The Yellow Wallpaper is an exhibition of new portraits by American artist, Kehinde Wiley. This is the first solo exhibition of new work shown by Wiley at a UK museum and also the first to feature exclusively female portraits. The works feature women that the artist met on the streets of Dalston and offer a visual response to American novelist Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s acclaimed feminist text, The Yellow Wallpaper (1892).

‘The Yellow Wallpaper is a work of literary fiction that explores the contours of femininity and insanity. This exhibition seeks to use the language of the decorative to reconcile blackness, gender, and a beautiful and terrible past.’ — Kehinde Wiley

Gilman’s text is a semi-autobiographical tale which sees her narrator confined to her bedroom after being diagnosed with hysteria and explores the disastrous consequences of denying women independence. In Wiley’s new portraits, each woman is positioned as autonomous, as powerful, as open to individual interpretation and as an emblem of strength within a society of complicated social networks. They wholly embody myriad positions with regard to social class, status, religion, colonialism and the negotiation of gender.

For over fifteen years Wiley has sourced William Morris’s iconic floral designs for his paintings. Building on his interest in the relationship between the human body and the decorative, Wiley’s models are depicted in reimagined fields inspired by the William Morris oeuvre. Wiley’s portraits offer a rubric through which to engage with the beautiful yet fraught histories and traditions that black women — and all women — are heir to.

This exhibition in the Story Lounge highlights the lives led by the women of William Morris’s social circle alongside portrait photographs of them from our collection. In the nineteenth century individuals might only be photographed a few times in their lives so many photographers specifically designed images to capture the essential character of their sitters.

William Morris’s mother, the stately Emma Morris, is seen leaning on an ornate urn while his industrious sister, Isabella Gilmore, embroiders in her deaconess uniform. Images of Jane Morris, captured as a gentle mother or a languid muse, throw light on the varied aspects of her personality.

However, portrait photographs of women could also shade parts of their lives from view. Simple seated portraits of Rosalind Howard reveal nothing of her radical politics, where a male sitter in her position may have been captured at a writing desk or next to a collection of political books.

Within The Reach of All: The Century Guild is the first exhibition in 20 years to explore the pioneering aesthetics and lasting legacy of this influential association of artists, designers and craftspeople.

The Century Guild was established by the architect and designer Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo (1851 – 1942), who later helped found the William Morris Gallery, and his assistant, Herbert Percy Horne (1864 – 1916), in close collaboration with designer Selwyn Image (1849 – 1930). They aspired to elevate crafts to the status of art, integrate both art and crafts in domestic interiors, and democratise good design. Within The Reach of All: The Century Guild will explore the group’s key figures, along with its influence on Art Nouveau, 20th-century design and modern publishing, through works from the William Morris Gallery, which holds the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of Century Guild works.

The exhibition coincides with the publication of a new book on the subject by Stuart Evans and Jean Liddiard. Arts and Crafts Pioneers: The Hobby Horse Men and their Century Guild is published in the UK by Lund Humphries on 28 January 2021.

Pioneers: William Morris and the Bauhaus is the first exhibition in the UK to fully explore the relationship between the English Arts and Crafts movement and the Bauhaus, the ground-breaking German art school established by Walter Gropius. Timed to coincide with the centenary of the founding of the Bauhaus in 1919, it brings together over 60 objects from nine international and domestic lenders, some of which have never been displayed in the UK before.

The exhibition uses Morris’s key principles of Unity, Craft, Simplicity and Community as a lens to explore the early years of the Bauhaus, from its establishment as a radical new school in the conservative city of Weimar, to its move to a purpose-built campus in Dessau. Along the way, the Bauhauslers embraced a diverse range of ideas and aesthetics as they adopted and adapted the messages of the Arts and Crafts movement in their quest to design a better world. In showing objects made at the Bauhaus alongside Morris’s own pioneering designs, the exhibition invites visitors to explore alternative perspectives on the Bauhaus, as well as see Morris’s legacy in a new light.

