The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs

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: 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.1870-1879
Dimensions: 12.7 x 12.7
Object Type: ceramic
Technique: hand-painted
Catalogue number: C220ii
Maker: Morris & Co.
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1997

‘Poppy’ was designed by William Morris, this version was painted on a Dutch blank, probably at Morris & Co’s workshop. The design was later produced for the firm by William De Morgan, who produced the design in more vibrant colour combinations. William De Morgan’s sister-in-law Mrs A.M.W. Stirling, recalled that he had said, ‘Morris never made but three designs for my execution, the Tulip and Trellis, the Poppy and another – I forget the name. I never could work except by myself and in my own manner.’ This example, in softer colours was possibly painted by Kate Faulkner, and is similar to her ‘Peony’ tile she designed and painted for the Firm.

Details

Date: c.1870-1879
Dimensions: 12.7 x 12.7
Object Type: ceramic
Technique: hand-painted
Catalogue number: C220i
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Maker: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1997

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. 1870
Dimensions: 15.2 x 15.2
Object Type: ceramic
Catalogue number: C267
Designer: De Morgan, William (1839 - 1917)
Maker: De Morgan, William (1839 - 1917)
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance from Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 2009

This design is credited to William Morris, but the tile was made for both Morris & Co. and William De Morgan’s firm. Morris and De Morgan met in 1863 and there was a large degree of overlap in their design, production and sale processes. The Firm sold products of its own design and also those by De Morgan; by the 1880s De Morgan was the main supplier to the Morris shop. Both De Morgan and Dutch manufacturers also made tiles after designs by Morris. The ‘Artichoke’ design was a popular choice and the pale blue colourway (e.g. C266) was still made well into the 20th century. Morris had this design installed in the fireplace at Kelmscott Manor.

Details

Date: 1872-1881
Dimensions: 15.2 x 15.2
Object Type: ceramic
Technique: slip-covered and hand-painted
Catalogue number: C15
Maker: De Morgan, William (1839 - 1917)
Credit notes: Presented by Miss P. Garrett Fawcett, 1938

Tile is painted in ruby lustre on white slip with four-square design of alternating pattern of a rose head and a leaf scroll, the former against a ruby ground, the latter against a white ground. De Morgan produced this tile during his Chelsea period (1871-1881), when he worked from his home in Cheyne Walk. The tile is painted on a blank, possibly from Poole Pottery- another tile with this design is in The De Morgan Foundation and stamped with Poole Pottery’s mark.

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

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: c.1919-1923
Dimensions: 185.4 x 94
Object Type: textile
Material: silk
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F120
Maker: Tooth , Helen Lucas, Lady (4.6.1853 - 17.08.1942)
Designer: Dearle, John Henry (1859 - 1932)
Credit notes: Presented by Lady Durand, 1952

Embroidered panel showing a lemon tree with two birds; honeysuckle growing around the trunk; primroses and poppies growing at the foot of the tree. Coloured silks on cream silk, worked in long and short stitch, stem stitch, French knots and satin stitch.. Designed by John Henry Dearle for Morris & Co. who provided the silks; one of six panels worked by Lady Helen Lucas Tooth for the drawing room of her daughter’s house at Somerfield Keynes near Cirencester. The other panels are also in the Gallery’s collection.

Details

Date: designed 1884, printed c.1940-50
Dimensions: 58.4 x 58.4
Object Type: wallpaper
Catalogue number: B34c
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Manufacturer: Arthur Sanderson and Sons Ltd
Credit notes: Presented by Arthur Sanderson & Sons Ltd, 1950

William Morris frequently used tulips in his design for fabric and wallpaper. Here the small wild tulips form a mid ground with a foreground of ribbons of larger peonies intertwining with scrolling stems. Morris’s daughter May wrote how the character of this design was ‘all “Kelmscott” to me: the peony and the wild tulip are two of the richest blossomings of the spring garden at the Manor”. Kelmscott Manor was the Morris family’s country home in Oxfordshire.

Morris registered the design for ‘Wild Tulip’ wallpaper on 21st November 1884. The repeat is 64.8 x 26.7. This example in orange was printed by the firm Arthur Sanderson & Sons, after they bought the original woodblocks and designs from Morris & Co. when they closed in 1940.

