Adjustable back armchair

Details

Date: c.1866
Dimensions: 96.5 x 73.7 x 83.8
Object Type: furniture
Material: turned ebonised wood
Catalogue number: G2.1 to 4
Designer: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Miss F.J. Lefroy, 1951

The design of the chair was developed by Philip Webb, c.1866, although Warrington Taylor, the Firm’s business manager from 1865, seems to have been responsible for spotting the original prototype which formed the basis of Webb’s design. A note from Warrington Taylor to Webb contains a sketch of a smilar chair, annotated “back and seat made with bars across to put cushions on, moving on a hinge, a chair model of which I saw with an old carpenter at Herstmonceaux, Sussex, by name Ephraim Colman, your truly W. T.” It has always been supposed that the chair referred to above was an original piece of rural Sussex furniture; however a chair of a very similar design is illustrated in an early 19th century catalogue. Whatever the origins, the chair as designed by Webb for Morris went into production in the mid-1860s and became one of the Firm’s most popular items, still appearing in Morris & Co. catalogues as late as the first decade of this century. The chair is made of ebonized wood and upholstred in yellow Utrecht velvet, though less costly printed cotton covers were later available as an alternative.

Details

Date: c.1863-64
Dimensions: 15.2 x 15.2
Object Type: ceramic
Material: earthenware tiles painted in enamels
Catalogue number: C202.4
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Painter: Orrinsmith (née Faulkner), Lucy (1839 - 1910)
Credit notes: Purchased with the aid of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 1992

This series of 10 tiles depicts the story of Cinderella. It was designed by Edward Burne-Jones and painted by Lucy Faulkner. Burne-Jones account book for September 30, 1862 refers to : “10 designs for tiles, Cinderella paid £7.10s” which may well be the set made for Myles Birket Foster’s house, The Hill at Witley Surrey. The tiles were intended for an overmantel panel and four two tile figures, the original designs are in the V&A and Fitzwilliam. This set is said to have been from a house adjacent to Bracken Dene, Low Fell, Gateshead (home of James Leathart, patron of the Pre-Raphaelites) Other sets exist in the Gallery’s collection (C82), the Walker Art Gallery and the Sanford and Helen Berger Collection, The Huntington Library in California.

Details

Date: c.1863-64
Dimensions: 15.2 x 15.2
Object Type: ceramic
Material: earthenware tiles painted in enamels
Catalogue number: C202.7
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Painter: Orrinsmith (née Faulkner), Lucy (1839 - 1910)
Credit notes: Purchased with the aid of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 1992

Details

Date: c.1863-64
Dimensions: 15.2 x 15.2
Object Type: ceramic
Material: earthenware tiles painted in enamels
Catalogue number: C202.6
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Painter: Orrinsmith (née Faulkner), Lucy (1839 - 1910)
Credit notes: Purchased with the aid of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 1992

Details

Date: c.1863-64
Dimensions: 15.2 x 15.2
Object Type: ceramic
Material: earthenware tiles painted in enamels
Catalogue number: C202.5
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Painter: Orrinsmith (née Faulkner), Lucy (1839 - 1910)
Credit notes: Purchased with the aid of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 1992

Details

Date: c.1863-64
Dimensions: 15.2 x 15.2
Object Type: ceramic
Material: earthenware tiles painted in enamels
Catalogue number: C202.3
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Painter: Orrinsmith (née Faulkner), Lucy (1839 - 1910)
Credit notes: Purchased with the aid of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 1992

Details

Date: c.1863-64
Dimensions: 15.2 x 15.2
Object Type: ceramic
Material: earthenware tiles painted in enamels
Catalogue number: C202.1
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Painter: Orrinsmith (née Faulkner), Lucy (1839 - 1910)
Credit notes: Purchased with the aid of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Friends of the William Morris Gallery

Details

Object Type: printing block
Material: pearwood
Catalogue number: R593
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Manufacturer: Barrett's of Bethnal Green Road
Credit notes: Gift of John Lewis Partnership, 1980

This printing wood block with used to print Morris & Co.’s designs onto cotton and was made by the firm of Barrett, 249 Bethnal Green Road. William Morris’s original drawing, or those of his other chief designer’s, would be transferred onto a pearwood surface using tracing paper. Morris would check all the blocks for accuracy before the pattern was carved into the surface by Barrett’s carvers. Each block was cut to match a different colour of the design and had to register correctly to ensure the pattern was printed accurately. Small pins were inserted in the edge of the block which when printed left tiny dots of colour. This allowed the printer to line the blocks up in the right place.

At Merton Abbey the cloth was stretched over a blanket underlay on one of the long tables in the printing shop. The printer would press the printing block into a dye-pad and then lay it into position on the fabric. The block was then tapped with a mall (a led weighted mallet) to ensure an even impression on the cloth. The printer then lifted the block, applied more colour and repeated the process down the whole length of the fabric. By this time the first colour had dried, allowing the application of second colour.