Alongside the exhibition is a display of three pieces by acclaimed London-based fashion designer Mary Katrantzou, who is lending garments from her Autumn/Winter 2018 collection, which combines Bauhaus prints with patterns inspired by William Morris. There is also an installation by Bauhaus Artist in Residence, Nicholas Pankhurst.

Pioneers: William Morris and the Bauhaus has been funded through Art Happens, the Art Fund’s crowdfunding platform.

A principal founder of the Arts and Crafts Movement, William Morris was responsible for producing hundreds of patterns for wallpapers, furnishing fabrics, carpets and embroideries, helping to introduce a new aesthetic into British interiors. While it has long been acknowledged that Morris was inspired by Islamic art, this is the first exhibition to examine this important aspect of his artistic journey in depth.

Alongside his own iconic designs, outstanding examples of Islamic textiles, ceramics, metalwork and manuscripts from Morris’s personal collection – now belonging to major UK institutions including the British Library, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge – are brought together for the first time to reveal the wider impacts of these objects, their designs and impressions on Morris’s creative output.

The umbrella terms “Islamic world” and “Islamic art” are widely used to facilitate the categorisation of art produced in areas where Islam was the dominant religion or the religion of those who ruled. However, they perpetuate the notion that there is a single identity or uniformity within the vast output of production from across huge geographical regions. These ideas will be explored and discussed further in the exhibition and public programme.

Featuring over 90 works, the exhibition demonstrates how some of Morris’s best-known designs such as Flower Garden (1879), Wild Tulip and Granada (1884) were directly inspired by Islamic surface design and its technical application. This exhibition sets out to enrich our appreciation of Morris’s work and broaden our understanding of the underlying influences of this quintessentially British designer. The exhibition is made possible thanks to funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Garfield Weston Foundation.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a new publication, Tulips and Peacocks: William Morris and Art from the Islamic World (Yale University Press).

William Morris & Art from the Islamic World is curated by Rowan Bain, principal curator of William Morris Gallery, and Qaisra M. Khan, Curator of Islamic Art.

Images:
Peacock, c.1870, Iran, hollow brass with pierced decoration and turquoise. © The Society of Antiquaries of London (Kelmscott Manor)
Wild Tulip, 1884, designed by William Morris for Morris & Co., block-printed wallpaper. © William Morris Gallery

Muslims on Morris

A film commissioned by the Gallery to accompany the exhibition. In this short film we hear from three Muslims creatives who share their experience of William Morris and how they relate to his work and legacy today. Featuring Tayybah Tahir: Trainee Curator, William Morris Gallery, Yasim Hyatt: Traditional Artist, Wallpaper and Fabric Designer, Zarah Hussain: Digital Artist.

Directed by Navid Akhtar. Watch the film

Object Stories: Young people’s 2024 Curatorial Interpretation course

William Morris Gallery, with support from National Heritage Lottery Fund, offered adults aged 18-25 the opportunity to take part in a curatorial interpretation professional development course, inspired by the temporary exhibition that was opening at the Gallery in November 2024, William Morris & Art from the Islamic World.  During the summer of 2024, 20 young people with an interest in this exhibition were recruited for the course to enhance the interpretation of objects and stories in the exhibition. This five-day professional development opportunity was run by Shaheen Kasmani, artist, curator and educator.

You can read Object Stories produced by participants on this dedicated page.

Bayt Al Fann

To celebrate the exhibition William Morris & Art from the Islamic World, William Morris Gallery has collaborated with Bayt Al Fann to present a specially curated, limited-edition digital publication, William Morris & Islamic Art: Women Artists, crafted as a unique dialogue between pioneering women artists whose work is rooted in Islamic art and the legacy of William Morris. You can pick up a copy at the Gallery with a suggested donation of £2 or view it as a digital download. Read more about the project.