Details

Date: designed 1862, printed c.1950
Dimensions: 100.5 x 52.3
Object Type: wallpaper
Catalogue number: B9cii
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Manufacturer: Arthur Sanderson and Sons Ltd
Credit notes: Presented by Arthur Sanderson & Sons Ltd, 1950

William Morris designed Fruit (also referred to as Pomegranate) in 1862 and it is one of his earliest designs for wallpaper. The pattern is formed of pomegranates, oranges and lemons surrounded by foliage and flowers. The original design is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (E.299-2009) and included olive branches which were removed in the finished wallpaper. Morris first tried printing wallpaper at his studio in Red Lion Square in oil colours from etched zinc blocks. Unsuccessful he ordered traditional pearwood printing blocks to be cut for ‘Fruit’ and production was then subcontracted out to Jeffrey & Co. of Islington, which specialised in the production of hand-printed wallpapers and continued to print the firm’s wallpapers.

This version was manufactured c.1950 by the firm Arthur Sanderson & Sons, the firm acquired the original woodblocks from Morris & co. when they closed in 1940.

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.1873-75
Dimensions: 44 x 39
Object Type: drawing
Material: chalk on paper
Catalogue number: D186
Artist: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882
Sitter: Wilding, Alexa (1845 - 25.04.1884)
Credit notes: Cecil French Bequest, 1954

The subject of this drawing, The Blessed Damozel, is taken from the artist Gabriel Dante Rossetti’s poem by the same title, which was first published in February 1850 in the Pre-Raphaelite magazine The Germ. The subject is a young woman who has died and waits for her lover to join her in heaven. The poem’s opening lines are: The blessed damozel looked out/From the gold bar of heaven/ Her eyes were deeper than the depth/ Of waters stilled at even.

This study was for an oil painting (now in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, USA). The painting was commissioned from Rossetti by the Scottish politician and art patron William Graham in 1871, and completed in 1877. The model was Alexa Wilding, a favourite of Rossetti who modelled for many of his paintings.

Details

Date: 1896
Dimensions: 18.8 x 14.6
Object Type: photograph
Material: platinum print
Catalogue number: PhJ901xxxii
Photographer: Evans, Frederick H. (26.06.1853 - 24.06.1943)
Credit notes: Gift of Mary Sloane, 1962

William Morris and Frederick Henry Evans had shared interests in typography, literature and architecture. Evans was a talented photographer and had supplied Morris with lantern slides for his lectures on architecture. In 1896 Morris invited Evans 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.

Evans was a skilled architectural photographer, in this series he captures the unspoiled craftsmanship and organic feel that first attracted Morris to Kelmscott. After Morris’s death he assembled a number of these images in a memorial portfolio.

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.

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 1887, printed c.1940-50
Dimensions: 66.7 x 49.2
Object Type: wallpaper
Catalogue number: B22a
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Manufacturer: Arthur Sanderson and Sons Ltd
Credit notes: Presented by Arthur Sanderson & Sons Ltd, 1950

‘Willow Bough’ is one of William Morris’s most enduring wallpaper designs, in continuous production since 1887. The pattern consists of willow branches that form a diagonal branch pattern over the plain background. As he eloquently expressed in his lecture ‘Hints on Pattern Designing’, a successful design should combine a degree of abstraction with a gentle reminder of the outdoors rather than a few ‘sham-real boughs and flowers, casting sham-real shadows on your walls, with little hint of anything beyond the Covent Garden in them?’. In 1874, Morris had designed a similar wallpaper called ‘Willow’, a more simple stylised representation of willow branches, ‘Willow Bough’ is a more naturalistic version of this earlier pattern with curling leaves in tones of green.

This example was printed by Arthur Sanderson & Sons who purchased Morris & Co’s designs and printing blocks when the firm closed in 1940.

Details

Date: c.1868
Dimensions: 10.7 x 16.6
Object Type: print
Technique: wood engraving
Catalogue number: K718
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Maker: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1954

This is one of a series of illustrations to ‘The Story of Cupid and Psyche’ for the projected edition of ‘The Earthly Paradise’ begun in September 1865. The illustrations were engraved on wood by Morris and his friends and associates in the Firm. Burne-Jones did illustrations for some of the other tales in ‘The Earthly Paradise’, but the Cupid and Psyche wood engravings were the most completed part of the project which was abandoned in 1868 after trial pages, set in Basle and Caslon types at the Chiswick Press, did not prove satisfactory.

