Morris Mania: A talk

For London Textile Month

TALKS AND DISCUSSIONS

Saturday 13 September 2025

Join artists and makers at the Gallery on Saturday 13 September, for an evening exploring William Morris’s ideas around manufacturing, design and where his legacy sits in today’s world of mass consumerism. This event is part of the Morris Mania events and activities programme, which opens on 5 April, celebrating the Gallery’s 75th Anniversary year.

Details of speakers coming soon.

London Textile Month, organised by Selvedge, is a whole month of textile related events, coming to London during September 2025.

Read more about London Textile Month.

William Morris & Art from the Islamic World

LATE

LATE EVENT

Thursday 27 February 2025

Join us for a premiere screening of a short film trilogy by Shahed Saleem and James Wainman: Three Colours Green, a journey into the Muslim imagination of Waltham Forest. The film will be preceded by a conversation with the film makers.

Alongside the screening, the Gallery will come alive with creativity, with live music, art, hands-on arts and crafts workshops and conversations curated by our Young Creatives—a group of emerging artists and cultural producers who helped shape the exhibition. Together, we’ll reflect on the lasting influence of Islamic art and how it continues to inspire new ideas today.

Refreshments will be available and our shop will be staying open for the evening.

Musical performances from:

Ghuraba (الغرباء) are a globally inspired duo, blending a mix of cultural influences. Their music resonates with and brings together people of multiple backgrounds. Consisting of Mohammed Salih on Electric Guitar and Abdullah Mufa on the Daf, Ney, Ocean Drum. Ghuraba’s musical experience will transport you to places you didn’t know existed.

Ozan Baysal, a Turkish baglama player, performer and composer. Ozan specialising in selpe – an Anatolian baglama performance technique that uses fingerpicking instead of a plectrum. Having played the instrument from a very early age, much of his music is a synthesis of traditional baglama selpe performance practices along with harmonic practices in tonal and jazz music.

Shohret Nur is an outstanding young Uyghur musician, based in London. He specialises in playing the Uyghur stringed instruments dutar and rawap. Originally from Kasghar, Xinjiang, Shohret’s great grandfather and grandmother were both dutar players. Continuing this rich musical legacy, Shohret is helping to bring Uyghur music to wider attention around the world.

See art on display by:

Maryam Adam is an interdisciplinary artist, illustrator, and designer with a BA in Graphic Communication Design. Her work explores themes of heritage, introspection, and the connection between the conscious and unconscious. Community engagement is central to her practice, and she values the relationships formed with audiences through her concepts. Often incorporating surrealist imagery, her work addresses social politics, faith, and existence.

Plus henna art from:

Huq That is a South Asian, multifaith and multicultural artist collective devoted to elevating henna as an art form. Their carefully curated all-women team draws inspiration from traditional and modern art forms, with each team member offering their own unique twist on the work. Embracing community and inclusion, the collective is imagining a new world of henna that weaves together history, art and causes that are important to them.

Main image: Still from ‘Three Colours Green’ courtesy Shahed Saleem & James Wainman

Portrait of Sir Frank Brangwyn (1921)

William Morris Birthday Lecture: Wherefore art thou Brangwyn?

Friends of the William Morris Gallery Talk

OFF SITE

Monday 24 March 2025

DUE TO BUILDING WORKS AT THE GALLERY, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN RELOCATED TO WALTHAMSTOW TOWN HALL, FOREST ROAD, E17 4JF

Brangwyn was of the first British artists to gain an International reputation, the first British artist to be given a retrospective at the Royal Academy during his lifetime, an artist whose murals can be seen in USA, Canada and the UK. In 1914 he was described as ‘the acknowledged master of modern decoration… both in his own country and abroad’ and is reputed to have produced over 12,000 works of art. But, apart from the huge murals, where can we see these works? Where are they? Are they all hidden away?

The lecture hopefully provides a world-wide whirlwind tour and explanation – not of course forgetting Walthamstow’s very own William Morris Gallery and Brangwyn Gift.

Entry via the main entrance of Walthamstow Town Hall. The event takes place in the main foyer.

Image: Portrait of Sir Frank Brangwyn (1921), Ernest Stephen Lumsden 

William Morris & Art from the Islamic World at the V&A

75th Anniversary Talk

OFF SITE

Friday 7 February 2025

William Morris had a profound interest in Islamic art, collecting objects including carpets, textiles, metalwork and ceramics from regions like Iran, Syria and Turkey. He advised the V&A on acquiring Islamic art, including the Ardabil Carpet on display at the museum’s South Kensington site.