Details

Date: 4.8.1893
Object Type: book
Catalogue number: K9
Publisher: Kelmscott Press | 1891 | 1898
Author: More, Thomas, Sir (1478 - 1535)
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Editor: Ellis, Frederick Startridge (1830 - 1901)
Retailer: Reeves & Turner
Credit notes: Probably presented by Miss Demain Saunders, 1950

Book by Sir Thomas More. Reprinted from the 2nd edition of Ralph Robinson’s translation, with a foreword by William Morris. Edited by F.S. Ellis. Printed on paper with ‘Flower’ watermark in Chaucer type in black and red, with reprinted title in Troy type in Black. Borders and initials designed by Morris. Pages xiv (including Morris’s foreword and reprint of original title) + 282 pages + colophon (the first designed by Morris for Kelmscott Press). Dated 4 August 1893 (issued 8 September 1893). Limp vellum binding with silk ties 8vo.

Details

Date: 19.1.1898
Object Type: book
Material: paper
Catalogue number: K694
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Maker: Catterson-Smith, Robert (1853 - 1938)
Maker: Hooper, William Harcourt (1834 - 1912)
Printer: Kelmscott Press | 1891 | 1898
Publisher: Kelmscott Press | 1891 | 1898
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1954

The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs is an epic poem by William Morris, first published in 1876. The first refernce to a Kelmscott Press’s edition is found in the Press’s Secretary Sydney Cockerell’s diary on 5 November 1891 where he mentions “Saw … a trial page of Sigurd”. The following year, Morris was proposing it should be an illustrated folio and by 1895 it was announced as being in preparation in the lists by the Kelmscott Press. The folio was intended to be printed in Troy type with 25 illustrations by Burne-Jones, the number of these later being increased to 40. Burne-Jones was however reluctant to illustrate the book and made slow progress on the drawings. Two trial pages were set up and four borders were designed by Morris for the book, but in the end the scheme of printing it as a folio was abandoned. Two of the borders were later used for the Kelmscott Chaucer (pp. 470-471) the remaining two were never used, though one was engraved.

After Morris’s death, 32 copies of the folio pages were privately distributed to Morris’s friends in January 1897. Cockerell persuaded Burne-Jones to supply two illustrations for a more modest edition in small folio – a drawing for one of the illustrations “Gudrun setting fire to the Palace of Atli” (appears on the penultimate page) is now in the WMG’s collection, D192. The borders used in the small folio edition were almost the last Morris designed. They had originally been made for an edition of ‘The Hill of Venus’, which was to have been written in a prose version by Morris and illustrated by Burne-Jones. The foliage of the borders was suggested, according to Cockerell, by ornament in two Psalters of the last half of the 13th century in Morris’s library at Kelmscott House (see similarities of borders with those of the Windmill Psalter). This book was finally printed in 1898, two yeras after Morris’s death and is one of 160 copies printed on paper at 6 guineas (6 were printed on vellum at 20 guineas).

Details

Date: early 1860s
Dimensions: 185.5 x 127.5
Object Type: textile
Material: wool on linen
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F390i
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance of the MGC/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 1997

This embroidered hanging was designed by William Morris and probably hung in his first home, Red House in Bexleyheath. It was most likely stitched by a small team that may have included Morris’s wife Jane and her sister Elizabeth Burden. In the early days of their marriage Morris and Jane often worked on embroideries together. They enjoyed unpicking old pieces of embroidery that they admired to learn the different stitching techniques. Morris’s enthusiasm for medieval art is clear in his early embroidery designs, such as this one. The tree, banner and bird motif was inspired by an illustration in a fifteenth-century manuscript that he had been studying in the British Museum. The French inscription, ‘Qui Bien Aime Tard Oublie’, translates as ‘who loves best forgets slowly’ and is taken from Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem ‘Parliament of Fowls’. In simple terms it means ‘one never forgets true love’.

The embroidery was one of a set of identical hangings installed at Penkill Castle in Ayrshire, Scotland by the late 1860s. The castle belonged to Alice Boyd, mistress of the painter William Bell Scott, who was closely connected to Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite circle. In a letter to Boyd in 1868, Rossetti referrers to the embroideries as “the Topsaic tapestries” a reference to Morris’s nickname ‘Topsy’. The hangings were likely an early product produced by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co after it was founded in 1861. A very similar pattern can be seen on the hanging in the background of William Morris’s only easel painting, ‘La Belle Iseult’, painted in 1858.