In 1881, a few copies of these sets of illustrations were made, apparently by Morris himself, by friction printing. A second series (numbering about 8 sets according to Sydney Cockerell) was pulled for Morris by Emery Walker at his premises at 16 Cliffords Inn during the Kelmscott Press years; all these were on Kelmscott Press paper. One of these sets, given to Cockerell by Jane Morris c.1898, is bound into a single volume (K775) owned by the William Morris Gallery. Other sets are in the Pierpont Morgan Library (Gift of John M. Crawford) and the Fitzwilliam Museum (J.R. Holliday Bequest 1927).

Drawings related to the Cupid and Psyche illustrations and other tales from ‘The Earthly Paradise’ are in the following collections: A volume of 86 preliminary drawings of various sizes executed in pencil, pen and ink or chalk, is now in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (648’27). A series of 47 finished designs in pencil on tracing paper was given by Burne-Jones to Ruskin, who presented them to Oxford University in 1875 (now in the Ashmolean). Another volume of 39 drawings formerly in the collection of F.S. Ellis is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; 36 of these are on tracing paper, the remaining 3 on drawing paper; 21 relate to the Cupid and Psyche story though some are variants of scenes which were never engraved on wood; others are for the Story of Pygmalion and The Hill of Venus.

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: 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

Date: 1877
Dimensions: 55.5 x 46
Object Type: design
Catalogue number: A256
Designer and maker: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1954

This ‘predella’ panel is for the lower section of one of the four lights in a stained-glass window, depicting the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel in the upper part and scenes from their lives below in the north nave of Jesus College Chapel. The figures and scenes in this window were all by Burne-Jones, the prophets having originally been designed for a window in the east end of the north aisle of St Eustachius the Martyr, Tavistock, Devon (1875-76) where they appear in the middle tier.

Morris & Company’s eleven windows (1872-78) in the nave and transept of Jesus College Chapel, designed largely by Burne-Jones and Morris, are among the firm’s most spectacular commissions for stained glass. Burne-Jones’s Account Book (June 1877) records his charge of £10 for this cartoon.

The cartoon was subsequently used at All Hallows, Allerton, Liverpool (1879) and St. Stephen’s, Broughty Ferry, Angus, Scotland (1914).

Details

Date: 1886
Dimensions: 45.8 x 33
Object Type: design
Catalogue number: A208.1
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1953

The first of four cartoons designed and made for the window of a landing in the artist’s house in Rottingdean, Sussex. The windows (now in the V&A: C.623 to 626-1920) encapsulate the story of the Quest for the Sangreal (Holy Grail) and the failure of Sir Launcelot, depicted in this cartoon (because of his adultery with Guinevere), Sir Gawaiane, (because he fails to live up to courtly ideals) and Sir Galahad (because of his worldliness).

The cartoons were presented to Lady Leighton-Warren by the artist.

For references to the windows, see Angela Thirkell ‘Three Houses’, OUP 1931 p. 123.

Details

Date: 1895
Dimensions: 34 x 29.1
Object Type: print
Material: paper
Technique: woodcut
Catalogue number: P300
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: Presented by Miss Elinor Pugh, 1940

The illustration was originally produced as an etching for the frontispiece to Morris’ “A Dream of John Ball” (Reeves & Turner 1888); the original drawing for this is in the Gallery’s collection, D75. The motto was in lower case roman letter printed by woodcut. The illustration was again used in the Kelmscott Press edition of Morris’ book (Sept. 1892), framed in Morris frame with motto in capitals; both were woodcuts. This was also re-used for the leaflet printed in March 1894 for the Ancoats Brotherhood. The Daily Chronicle illustration was done as one of 24 illustrations by well-known artists of the day, assembled by Joseph Pennell with the object of furthering the cause of the Reform Party at the LCC elections of 1895; the title of the illustration on this occasion was ‘Labour’ and it was purported that it had been drawn especially for the Daily Chronicle.
For another copy see P300a.