To mark the launch of the groundbreaking new exhibition, William Morris and Art from the Islamic World, Max Donnelly (Curator of Furniture, V&A) will chair a discussion with the show’s co-curators Rowan Bain (Principal Curator, William Morris Gallery) and Qaisra M. Khan (Curator of Islamic Art, The Khalili Collections). They will share fresh insights into Morris’s collection and its impact on his designs.

William Morris Gallery celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2025. This is the first in a series of anniversary talks being held at institutions across the UK during this landmark year.

Image: Nicola Tree © William Morris Gallery

 

William Morris & Art from the Islamic World at the V&A

75th Anniversary Talk (LIVESTREAM)

ONLINE

Friday 7 February 2025

William Morris had a profound interest in Islamic art, collecting objects including carpets, textiles, metalwork and ceramics from regions like Iran, Syria and Turkey. He advised the V&A on acquiring Islamic art, including the Ardabil Carpet on display at the museum’s South Kensington site.

To mark the launch of the groundbreaking new exhibition, William Morris and Art from the Islamic World, Max Donnelly (Curator of Furniture, V&A) will chair a discussion with the show’s co-curators Rowan Bain (Principal Curator, William Morris Gallery) and Qaisra M. Khan (Curator of Islamic Art, The Khalili Collections). They will share fresh insights into Morris’s collection and its impact on his designs.

William Morris Gallery celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2025. This is the first in a series of anniversary talks being held at institutions across the UK during this landmark year.

 

 

Uncovering Similarities

William Morris and Art from the Islamic World

TALKS AND DISCUSSIONS

Friday 29 November 2024

NOW SOLD OUT!

Part of the William Morris & Art from the Islamic World events and activities programme.

Take a deep dive into the themes of the exhibition William Morris & Art from the Islamic World  with three introductory talks about the links between William Morris’s designs and the Islamic art that inspired him.

With the exhibition’s co-curators Rowan Bain and Qaisra Khan, and Navid Akhtar, producer and journalist.

The talks are followed by a discussion, Q&A and special curator-led tours of the exhibition.

Timings

  • 6pm: Doors open
  • 6.30pm: Introductory tour (optional)
  • 7pm: Talk with Navid Akhtar
  • 7.20pm: Talk with Qaisra Khan
  • 7.40pm: Talk with Rowan Bain
  • 8pm: Discussion followed by audience Q&A

About the speakers

Rowan Bain is the Principal Curator of William Morris Gallery, where she oversees the collections, exhibitions and public programme. She is the co-curator for the exhibition William Morris & Art from the Islamic World. Past exhibitions include Althea McNish: Colour is Mine (2022), Kehinde Wiley: The Yellow Wallpaper (2020) and May Morris: Art & Life (2017). She is the author of William Morris’s Flowers (2019), co-author of May Morris Arts & Crafts Designer (2017) and contributed to Women Pioneers of the Arts and Crafts Movement (2024).

Qaisra M. Khan has a degree in Law and an MPhil in Oriental studies both from the University of Cambridg, and an MA in Islamic Art and Architecture from SOAS, University of London. She worked for the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha and co-curated the groundbreaking exhibition Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam at the British Museum in 2012. Qaisra has lectured and broadcast widely on Islamic art and since 2014 has been a curator at the Khalili Collection in London. She is co-curator of the exhibition William Morris & Art from the Islamic World.

Navid Akhtar is an award winning Producer and Broadcast journalist, with over 25 years of experience in UK television and broadcasting for the BBC, Channel 4, BBC Radio 4 and the World Service. Navid was a Senior Producer on the 2013 Ramadan Season at Channel 4, producing a series of 30 Ramadan reflections and the first ever-Muslim ‘Hipster’ call to prayer, broadcast on UK television. In 2015 he founded Alchemiya.com, a streaming platform that showcases Muslim art, culture and history. In 2009 he developed and presented William Morris and the Muslims ‘on BBC Radio 4.