Details

Date: c.1895-7
Dimensions: 25 x 17.5
Object Type: drawing
Catalogue number: D192
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1954

This pencil drawing by Edward Burne-Jones was a preliminary drawing for an illustration in William Morris’s Kelmscott Press edition of Sigurd the Volsung published in January 1898. The Kelmscott Press edition of Sigurd was first proposed in November 1891. At the time Burne-Jones was already working on the illustrations for the Kelmcott Press edition of The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, but agreed to provide 25 illustrations to the Sigurd. He found the subject much less congenial than working on Chaucer and his illustrations progressed slowly. Morris’s death in October 1896 put an end to the idea of a fully illustrated folio and in the final edition as printed, only two illustrations were used, ‘The Dwelling of Volsung’ (frontispiece) and ‘Gudrun Setting Fire to the Palace of Atli’. Another drawing, similar to this one, is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Details

Date: 1874-1876
Dimensions: 88 x 582
Object Type: textile
Technique: embroidery
Catalogue number: F140d
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Maker: Bell, Margaret (1820 - 1886)
Maker: Johnson, Florence
Credit notes: Presented by Sir Hugh Bell, Bart., 1953

This embroidery was part of a frieze of five parts commissioned by Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell and his wife Margaret 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 Edward Burne-Jones c.1874-76. The exquisite embroidery was executed by the wife and daughter of Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, Margaret Bell and Florence Johnson, respectively.

Details

Date: 1874-1876
Dimensions: 96.5 x 126.4
Object Type: textile
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F140e
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Maker: Bell, Margaret (1820 - 1886)
Maker: Johnson, Florence
Credit notes: Presented by Sir Hugh Bell, Bart., 1953

This embroidery was part of a frieze of five parts commissioned by Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell and his wife Margaret 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 Edward Burne-Jones c.1874-76 (see D187). The exquisite embroidery was executed by the wife and daughter of Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, Margaret Bell and Florence Johnson, respectively.

Details

Date: 1874-1876
Dimensions: 92.1 x 123.2
Object Type: textile
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F140b
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Maker: Bell, Margaret (1820 - 1886)
Maker: Johnson, Florence
Credit notes: Presented by Sir Hugh Bell, Bart., 1953

This embroidery was part of a frieze of five parts commissioned by Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell and his wife Margaret 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 Edward Burne-Jones c.1874-76 (see D187). The exquisite embroidery was executed by the wife and daughter of Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, Margaret Bell and Florence Johnson, respectively.

Details

Dimensions: 15.2. x 15.2
Object Type: ceramic
Material: earthenware tiles painted in enamels
Catalogue number: C82b
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Painter: Orrinsmith (née Faulkner), Lucy (1839 - 1910)
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs L Hitch, 1954

This series of 7 tiles depicts the story of Cinderella. It was designed by Edward Burne-Jones and painted by Lucy Faulkner. Burne-Jones account book for September 30, 1862 refers to : “10 designs for tiles, Cinderella paid £7.10s” which may well be the set made for Myles Birket Foster’s house, The Hill at Witley Surrey. The tiles were intended for an overmantel panel and four two tile figures, the original designs are in the V&A and Fitzwilliam. This set shows the colours having run during the firing, suggesting they were either trial samplers or rejects and kept by Lucy Faulkner. Other sets exist in the Gallery’s collection (WMG202), the Walker Art Gallery and the Sanford and Helen Berger Collection, The Huntington Library in California.

Details

Date: 1893
Dimensions: 20.6 x 14.7 x 2.6 (closed)
Object Type: book
Catalogue number: K446
Manufacturer: Kelmscott Press | 1891 | 1898
Author: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882
Credit notes: Transfer from Walthamstow Reference Library, 1953

Ballads and Narrative Poems was written by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Published by the Kelmscott Press in 1893, 310 were printed on paper and a further six on paper. The book is printed on paper and is set in Golden type in red and black ink. The woodcut frontispiece was designed by William Morris, along with the title, borders and initials. Ballads and Narrative Poems was part of a two volume set of works by Rossetti. A few months after this first volume was produced, the Kelmscott Press published Rossetti’s Sonnets and Lyrical Poems (K447).

Details

Date: c.1900
Dimensions: 188 x 296
Object Type: textile
Material: silk on hessian canvas
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F101
Designer: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Maker: Battye (née Bibby), Frances, Mrs (15.12.1846)
Credit notes: Donated by Miss M Audrey Battye and Mrs Bibby, 1950

The design for this embroidery was commissioned from Morris & Co. by Mrs Frances Battye. It was designed by May Morris and worked by Battye herself. Frances Battye (neé Bibby) was the daughter of James Jenkinson Bibby, a self-made millionaire and founder of the Bibby Shiping Line. She married her husband, a barrister called Richard Battye in 1866 however he died just a few years later in 1873. The Battye family coat of arms was incorporated into this embroidery. Two of May’s designs for this embroidery are in the V&A’s collection (E.30 and 30A-1940).

Frances Batteye was a skilled embroider and completed this large hanging with the help of her two daughters, Audrey and Norah. She also completed two other hangings around 1898, now in the V&A (T.369&A-1982).

Details

Date: c. 1863-4
Dimensions: 140 x 70
Object Type: design
Material: pencil, sepia and watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: A211
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: Cecil French bequest, 1954

This design is one of a number prepared by Edward Burne-Jones based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘Legend of Good Women’, intended for an embroidered frieze for John Ruskin’s home. Burne-Jones had previously visited this subject in a series of tile panels produced for Morris & Co. in around 1861, and Morris himself had designed a series of wall hangings on the theme, intended for Red House, three of which are now located in the chapel at Castle Howard, North Yorkshire.