Details

Date: 1864
Dimensions: 74.9 x 55.9
Object Type: design
Material: sepia wash and pencil on paper
Catalogue number: A8
Artist: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)

This design is for part of a large stained glass window in the church of All Saints, Middleton Cheney, Northamptonshire. It shows Eve (the figure on the left) walking behind the Virgin Mary in a reference to the Christian doctrine that celebrates Mary as the redeemer of Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden. The figures are set against rich foliage—typical of Morris’s talent for creating flat, decorative pattern, and small flowers are visible at their feet, perhaps inspired by Morris’s knowledge of millefleur motifs found in medieval tapestry. This design is a working drawing and is annotated with instructions, such as ‘R’ indicating the use of red glass for the inner layer of the Virgin’s robe.

Stained glass was one of William Morris’s first artistic pursuits and an important product in the early days of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co., the interior decoration firm that Morris established in 1861. Morris leased premises at 8 Red Lion Square, London, and installed a kiln for firing glass and tiles in the basement. While Morris did not make the glass himself, preferring instead to order glass from more established companies such as James Powell & Sons, he breathed new life into the revival of historic stained glass techniques that was gathering pace in the nineteenth century. Key characteristics of Morris’s stained glass are an interest in simple forms reminiscent of medieval examples, the use of earthy, jewel-like colours, and the placement of pieces of coloured, ‘pot glass’ within a lead framework, creating patterns and images through a mosaic technique, as well as painting directly on to plain glass.

The cartoon was first designed by Morris for the chancel East window church of All Saints, Middleton Cheney, Northamptonshire, erected in 1865. The cartoon of Eve and the Virgin was used only once again, at Greenock, Renfrewshire, Scotland, in the North Church (Old West Kirk) in 1865 for the window in the west gable. The window has 4 lights and tracery, with 3 tiers of subjects, Eve and the Virgin being used for a panel in the bottom tier at left. The window also used the cartoons of the Angel with cymbals and Angel with lunette dulcimer designed by Burne-Jones and originally used at Lyndhurst in Hampshire. The church was demolished in 1926 to make room for shipyard extensions, the glass being re-fitted in the new church in Campbell Street.

Details

Date: c.1892
Dimensions: 274 x 55.9
Object Type: design
Material: ink on paper
Catalogue number: A218
Designer: Morris & Co.
Artist: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938

This design by May Morris was created for Morris & Co., probably around 1892. The design is called ‘Flower Garden’ and is for a pair of large embroidered portière (hangings) with a symmetrical design of acanthus leaves, tulips, peonies, poppies, daffodils and iris with a central palmette motif. An inscription on the top reads “Summer is y-cumen in Loudly sing cucu”. This is taken from a medieval round or rota of the mid-13th century; it is also known variously as the Summer Canon and the Cuckoo Song. A finished version embroidered in silk thread on green silk damask is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1983.160a) as well as its pair with the next verse of the song: ‘Growth sed & blowth med & springeth wod nu” (1983.160b). These panels compliment another wider set of embroidered panels called Fruit Garden (designed before 1890) also in Boston (1893.160c & d). The four panels were commissioned by Mary Monroe Longyear of Marquette, Michigan, on 30 May 1892. The wider pair (Fruit Garden) cost £95 and the narrower pair (Flower Garden) £87. The panels hung either side of a reception room in Longyear’s home in Brookline, Massachusetts.

This design drawing was one of a number bequethed to the V&A by May Morris, and later transferred to the William Morris Gallery in 1954.

Details

Date: c.1885-1900
Dimensions: 52.1 x 52.1
Object Type: textile
Material: silks and gold thread on linen
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F154
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Maker: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Credit notes: Presented by Marie Lyndon Lang, 1954

‘Flowerpot’ was designed by William Morris for Morris & Co., c.1876. This fine example was embroidered by May Morris, using satin, stem, darning, herringbone, French knots and couched gold. The gold is so vibrant it is likely to be Japanese gold which doesn’t tarnish. Japanese gold thread was recommended by May Morris in her instructional book ‘Decorative Needlework’. The panel is edged with a handmade buttonhole braid. This version was gifted to May’s friend and neighbour Dorothy Walker, the daughter of the printed Emery Walker. Another example of ‘Flowerpot’, also embroidered by May is in the V&A (T.68-1939). William Morris’s original design drawing is in the Gallery’s collection (see A1061) and another version in the William Morris Society’s collection. Morris based the design on two Italian seventeenth-century lacis-work panels acquired by the South Kensington Museum in 1875. Lacis is a handmade net onto which a design is darned.