Munstead: Iris and Lupin Boarder c.1911

Arts and Crafts and Gardens

Friends of the William Morris Gallery Talk

TALKS AND DISCUSSIONS

Tuesday 12 November 2024

John Ruskin and William Morris spearheaded the movement that became known as Arts and Crafts, which embraced all aspects of art and life, including garden design. Richard Bisgrove will discuss the contributions of pioneering Arts and Crafts designers William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll, to the making of gardens, and to the improvement of human life, the central aim of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Doors open at 7pm for a 7.30pm start.

By Richard Bisgrove: The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll, (1992) and William Robinson: The Wild Gardener, (2008)

Image: Munstead: Iris and Lupin Border c.1911

A forest in autumn

Saving the People’s Forest

Friends of the William Morris Gallery Talk

TALKS AND DISCUSSIONS

Thursday 17 October 2024

In July 1871 thousands of Londoners gathered on the southern edge of Epping Forest to take part in a protest demonstration. A campaign was beginning – one that the historian and ecologist Oliver Rackham saw as the origin of the modern British conservation movement.

The struggle to preserve Epping Forest and other commons from unchecked housing development across London had its watershed moment that day. The demonstration was the turning point for a popular struggle which was to contribute to a change in the law – the 1878 Epping Forest Act .
This story, set within the wider narrative of campaigns to preserve the London commons, is told in this talk by east London historian Mark Gorman. The focus here is not on the metropolitan upper middle-class campaigners, but instead on the grass roots movement whose popular protests helped steer the campaign towards its successful conclusion.

Together with other metropolitan contests, the struggle to save Epping Forest contributed significantly to what has become the ‘right to roam’.

Doors open at 7pm for a 7.30pm start.

Mark Gorman: Saving the People’s Forest: Open spaces, enclosure and popular protest in mid-Victorian London is published by University of Hertfordshire Press.

Photography: Roger Huddle

Portrait of Sir Frank Brangwyn (1921)

Tulips & Peacocks. William Morris and Art from the Islamic World

Friends of the William Morris Gallery Talk

TALKS AND DISCUSSIONS

Tuesday 10 December 2024

THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT

In this talk, Rowan Bain, Principal Curator at the William Morris Gallery), will discuss her new book, published by Yale University Press to coincide with the Gallery’s exhibition William Morris and Art from the Islamic World. Rowan will provide insight into the book’s diverse perspectives on contextualising Morris’s role as a collector of Islamic art, and the enduring importance of recognising the contributions of various cultures to the evolution of his design and craftsmanship.

Doors open at 7pm for a 7.30pm start.

Image: © The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge

Brewery image - making beer

In Conversation with Pete Brown

With Hadrian Garrard

OFF SITE

Wednesday 18 September 2024

DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED. MORE INFORMATION WILL BE PROVIDED WHEN A NEW DATE IS CONFIRMED.

Join Hadrian Garrard, Director of William Morris Gallery, for a special conversation with Pete Brown, award-winning food and drink writer and author of Craft: An Argument, winner of Best Beer Book at the North American Guild of Beer Writers Award.  

At this special event – taking place in a craft brewery just down the road from the childhood home of William Morris, founder of the Arts and Crafts movement – they will talk about what might make something ‘craft’ (or not). Also up for grabs are the changing nature of work, to what extent how a thing is made affects the thing itself, the advance of the robots and when is a nice drink just a nice drink.  

The event will take place in Exale Brewery and Taproom – an independent craft brewery in Walthamstow. 

Times:

6-7pm – doors open

7-8pm – talk

About Exale 

Exale is a beloved neighbourhood hub for good vibes. They cultivate a feeling of unity through music, dance and incredible craft beer brewed on-site.

Exale Brewery and Taproom, Unit 2C, Uplands Business Park, E17 5QL

About William Morris Design Line

William Morris Gallery is excited to be part of this year’s William Morris Design Line, which shines a light on the richness of Waltham Forest’s past and present creative community and encourages visitors to discover, learn and interact with an incredible range of design, making and creative activity.

The William Morris Design Line was created by Wood Street Walls in 2020, as part of the Local Trust’s Creative Civic Change Programme in collaboration with William Morris Big Local. It helped establish a community-led design route through Walthamstow as part of London Design Festival.  The 2024 edition, programmed in partnership with Waltham Forest Council, will extend to Lea Bridge for the first time to showcase designers and makers across the Argall Industrial Area. It is a Design District for London Design Festival 2024.

Supporters and partners

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