Here, Thisbe holds a sword and a mulberry leaf from the tree under which she is supposed to meet Pyramus, her lover. Before they can meet, she is frightened away by a ferocious lion, dropping her mantle as she flees. Pyramus arrives and, seeing the mantle, which has been torn and bloodied by the lion, he assumes the worst and kills himself with his sword. Thisbe soon returns to find her lover dead, and in her grief turns his sword upon herself.

The embroidery project was to be carried out by Burne-Jones’ wife, Georgiana, and the pupils of a girls’ school at Winnington Hall, Cheshire, run by Miss Bell, a friend of Ruskin. The work was never completed, however, as Georgiana remarked, “the joint embroidery scheme proved impracticable, and the drawings alone remained as a symbol of loving intentions”. These intentions did prove fruitful in the end, as the designs went on to be reused in stained glass windows made for The Hill at Witley, Surrey, of which six are now located in the Combination Room at Peterhouse College, Cambridge.

Details

Date: c.1876
Object Type: photograph
Catalogue number: PP1/Z521
Sitter: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)

Photograph of William Morris wearing an artist smock and soft felt hat, c.1876. Morris had an unconventional dress sense. At university he went through a phase of only wearing purple trousers. In later years his shirts and jackets were made exclusively from indigo blue cloth. His willingness to wear a working smock in this portrait reveals a great deal about his attitude to manual labour. Unlike many reformers, Morris was a hands-on craftsman. Practical workwear such as this was as much a profession of his affinity with working people as it was a practical choice, protecting his normal clothes from the dye vats and printing ink in his factory at Merton Abbey.

Details

Date: designed 1883
Dimensions: 56 x 54
Object Type: wallpaper
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: B52b
Designer: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Manufacturer: Jeffrey & Co.
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1955

During her first three years working for Morris & Co, May Morris designed three wallpapers. ‘Honeysuckle’ was her most popular and enduring pattern and its light and uplifting design proved very successful for the firm. The design is based on a net structure of untamed woody stems, small curling leaves in two tones and honeysuckle flowers set against a plain background and was printed in four colourways. The repeat is 54cm.

Until recently questions surround who originally designed ‘Honeysuckle’, with some arguing that May’s father, William Morris was in fact the chief designer of the wallpaper. This is based on its earliest known attribution from 1890 by the writer of an article in The Woman’s World where it was credited to William Morris. However it was not unusual at this time for the designs of both May and Henry Dearle, Morris & Co.’s chief designer, to be credited to the firm’s more famous owner: the association tended to make the products more commercially viable. The first time the design is attributed to May appeared twenty years after The Womans World article in the Morris & Co. wallpaper catalogue from about 1909 and is confirmed in a letter by May.

Details

Dimensions: 28 x 22.7
Object Type: photograph
Material: photograph
Catalogue number: P754
Photographer: Walker | Emery | 1851 | 1933
Credit notes: Presented by Miss Dorothy Walker, 1955

This photograph captures the dining room of Kelmscott House in Hammersmith, home of the Morris family. Dominating the space is a magnificent 17th-century Iranian ‘Vase’ carpet, dramatically draped across the wall and ceiling. The carpet was given to the V&A by Jane Morris when she left Kelmscott House in 1897. In front stands a Cypress wood chest displaying examples of Iranian metalwork, including two brass peacocks that are now at Kelmscott Manor. Above the doorway hangs a portrait of Jane Morris by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Details

Date: 1876
Dimensions: 94.5 x 66.2
Object Type: design
Catalogue number: BLA464
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)

This design is for a printed textile, ‘African Marigold’. The design features small marigolds, with larger stylised lilies and curling ribbons of acanthus leaves. You can see that alterations have been made and lines have been rubbed out. Morris drew, revised and finally coloured a pattern on a single sheet of paper, believing that a harmonious piece of work should be done in one attempt. The design is stencilled on reverse with title, Morris & Co. address at Merton Abbey and numbered ‘No.1’.

African Marigold was first printed as chintz by Thomas Wardle of Leek. Two samples are held in WMG: F5 (green on natural ground) and BlF256 (red on natural ground).

Details

Date: 1867
Dimensions: 54 x 37
Object Type: watercolour
Material: watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: BrW48
Attributed artist: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882
Attributed artist: Dunn, Henry Treffry, 1838, 1899
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1935

This is one of three watercolour replicas painted by Rossetti and assistants of his original oil painting, for which the model was Alexa Wilding, whereas here the model is Ellen Smith, a laundry maid who Rossetti ‘discovered’ in Chelsea.

This painting was largely painted under Rossetti’s supervision by H. T. Dunn, who became his studio assistant in 1867. It is probable the finishing touches were added by Rossetti himself, as the quality of the execution is superior to most of Dunn’s works. The couplet of poetry inscribed on the frame is from a French ballad, pledging happiness by day and night to the unseen partner of the loving cup.