‘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 National Museums Liverpool, Birmingham Museum and the Embroiderers’ Guild.

Details

Date: designed 1876
Dimensions: 63.5 x 133.4
Object Type: textile
Material: woven wool
Technique: woven
Catalogue number: F27
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1940

Woven wool treble cloth with warp in shades of dark & light blues and weft in cream with dark & light blue and pale green. The pattern was produced in range of materials, such as 3-ply carpeting and fabric, woven silk and wool, woven wool and cotton. This 3-ply woven wool was originally manufactured for Morris & Co by Heckmondwike Manufacturing Company, Yorkshire, England, and later at Merton Abbey.

Details

Date: 1862
Dimensions: 77.2 x 88
Object Type: design
Catalogue number: A4
Artist: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1940

The cartoon is for part of the west window of St Michael and All Angels, Brighton, for which Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., provided an extensive scheme of windows. The lower part of the west window consists of 2 windows, each with 2 lancets, containing full length figures of the 4 Archangels, each pair of lancets having a hexafoil window above. The left hexafoil over the top of Michael and Raphael, shows St Michael in combat with the dragon; the right hexafoil, over top of Uriel and Gabriel, an Annunciation scene; high above in the gable is a rose window with central panel of the Virgin and Child surrounded by 7 angels within circles playing on bells.

The present cartoon, which was not used again elsewhere, is an adaptation of a similar design by Morris for a 2-light window in the chancel, south, of F F Bodley’s church, All Saints, Selsley, in Gloucestershire. In the 2-light Sesley window (cartoon 1861, window 1862) the figures of Gabriel and the Virgin are contained in panels set into square, patterned quarries, inscriptions running below each panel,with decorative tracery in the head of the window. The cartoons for the Selsley window were only used on one other occasion (St Stephen’s Parish Church near St Peter Port, Guernsey; top of right and left lancets in west window) and are now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, purchased from Morris & Co. 1940.
The figure of the angel Gabriel in both the Selsley and Brighton panels is an adaptation from Jan van Eyck’s figure of Gabriel.

A drapery study for the figure of the Virgin (by William Morris – S.H.) is in the Sanford L Berger collection, Huntington, California. (Illustrated in Sewter, plate 63 – S.H.)

For other cartoons used in this west window of St Michael and All Angels now in the WMG, see the full-length cartoon for the Archangel Raphael (A6) also designed by Morris.

According to extract from account book 1862-1872 , Morris Marshall and Co. were paid £34.10 shillings and 4 pence on October 2nd, 1862; £40. 17 shillings on March 27th, 1863; £34. 19 shillings on August 16th, 1864 (Glass, S. Aisle) for work for Saint Michael and All Angels, Brighton. (S.H. from file document).

Selwyn Image wrote in 1909: ‘ Brighton possesses the finest modern piece of stained glass that has ever been done… for the magnificence of its design the sense which it gave one of being in the presence of supernatural beings, the perfectness of its splendid colouring, and for everything that goes to make a fine stained glass window, this specimen seemed to be perfection.’

Details

Date: c.1880s
Dimensions: 185.4 x 94 including fringe
Object Type: textile
Material: woollen pile on cotton warp
Technique: hand-knotted
Catalogue number: N10
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: Presented by Miss M.L. Wooldridge, 1955

This small ‘Hammersmith rug’ was designed by William Morris. The border of peonies and pastel colouring shows the influence of Chinese design. This rug was given to the Gallery by Martha Wooldridge, (1863-1958) a classical dancer who purchased it around 1898 for her home, the Arts & Crafts House called ‘Wavertree’ in St Margarets, Twickenham, with whom she shared with the radical preacher Stewart Headlam (Headlam is perhaps most famous for putting up half of Oscar Wilde’s bail when he was tried for ‘gross indecency’ in 1885).