Exploring and problematising Morris’s connections with South Asia, this exhibition features new work by former artists in residence Priya Sundram and Nia Thandapani. Sundram and Thandapani have designed a new pattern based on Morris’s designs which is being made by traditional block printers in India and used to create a domestic-style space within the Gallery, where visitors can explore alternative resources around Morris and South Asia in various community languages. The exhibition will also feature interventions throughout the permanent galleries by artists with links to South Asia.

Featuring work by:

Vasundhara Sellamuthu
Shahed Saleem
Shehzil Malik
Studio Carrom
Kangan Arora
Rathna Ramanathan
Sofia Niazi and Aleesha Nandhra
Tiipoi

Image: Felicity Crawshaw

A display of wallpaper patterns designed by young people in the care of Waltham Forest in collaboration with Waltham Forest Virtual School and artist Angela Groundwater. Through workshops at the William Morris Gallery and via Zoom during lockdown, the young people made patterns using drawing and objects that are significant to them, creating designs that commemorate the stories of their lives. The design process was captured in a short film which will be shown in the exhibition.

Sacred Stories is a display celebrating young people’s lives and the unique paths they walk. It is a reminder that their —and our— sacred stories are everywhere.

The Black Artisans is a new photography exhibition by Jo Sealy that showcases Black makers and craftspeople, capturing traditional sectors of UK heritage crafts alongside areas of cultural heritage.

The 27 images feature disciplines that include ceramics, wood, brass instruments, stone, steel pan and calabash to name a few. There is also a series of recorded artisan talks where you can hear how each artisan selected their craft and how their experiences have shaped the type and style of their work. A selection of the featured display pieces will also be available to view throughout the exhibition.

The Black Artisans is funded by a Waltham Forest Council, Make It Happen grant, is supported by the Heritage Crafts Association and furniture maker, eco designer and broadcast presenter Jay Blades MBE.

Image: Jo Sealy

Young Poland: An Arts and Crafts Movement (1890 – 1918) is the first major exhibition to explore the decorative arts and architecture of Young Poland (Młoda Polska), an extraordinary cultural movement that flourished in response to Poland’s invasion and occupation by foreign powers.

Originating in Kraków and the nearby village of Zakopane at the foot of the Tatra Mountains, Young Poland sought inspiration in local folk traditions, wildlife and craftsmanship while collapsing the distinction between the fine and applied arts. Developing themes explored in a critically acclaimed book by its curators (Lund Humphries, 2020), the exhibition is the first in the world to position Young Poland as an Arts & Crafts movement, revealing strong stylistic and philosophical affinities with the work of William Morris and John Ruskin.

From furniture to Christmas decorations, intricate textiles to delicate paper cuttings, this landmark survey spans five galleries and brings together over 150 works, most of which have never travelled outside of Poland. Young Poland: An Arts and Crafts Movement (1890 – 1918) examines the ideas that propelled the movement and introduces the artists, designers and craftspeople whose decorative schemes and objects came to define it.

Artists featured in the exhibition include Józef Czajkowski, Zdzisław Gedliczka, Wojciech Jastrzębowski, Karol Kłosowski, Józefa Kogut, Bonawentura Lenart, Jacek Malczewski, Jan Matejko, Józef Mehoffer, Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Henryk Uziembło, Stanisław Wyspiański and Stanisław Witkiewicz.

Exhibition organised in partnership with the National Museum in Kraków and the Polish Cultural Institute, London. Co-financed by the Polish Minister of Culture, National Heritage and Sport within the framework of the Inspiring Culture Programme.

Image: Karol Kłosowski, At Bobbin Lacemaking (Legend), undated. Private collection. By descent from the artist

Althea McNish: Colour is Mine is a landmark retrospective of one of the UK’s most innovative textile artists and the first designer of Caribbean descent to achieve international recognition.

Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, McNish (1924-2020) moved to the UK in 1950, completing a postgraduate textiles degree at the Royal College of Art before rising to prominence as a Black female designer. On graduating, McNish began designing bestselling furnishing and fashion fabrics for iconic firms including Liberty, Dior, Heal’s and Hull Traders, for whom she created one of her most famous patterns, Golden Harvest, in 1959. As her career progressed, McNish took on major interior design projects and mural commissions around the world, as well as creating wallpapers for leading companies.

McNish’s painterly designs incorporated natural botanical forms from Britain and the Caribbean, using a riotous colour palette that overturned the staid rules of mid-century British textile design. Her technical mastery gave her the freedom to create ever more complex prints. “Whenever printers told me it couldn’t be done, I would show them how to do it,” she said. “Before long, the impossible became possible.”

Drawing on extensive new research and her personal archive, Colour is Mine explores McNish’s extraordinary career, her transformative impact on mid-century design and her enduring influence today. Althea McNish: Colour is Mine is curated by the William Morris Gallery and Rose Sinclair, Lecturer in Design Education at Goldsmiths, University of London and is part of a three-year research, exhibition and archiving project generously supported by the Society of Antiquaries through its Janet Arnold Textile award.

Althea McNish: Colour is Mine is sponsored by Liberty Fabrics, who will also be reissuing a capsule collection of Althea McNish’s original fabric designs in Spring 2022 to coincide with the exhibition, available to purchase at Liberty in store and online.

Part of the BBC Art That Made Us Festival for Spring 2022.

To coincide with the exhibition The Legend of King Arthur: A Pre-Raphaelite Love Story, William Morris Gallery commissioned London-based contemporary artist Joy Gregory to create an installation exploring international myths and legends.

In response to King Arthur’s male-dominated round table of knights, Joy Gregory’s textile installation explores the role of women in folklore, myths and legends. The printed and embroidered textile forms a tent illustrated with stories where women are fierce protagonists.

A British photographer of Jamaican heritage, Gregory’s practice is concerned with social and political issues that reference cultural differences, language endangerment and overlooked histories. Her work encourages interaction, you are invited to read a book, share a story with others or engage with the illustrations.

Note: This temporarily installation will remain in place after the King Arthur exhibition closes in January (end date to be confirmed).

Image: Installation photography by Nicola Tree for William Morris Gallery 

The Legend of King Arthur: A Pre-Raphaelite Love Story explores the legend of King Arthur within the Victorian imagination, presenting national myths and legends through the eyes of Pre-Raphaelite artists.

King Arthur is a central figure in English folklore, a fictional 5^th century ruler who led his famous knights in various battles and quests. The Arthurian stories are told through numerous works by various authors from the 9^th century onwards. The telling and retelling of the legend culminated in the English author Thomas Malory writing down the stories in a single work in 1485, Le Morte d’Arthur.

The Arthurian legends fell out of interest at the end of the Middle Ages but were rediscovered in the early 19^th Century, initially by poets such as Walter Scott and Alfred Tennyson. William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones read these poems obsessively whilst at Oxford University and drew from them – and the myths that inspired them – for artistic projects throughout their careers.

This exhibition tells the Arthurian stories as presented by Malory, through the work of Pre-Raphaelite artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Arthur Hughes, John William Waterhouse and William Morris alongside lesser known female Pre-Raphaelite artists Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale and Elizabeth Siddal. The show will introduce audiences to the Arthurian legend within the context of reawakened interest in medievalism in Victorian England.

Curated by Natalie Rigby, Falmouth Art Gallery and Ainsley Vinall, William Morris Gallery, this is the exhibition’s first stop on a nationwide tour of locations associated with King Arthur. Following its debut at the William Morris Gallery, the exhibition will tour to Tullie House, Carlisle in February 2023 before finishing its run at Falmouth Art Gallery in Cornwall in June 2023. This exhibition was made possible with Art Fund support and is also kindly supported by Visit Cornwall, Visit England and Cornwall Museums Partnership.