Details

Date: 1864
Dimensions: 58.3 x 66
Object Type: glass
Material: stained, painted, leaded glass
Catalogue number: C198
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Designer: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915
Manufacturer: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.

This stained glass panel is from a series illustrating Chaucer’s ‘Legend of Goode Wimmen’. Amor (left) in white robe with painted yellow flowers, with red wings, holding a sheaf of arrows and clasping the hand of Alcestis (right), in a green robe, with long golden hair and a pearl ornamented crown. The two figures stand in an enclosed garden against a background of a city, the walls of which bear the inscriptions ‘Imago Amoris’ (left) and’ Imago Martyris’ (right) in Gothic lettering, within a running border of Tudor roses and stems.

It is possible that the Amor & Alcestis panel might be part of the original series made for Myles Birket Foster, which is known to have been dispersed at some time between the wars. It is certainly a very early version of the design, other examples of which are at the V&A, at Peterhouse in Cambridge, and in private collections.

Details

Object Type: printing block
Material: pearwood
Catalogue number: R477
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Manufacturer: Barrett's of Bethnal Green Road
Credit notes: Gift of John Lewis Partnership, 1980

Details

Date: 1886
Dimensions: 101.6 x 68.6
Object Type: design
Material: watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: A30
Artist: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1940

One of the more ‘formal’ of Morris’s 1880s wallpapers, ‘Lily and Pomegranate’ resembles some of the historic textiles which Morris studied at the South Kensington Museum. The dotted background is a favourite device of Morris’s , found in both his wallpapers and textiles, and one which he enjoyed painting in his designs. When a friend asked him why he did not hand over such mechanical work to an assistant, Morris replied ‘After taking all the trouble to draw it, do you think I’d be such a fool as not to do the dots?’

Details

Date: c.1880s - 1890s
Dimensions: 22.8 x 15.4
Object Type: textile
Material: silks and gold thread on linen
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F337
Designer: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Maker: Morris, Jenny (1861 - 1935)
Credit notes: Purchased 1986

This bag was designed and made by William Morris’s two daughters, May and Jenny. It was designed by May to contain a ‘Psalter’ (a book of psalms), from William Morris’s extensive collection of medieval manuscripts. The bag is made of indigo linen and embroidered by Jenny in silk with the word “Psalterium” in Gothic script. Stitches include back stitch, stem stitch, long & short stitch, loop stitch, satin stitch, couching and buttonhole stitch round edges with words filled in with chain stitch, pomegranate is padded laid work, surface couched in gold thread.

Details

Date: c.1863-64
Dimensions: 60.5 x 127
Object Type: ceramic
Material: tin-glazed earthenware
Technique: hand-painted
Catalogue number: C75
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Maker: Orrinsmith (née Faulkner), Lucy (1839 - 1910)
Retailer: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Credit notes: WMG Purchase, 1953

This tile panel depicts the children’s fairytale ‘Beauty and the Beast’. It was originally installed above a fire place in a bedroom of the artist Myles Birket Foster, at his home The Hill, Witley, Surrey. The scroll on the surrounding Swan tiles is inscribed with a description of the story, ‘How a Prince who by enchantment was under the form of a beast became a man again by the love of a certain maiden’.

The panel was designed by Edward Burne-Jones. The bear was based on sketches specially drawn for him by Philip Webb, who probably observed the animals at Regents Park Zoological Gardens. Lucy Faulkner, the sister of Charles Faulkner, one of the partners of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. painted Burne-Jones designs by hand onto the tiles.

Burne-Jones also designed a similar panel of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ for Birket Foster’s house (now in the V&A Museum, London).

Details

Date: Designed 1875-1880
Dimensions: 101.6 x 79.4
Object Type: textile
Material: woven wool
Technique: machine-woven
Catalogue number: N14
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Manufacturer: Heckmondwike Manufacturing Co. Yorkshire
Credit notes: Presented by Worcestershire County Museum, Hartlebury Castle, Kidderminster, 1970

Kidderminster machine wool carpet with design of artichoke heads, stylised anemones and other flowers in an overall net pattern, with a border showing the same motifs and a narrow band of small pairs of birds and flowers, in green, pink and pale blue on dark blue ground. Section from a larger carpet. For original design see WMG: BLA449.

Details

Date: 1908
Dimensions: 29 x 23 x 26
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze
Catalogue number: BrS11
Artist: Lanteri, Edouard (1848 - 1918)
Sitter: Richmond, William Blake, Sir, 1842, 1921
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Edward (Edouard) Lanteri, (1848-1917), was born in France. He trained in Paris and came to London in 1872 to work as a studio assistant to Joseph Edgar Boehm. From 1880, he taught sculpture at the South Kensington Art Schools (later the Royal College of Art) where he was Professor of Modelling from 1900 to 1910. This bronze sculpture depicts Sir William Blake Richmond (1842-1921), a painter and sculptor and influential figure in the early Arts and Crafts Movement. In 1878, Richmond succeeded his friend and mentor John Ruskin as the Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford. Richmond was elected to the Royal Academy in 1895, where he served as Professor of Painting from 1895 to 1899 and from 1909 to 1911, he continued to exhibit with the Academy until 1916 and was elected Senior RA at the Academy in 1920.