A similar example was given by Morris to Margaret Mackail (nee Burne-Jones) on the occassion of her wedding in 1888, this is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (T.104-1953). Another small rug to the same design was lent by Mrs. Lucius Gubbins to the Victoria & Albert Museum William Morris centenary exhibition in 1934 (94). It is reproduced in Gerald H. Crow’s “William Morris – Designer” published by ‘The Studio’ 1934 p. 81.

The same design was later woven at Wilton (their no. 6213).

Details

Date: 1862
Dimensions: 66.4 x 60
Object Type: design
Catalogue number: BLA472
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Designer: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.

Trellis was the first wallpaper designed by William Morris, and the third to be printed by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. The design, which exemplifies Morris’s early interest in flat, abstracted pattern, layered to create a sense of depth, was based on rose trellises in Morris’s garden at Red House, the home designed for Morris and his wife Jane by Philip Webb. Webb worked in collaboration with Morris on this design for wallpaper, supplying the birds which add movement and interest to the composition.

Morris’s Arts and Crafts movement would have been impossible without Philip Webb, the modest, thoughtful and hardworking architect and designer whom Morris met while training as an architect in Oxford. Although primarily an architect, Webb was an avid sketcher of plant and animal life, as shown in his sketchbooks now held by the V&A. In addition to his role as a designer of furniture, metalwork and glass, Webb was also instrumental in the administration of Morris & Co., balancing the accounts and on occasion sacrificing his own wages to keep the business solvent.

Details

Date: c. 1880
Dimensions: 73.2 x 71
Object Type: design
Material: pencil, ink and watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: BlA456
Attributed artist: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)

This design for an embroidered reversible table cover has clearly been used as a working drawing, intended to communicate the design and choice of colours to the artisan who would make up the piece. The swirling, symmetrical floral pattern and choice of earthy, natural hues are typical of the smaller pieces of embroidery sold by Morris & Co. for domestic decoration.

“At first glance, this design appears unfinished, but looking more closely you can see faint pencil markings underneath the coloured sections. The pencil markings have vertical and diagonal symmetry with the parts that are coloured in, in a mathematical pattern. The purpose of the design is to convey information to the maker. Therefore because of the symmetry, the composition is complete.”

Raizel Frankl-Slater, WMG Young Producer

Details

Date: 1890s
Dimensions: 71 x 71
Object Type: design
Material: watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: A294
Artist: Dearle, John Henry (1859 - 1932)

This design is for a quarter section of a panelled ceiling at Combe Court, Godalming, Surrey. From about 1890, Morris & Co.’s interior decoration commissions were larger designed and supervised by J. H. Dearle. Combe Court was built in 1850 by the Rev John Storer and later owned by George Henry Pinckard, MA, JP, c.1860. Pinckard was chief officer of the Clerical, Medical & General Life Assurance Company from 1839 to 1858, and remained a director of the company until his death in 1892. Pinckard’s widow Rosa remained in the house following his death, it then passed to his nephew George Henry Coles Pinckard.

A smaller scale drawing for two ceiling designs for Combe Court, one of which is this same design, is in the Huntington, California (Accession number: 2000.5.115).

Details

Date: 1870
Dimensions: 19.7 x 13 x 3
Object Type: book
Catalogue number: K531
Translator: Magnusson, Eirikr (1833 - 1913)
Translator: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Publisher: Ellis, Frederick Startridge (1830 - 1901)
Designer: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915
Credit notes: Transfer from Walthamstow Central Library, 1951

‘The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs’ is a translation of The Völsunga saga (often referred to in English as the Volsunga Saga or Saga of the Völsungs). This legendary saga is a late 13th-century poetic rendition in Old Norse of the origin and decline of the Völsung clan. It was translated for the first time into English by William Morris and Eirikr Magnusson in 1870. Morris wrote: “This is the great story of the North, which should be to all our race what the Tale of Troy was to the Greeks”.

Eirikr Magnusson was born in Iceland, he came to England in 1862 and went on to work at the library of the Univerity of Cambridge, as well as lecturing on the Icelandic language. He met Morris in the summer of 1868 and taught him Old Norse. The pair became good friends, and shortly after Morris suggested they translate the sagas together.