To coincide with the exhibition, the William Morris Gallery has commissioned London-based contemporary artist Joy Gregory to create an installation exploring international myths and legends. Visit the installation upstairs in our Story Lounge. Read more

Image: The Arming and Departure of the Knights Tapestry, Morris & Co., (1891-4)

Ashish’s first retrospective shines – British Vogue

Ashish’s new show is fashion serotonin – Dazed

A glittering testament to a fashion genius – The Conversation

A bright and healing balm for troubled times – Woo Magazine

Originally trained in fine art, he studied fashion design at Central Saint Martins, London, founding his eponymous label in 2001. Ashish has established a reputation for high-glamour outfits designed in his studio in East London and then hand-made by skilled artisans at his small workshop in Delhi.

Ashish’s practice includes a broad range of cultural and design references, embracing both American and European fashion histories and indigenous textile traditions from across the world. Ashish’s designs often challenge preconceptions of materials and techniques, interrogating the construction of cultural identities and the ways in which clothes send signals about their wearer.

In recent years Ashish’s work has engaged more explicitly with ideas around global exchange and the complex cultural relationships between India and Britain. In both the clothes themselves and how they are presented within his photographic campaigns and fashion presentations, key South Asian reference points are increasingly pronounced and celebrated. Ashish’s signature use of colour reflects his belief in the ability of clothing to bring joy to its wearers and create a space in which different identities become unashamedly, luminescently visible.

Ashish’s use of fashion as a site for social and political engagement will be highlighted through examples of some of the politicised slogans for which the designer is best known. These will include designs emblazoned with ‘MORE GLITTER LESS TWITTER’ devised in response to the election of President Trump 2016 and a new version of his celebrated ‘IMMIGRANT’ t-shirt.

Ashish is a pioneering voice within the creative industries for his long-term commitment to inclusion and equitable representation. The exhibition will also spotlight Ashish’s Autumn Winter 2017 collection ‘The Yellow Brick Road’. Inspired by The Wizard of Oz (1939), a film that holds an iconic place within Queer culture. The season drew on an interpretation of the film by the Indian-born writer Salman Rushdie which interprets the story as an exploration of migration and an individual’s ability to determine how they identify ‘home’.

Like William Morris, traditional handcraft skills and techniques are at the heart of Ashish’s design and the context of the William Morris Gallery allows Ashish’s work to be considered within a dialogue of artisanship, adornment and thoughtful production processes. Each individual sequin is hand sewn on an embroidery frame by highly skilled artisans at Ashish’s workshop in Delhi – a process which can take anywhere from a few days to over a week depending on the piece.

The exhibition will feature a major new commission by the Mumbai-based photographer and film-maker Ashish Shah (b. Dehradun, 1984). Working within a genre which has limited precedent other than the aesthetic conventions and expectations imported and emulated from European and American fashion documentation, Shah is part of an exciting generation of photographers creating a new language of image-making. Shot on location in India and London; Shah’s film and photography commission will explore the intricacy of global movement and the ways in which Ashish’s garments navigate the complex cultural relationships between India and the West. The new commission will also contextualise Ashish’s work from a decolonising perspective, offering a counterpoint to the Western gaze that dominates much fashion documentation and photography.

Ashish: Fall in Love and Be More Tender is co-curated by Roisin Inglesby and Joe Scotland

Ashish Shah’s commission is supported by the Art Fund

The exhibition is kindly supported by the Lizzie & Jonathan Tisch Foundation

About Ashish
Ashish Gupta (b. Delhi, 1973) is a celebrated voice in international fashion. He has won the prestigious NEWGEN award three times and has been included in major exhibitions and presentations at The Victoria & Albert Museum, London and The Metropolitan Museum, New York. Ashish’s designs have been worn by global icons including Beyonce, Debbie Harry, Hunter Schafer, Rihanna, Charli XCX and Taylor Swift.

Image: Photographer and copyright Ashish Shah, 2022.

Fall in Love and Be More Tender, a film by Ashish Shah

(Please note: There is some swearing in this video)