The model for this bronze is also in the Gallery’s collection, se BrS27.

Details

Date: c.1890s
Dimensions: 127 x 163.8
Object Type: textile
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F205
Designer and maker: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Credit notes: Presented by Mary Annie Sloane, 1962

Wrap or cloak made from fine navy blue woven wool cloth with broad band of Chinese embroidery around neck and down one side along front opening and around cuffs and sleeves with pink chrysanthemums and butterflies. Coloured silk and metal thread worked in satin, stem, long and short, French knots and running stitches. The wrap is thought to have been made by May Morris and the embroidery is likely to be 19th century and of Chinese origin. It was acquired by May’s friend the artist Mary Sloane at the Kelmscott Manor Auction in 1938, Lot 124, for £2.6s.

Details

Object Type: printing block
Material: pearwood
Catalogue number: R596
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Manufacturer: Barrett's of Bethnal Green Road
Credit notes: Gift of John Lewis Partnership, 1980

Details

Date: 1891
Object Type: photograph
Material: photograph
Technique: photographic cartoon
Catalogue number: BLPhA527b
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: Barking Loan

The Summons is the first of the series: ‘The Knights of the Round Table Summoned to the Quest by a Strange Damsel’ of six narrative panels relating to the story of the Holy Grail which was designed by Burne-Jones in 1891-1894 , for a series of tapestries woven by Morris & Co. at Merton Abbey for Stanmore Hall, Middlesex. Photographic enlargements to the same size as the final tapestry were made from Burne-Jones final designs, and these enlarged cartoons were then worked over by the artist in ink, with some sepia and white heightening to bring out contrasts.
The full size cartoons for the series are held in the William Morris Gallery (BLPhA527a-e, BLPh528a-b, BLPh529, BLPh530a-c, BLPh531)
The full series of tapestries is in the collection of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (M60’80).

Details

Date: designed c.1876
Dimensions: 58.5 x 59.1
Object Type: design
Material: pen and ink on paper
Catalogue number: A1061
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: Presented by Arthur Todd, 2002

William Morris based the design on two Italian seventeenth-century lacis-work panels acquired by the South Kensington Museum in 1875. The paper is watermarked 1876. Lacis is a handmade net onto which a design is darned. An example worked up by May as an embroidery is in the William Morris Gallery’s collection (F154). Another version of the Flowerpot design is in the William Morris Society (watercolour and pencil on paper).

‘Flowerpot’ was available to buy in kit form from Morris & Co.; as a tracing pattern to be embroidered at home, partly started, or as finished version worked by the Firm’s embroidery department. According to the Firm’s ‘Embroidery Day Book 1894-1896’ (V&A), a tracing of ‘Flowerpot’ cost 5 shillings, whilst a started version on cotton or linen cost 14 shillings. The square shape meant it was adapted into cushions and mounted into firescreens. Other worked examples are in collections of V&A, National Museums Liverpool, Birmingham Museum and the Embroiderers’ Guild.

Details

Date: 03.02.1889
Dimensions: 16 x 11
Object Type: photograph
Material: photograph
Catalogue number: P660
Sitter: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs Charles Bramley from her husband's collection, 1962

This striking photograph of May Morris was taken on 3 February 1889 at Hammersmith Terrace, London. Seated with her guitar in front of a curtain made from Morris & Co. fabric, May was likely rehearsing for a Socialist League performance.

The photograph is one of a series taken that day, including one of her standing (see WMG:P652) as well as group photograph (held at The Wilson, Cheltenham) capturing May alongside Henry Halliday Sparling, Emery Walker, and George Bernard Shaw—all active members of the Socialist League. From 1885, May took part in Socialist plays and entertainments, often performing with Eleanor Marx and Shaw. She also ran a choir and remained a keen guitarist throughout her life.

May understood that music, theatre, and social gatherings were powerful tools for bringing people into the Socialist movement. She later wrote two plays: Lady Griselda’s Dream (1898) and White Lies (1903).

Details

Date: 1892
Dimensions: 21.5 x 15 x 2.5 (closed)
Object Type: book
Catalogue number: K445
Manufacturer: Kelmscott Press | 1891 | 1898
Author: Mackail, John William , Professor (1859 - 1945)
Credit notes: Transfer from Walthamstow Reference Library, 1953

8vo, stiff vellum with brown silk ties in green paper slipcase, golden type in black and red ink, ex-libris T. Hugh Cobb on front pastedown, W. Morris woodcut title and initials, uncut, some leaves unopened.

