The Block Printers and Hand Loom Weavers, Design for Advertisement of Morris & Co.

Details

Date: c.1890-1905
Dimensions: 19.3 x 29.1
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: D456
Artist: Jack, George Washington Henry (1855 - 1931)
Credit notes: Gift of Brandon-Jones, 1997

George Washington Jack was an architect and designer craftsman and chief furniture designer for Morris & Co. This sketchbook includes architectural and plant and flower studies for a selection of his commissions between 1890 and 1905. It includes designs for carved pew ends at Winchester Cathedral Lady Chapel; gladiolas at Clouds House; capitals in the south arcade chancel for St Thomas’s Church, Salisbury and a door from the north west transept at Canterbury Cathedral.

Details

Date: 1913
Dimensions: 720 x 620 mm (framed)
Object Type: design
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: A1401
Designer: Jack, George Washington Henry (1855 - 1931)
Credit notes: Gift of John Brandon Jones, 1997

The architect Halsey Ricardo (1854-1928) built 8 Addison Road, Kensington for Sir Ernest Debenham, the department store owner and his family. The house was elaborately decorated and includes work by Ernest Gimson, William Aumonier and E.S. Prior as well as extensive series of tiled fireplaces and surfaces by William De Morgan (with whom Ricardo had been in partnership). In March 1912, Ricardo asked George Jack to design and prepare cartoons for part of the mosaic decoration of the main hall of the house, and also to design the carved marble balustrade around the first floor gallery space. The following month Jack travelled to Italy with his friend Thomas Hamilton Crawford to make a study of Byzantine mosaics in preparation for the work. Jack’s final designs incorporates floral patterns of both Persian, Ottoman and Byzantine influence. Another design drawing in the Gallery’s collection shows a different, and the final design for the dome (see: A1396). The subsequent design for the lower wall surface was in the end exectuted to designs by Henry Payne (1868-1940).

Details

Date: 1896 - 1901
Dimensions: 45 x 29
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: D279
Artist: Sloane, Mary Annie (10.12.1867 - 30.11.1961)
Credit notes: Mary Annie Sloane bequest, 1962

Mary Annie Sloane’s pencil drawing depicts a professional embroidery studio at the turn of the Twentieth century. Nine women are seated around a table with a woman seated on her own. The workers wear white pinafores and cuffs to keep their work clean.

The location of the workshop is unknown, however it is is annotated with the names of the workers: Miss Wells, Miss Cook, Mrs Forsythe, Mrs Lindus, Head, Underwood, Appleby, Knight, Lynes, Buckingham. Sloane’s address at Montague Mansions, Crawford Street, London is written on the reverse, where she lived from 1896-1901. The artist was a close friend of May Morris, and a member and Honorary Secretary of the Women’s Guild of Arts that May Morris founded in 1907. The pair travelled to Florence and Majorca, and Sloane drew several pencil portraits of may, now in the WMG collection. Sloane took over the lease of May’s house at 8 Hammersmith Terrace in London, after she moved permanently to Kelmscott Manor.

Details

Date: 02.07.1870
Dimensions: 34.1 x 50.5
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: D183
Sitter: Morris (née Burden) | Jane | 1839 | 1914
Artist: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882

This intimate portrait of Jane Morris, William Morris’s wife, was drawn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti was a key associate of William Morris and a founding member of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. when it was established in 1861. When he drew this work in 1870 he was involved in an intense emotional relationship with Jane Morris, which complicated his work with the Firm. In 1875 Morris restructured the Firm as Morris & Co., buying out the original partners including Rossetti.

Details

Date: c.1908
Dimensions: 25 x 25
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: D435
Artist: Merritt, Anna Lea, 1844, 1930
Sitter: Toynbee, Charlotte Maria (30 March 1841 - 8 January 1931)
Credit notes: Presented by the Trustees of the Anna Lea Merritt Estate, via the V&A, 1963

Portrait in coloured crayon of Charlotte Maria Toynbee, née Atwood, by the American artist Anna Lee Merrit. Toynbee studied at Oxford University, where she met her future husband, the economic historian Arnold Toynbee. After her husband’s death Toynbee served on the committee aiming to create a settlement in Oxford, which resulted in Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel, London (named after Arnold Toynbee). Toynbee was Poor Law Guardian as well as managing and contributing to the finances of the female Oxford college Lady Margaret Hall for forty years. This drawing is possibly for a study for an oil portrait of Toynbee by Merrit, in 1908.

Details

Date: 09.03.1876
Dimensions: 20.3 x 29.2
Object Type: design
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: A394
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Retailer: Morris & Co.

Scale design drawing for a three light window for St Peter’s Church, Yateley, Hampshire. The three windows depict figures of St Peter, Christ as King and St John with additional figures of angels playing musical instruments. It is labelled ‘2nd Design for East Window, Yateley Church, March 9th 1876’, providing an insight into how Morris & Co. communicated with their clients on the final designs for artworks.

The design is also marked, ‘Omitting the angels this design is approved’. Although the windows were realised in 1878, they have since been destroyed.

Details

Date: c.1890s
Dimensions: 19.8 x 25.5
Object Type: design
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: A523
Designer: Jack, George Washington Henry (1855 - 1931)
Credit notes: Gift of Margery Jack, 1972

This original design indicates that the table was originally intended to be decorated with different coloured wood inlay. On the present example, (G53) the pattern is the same, but painted; the painting executed by the artist’s daughter Jessie Jack, who donated the table to the gallery. Possibly made and designed as a workbox for George Jack’s wife Annie’s embroidery. When exhibited in 1899 the table was described as a ..”very entertaining little work table.., the construction of which seems somewhat frail even for feminine use, but one can forgive that, since it is painted in the gayest fashion imaginable”.

Details

Date: c. 1860-1870
Dimensions: 11.5 x 18
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: D469
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: Gift of Dominic Dunlop, 2018

Details

Date: 1886
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: D231
Artist: Solomon, Simeon, 1840, 1905
Credit notes: Presented by Miss Martha Lugg Wooldridge, 1955

This portrait shows the head of a youth, representing Love in sleep. The portrait recalls Simeon Solomon’s mystical prose piece called Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep which he published privately in 1871. The narrative, which was of central importance to the artist’s career, was based on the platonic theme of the fulfillment of the soul through earthly love.

Material: pencil on paper

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