Written anew for children by J.W. Mackail. 200 paper copies, none on vellum. J.W. Mackail was Edward Burne-Jones’ son-in-law and later Morris’ biographer. He was also a socialist, Virgil scholar, professor of poetry at Oxford and president of the British Academy.

Details

Date: designed 1876, manufactured post 1917
Dimensions: 64.7 x 96.5
Object Type: textile
Material: printed cotton
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: F366
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1994

This printed fabric shows how Morris learnt from contemporary cottons imported from India, particularly in the strongly contrasting reds and blues, and the way the three-dimensional forms of flowers and leaves could be transformed into flat patterns.

Morris admired the fact that Indian cottons were hand-printed with natural, rather than chemical, dyes. In Britain knowledge of how to produce dyes from plants and vegetables was fast disappearing; most textile manufacturers found chemical dyes cheaper and easier to use. But Morris felt natural colours had a richness lacking in chemical dyes, and spent ten years working with a Staffordshire silk dyer named Thomas Wardle to revive their use.

Seven printing blocks (the pattern required four blocks) used to print this fabric are in the Gallery’s collection.

Details

Date: Designed 1876, printed 1877-1917
Dimensions: 94 x 98
Object Type: textile
Material: cotton
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: F401
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Manufacturer: Wardle and Co. (1872 - 1908)
Retailer: Morris & Co. Decorators Ltd, 449 Oxford Street, London
Credit notes: Presented by Michael Whiteway, 1998

Snakeshead was designed by William Morris in 1876. It was printed by Thomas Wardle at his factory in Leek, Wardle continued to print this design for Morris & Co., after Morris opened his own textile printing factory at Merton Abbey. The pink and blue on pink ground is colourway no. 1573. The selvedge is printed with Morris 7 Co’s Oxford Street address.

Details

Dimensions: 3.0 x 11.8 x 5.6
Object Type: furniture
Technique: carved
Catalogue number: H4
Artist: Unknown
Owner: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: Presented by Dr. Robert Steele, 1942

A snuff box used by William Morris of unknown, possibly Indian, origin. May Morris in her “Introduction to the Collected Works of William Morris” vol. XIII p.xix records: “He (Morris) took pleasure in all sorts of beautiful and precious boxes, and he prized certain trinkets, keepsakes from friends, such as an inlaid snuff box of choice work, though his everyday snuff-box was a somewhat plain silver one, and he carried his tobacco in a shabby little home-made bag of blue chintz – sometimes, until found and impounded by one of us, in a bank-bag tied with a bit of tape.”

The silver snuff box was given to Philip Webb by Jane Morris after Morris’s death. The blue tobacco pouch is in the Gallery’s collection (H28).

Details

Dimensions: 95.3 x 68.5 x 78.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: turned ebonised wood
Catalogue number: G38
Designer: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Owner: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: Presented by Joan and N. Larkin, 1967

According to a letter in the Gallery files from the donor, Mrs Joan Larkin, (4th September, 1967) this chair (G38) originally belonged to the Morrises, and was presented to Dr Robert Steele by May Morris, daughter of William Morris. Robert Steele was May Morris’s executor, and after his death it passed to his family and finally to his grand-daughters, the Misses J and N Larkin, who presented it in 1967. A handwritten green tag, signed by Miss Larkin describes the armchair as “used by William Morris up to time of his death and for a great many years before..” and described in a letter by Joan Larken thus: “..it was a favourite armchair for W.M., he used to read over his writings and proofs therein as recalled by my grandfather,…Miss May Morris passed it on to him…” The chair was damaged in the Blitz (during the Second World War).

Originally the chair was upholstered in Morris ‘Utrecht’ velvet in green for the deep-buttoned back and seat cushions and arm pads; however it was re-upholstered in 1979-80 by the Gallery in Liberty’s reproduction Moris ‘Daffodil’ chintz in dark blue.

Details

Date: c.1857
Dimensions: 134.6
Object Type: textile
Material: cotton
Technique: woven
Catalogue number: H12
Attributed designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Owner: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Owner: Morris (née Burden) | Jane | 1839 | 1914
Credit notes: Presented by Central School of Arts and Crafts (London County Council), 1954.

This woven white cotton sideless gown is part of a group of costume items that also includes a dress and cloak, both also in the collection. They were all reputed to have been designed by William Morris for use as costume props to be worn by models, notably his wife Jane, at the time of the decoration of the Oxford Union murals in 1857. The gown has been linked to a 1858 study by Morris for ‘La Belle Iseult’, his only easel painting which is now in the Tate collection.

Details

Date: Designed c.1888
Dimensions: 65 x 65
Object Type: textile
Material: silk and linen
Technique: hand-loom jacquard woven
Catalogue number: F406
Attributed designer: Dearle, John Henry (1859 - 1932)
Attributed designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Miss A McEwan, 1998

Described by May Morris as ‘fit for a queen’s chamber’, this luxurious fabric is one of the last textile designs attributed to her father. Woven at Merton Abbey on hand-activated Jacquard looms, its shimmering texture is created by the contrast between the linen ground and silk pattern. In addition to its use within wealthy homes, Golden Bough was also popular for church furnishing, a profitable aspect of Morris’s business.

Details

Date: c.1862
Dimensions: 9 x 36
Object Type: design
Material: ink and watercolour
Catalogue number: BlA445
Designer: Morris & Co.

Four quarry designs arranged vertically and framed with a black border each depicting a single stylized plant. Top: Five bluebells springing from single stem with rounded ground leaves. Middle top: Three four-petaled flowers with spear-like leaves springing from central point on ground with leaves. Middle bottom: Five four-petaled flowers on long stalks springing from tuft of grass with two grass fronds behind. Bottom: three circular flowers with pointed cleaves springing from central ground point with leaves. On back is written “QP73” with H (circled) Haddingston 1894, A (circled) Ambleside 1894 and ME. Little Hollingsbury 1908.

Details

Date: 22.07.1869
Object Type: archival
Material: paper
Catalogue number: J849
Publisher: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Credit notes: Gift of Francis Leach, 1957

This printed receipt is for a payment of 19 shillings from Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. to F.R. Leach & Co, the decorator and stained glass painters. The receipt is dated 22nd July 1869 for ‘Man’s time at Liverpool’. During this period Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. were working on stained glass windows for St John the Baptist Church in Tuebrook, Liverpool. The church was designed by the Gothic Revival architect G.F. Bodley, with the highly decorated interior of the church a collaboration between Bodley, Charles Kempe, F.R. Leach and Morris.

Details

Date: reg 15 April 1875, printed 1917-1940
Dimensions: 184.8 x 97.2
Object Type: textile
Material: cotton
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: F211
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Mary Annie Sloane bequest, 1962

Tulip was designed by William Morris in 1875 and manufactured by Wardle & Co. in Leek, Staffordshire. The design features horizontal rows of variagated tulips and acanthus leaves. The Gallery holds the original design and wood blocks used to print the cotton. Morris advised would-be designers to create forms of flowers and leaves ‘that are obvioulsy fit for printing with a block; to mask the construction of our pattern enough from counting the repeats‘ (Some Hints on Pattern Designing, 1880)

Details

Date: 1875-1880
Dimensions: 52.5 x 35.5
Object Type: design
Material: pencil, ink and watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: BLA480
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)

Kidderminster carpets are made by hand weaving two or three fabric layers together to form a single thick, flat cloth. Morris & Co.’s Kidderminster carpets were woven by the Heckmondwicke Manufacturing Company and were available in two or three ply. This design for Wreath was a three ply carpet. Morris was dissatisfied with by Heckmondwicke’s attempts to transfer his designs on to point paper to prepare it for the loom so he did the work himself, later training his own staff to achieve the quality he desired.

Details

Date: c. 1863
Dimensions: 88.9 x 50.8 x 45.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: wood and rush seat
Technique: painted wood
Catalogue number: G77
Manufacturer: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Attributed designer: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882
Credit notes: WMG Purchase, 1994

In style and construction this armchair complements Morris & Co’s range of ‘Sussex’ chairs, also based on traditonal types, which the Firm manufactured from the mid-1860s. The earliest known illustrations of the ‘Rossetti’ chair date from mid-July 1863, where it appears in photographs taken by William Downey in the garden of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s house, Tudor House, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, of William Bell Scott, Rossetti and Ruskin. See the chair in the right corner of the room in Henry Treffry Dunn’s gouache of 1882 (National Portrait Gallery) of Rossetti reading his ‘Ballads & Poems’ to Theodore Watts-Dunton in the drawing room at Tudor House, 1882, which has red-painted decoration similar to this example. The style suggests origins in French provincial furniture but possibly Rossetti urged the firm to produce chairs in a similar style to the French example he posessed.
Made by Morris & Co. as part of its rush-seated furniture range, the chair continued to be made well into the 20th century, see the Morris & Co. catalogue c. 1911 ‘Specimens of Upholstered Furniture’ where it was priced at 16/6. The examples with additional red painted decoration, as G77, are uncommon and were probably made to special order; a few green-stained examples are also known.

Details

Date: c.1860s
Dimensions: 86.4 x 49 x 41.3
Object Type: furniture
Material: turned, ebonised wood with rush seat
Catalogue number: G27a
Owner: Brown, Ford Madox, 1821, 1893
Manufacturer: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Retailer: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1957

The William Morris Gallery holds a variety of chairs and settles from the Morris & Co. Sussex range. This example with plain, not turned rails is considered to be one of the earliest. The chair, one of a pair with G27b, was owned by Ford Madox Brown, one of the original founders of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. The pair of chairs were purchased from the sale of his effects by his friend and executor, R. S. Garnett. Garnett’s daughter, Mrs R. Nickalls, later inherited the chairs and sold them to the William Morris Gallery in 1957.

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