This first edition of the Crown octavo book has green cloth binding with stamped gold pattern designed by Philip Webb. Rossetti wrote on 7 May 1870 “His binding for the Volsungs is most lovely- quite perfect”. 750 copies of the book were printed.

Details

Date: 1875-1877
Dimensions: 73.8 x 58.7
Object Type: design
Material: pencil, ink and watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: BLA458
Artist: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)

This design for a carpet is an early design by William Morris, drawn before 1877, after which the Firm moved from 26 Queens Square to Oxford St. The patterns shows a geometric border in white, pale blue and green, with a central panel of scrolling acanthus leaves in blue-green and stylised flowers, with part of a pine cone.

The design is inscribed with the Queens Square address, and ‘Designed for Miss Beardmore’. The pattern was used again for a Hammersmith rug belonging to Dorothy Walker, now in the Emery Walker House (02344). The words ‘Finger Rug’ is crossed out, this was the term Morris gave to small rugs such as these. It is also inscribed No.18.

Details

Date: 1870s
Dimensions: 51 x 40
Object Type: design
Material: sepia wash and pencil on paper
Catalogue number: A459
Designer: Morris & Co.
Artist: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)

This embroidery design features large, curling acanthus leaves – a favourite of Morris and a popular feature of many of his designs for embroidery as well as textiles and wallpaper. Morris’s designs enlarged and foregrounded the acanthus leaf, and for this he likely took some inspiration from ‘Large Leaf Verdure’ tapestries produced in 16th-century France and Belgium. Verdure, or ‘greenery’ tapestries featured exaggerated leaf designs, often with other plants, birds and animals nestled amongst them. They became popular as the designs were easily adapted to different sizes, and the weaving process for the leaf pattern was relatively simple. As a result they could be produced more cheaply, and were therefore available to a wide range of buyers, echoing Morris’ ideals of art and design for all.

The design is numbered No46d in the Firm’s Embroidery Portfolio, another design for part of a pianoforte cover by Philip Webb, numbered 46 is in the collection of the William Morris Society (D88).

Acanthus leaves have been used as inspiration for decorative objects and architectural embellishments as far back as the 5th century, first found in Ancient Greek friezes, roof ornaments and perhaps most prominently in the capitals of Corinthian columns. When Greece came under Roman rule, the aesthetics of Greek decorative arts were brought into Roman architecture and furniture. The acanthus motif was particularly adopted and adapted: the swirling, curling leaves providing a sense of movement and depth to designs. The endurance of the acanthus has partially been credited to the adaptability and hardiness of the plant itself. It has been grown all over the world, used in medicines and for the preservation of food. Conceptually, the leaf has come to symbolise enduring life, immortality and strength.

Details

Date: c. 1930s
Dimensions: 111.8 x 49.5
Object Type: design
Catalogue number: BLA487a
Designer: Morris & Co.

Design for stained glass window roundel showing figure of young man in smock and trousers seated facing in profile to right at left on a work bench, a high-warp tapestry at centre in front of him, one hand picking up spools of thread from the bench, the other holding warp threads of the tapestry , a full size cartoon in background behind him, with view to room in background with spinning wheel at right. For two other cartoons for this panel see BLA487a and BLA 487c, which are working cartoons showing the framing border, inscription scroll and leading lines for the panel. The scene is similar to that shown in BLA485a-c, a large cartoon in three parts showing the Morris and Co. works at Merton Abbey and the various activities carried out there, which dates from c. 1938.

Details

Date: c.1890-1920
Dimensions: 86 x 56 x 35.6
Object Type: textile
Catalogue number: H31
Owner: Morris, May
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1993

The loom is a high-warp tapestry loom, the frame in oak with metalwork fitments, threaded with a cotton warp and partially completed tapestry based on a Morris-inspired border pattern. The loom is probably identical with the loom referred to in the 1939 Kelmscott Manor sale catalogue as ‘oak weaving loom with unfinished tapestry of ‘The River Thames’ worked by Miss Morris and a box of various wools etc’. The bobbins threaded with coloured wools, samples of various coloured wools wound round old envelopes addressed to May Morris, and two warp combs were also purchased with the loom and are in the Gallery’s collection.

The unfinished tapestry referred to in the Kelmscott Manor sale catalogue was apparently cut off the loom by the vendor’s mother, who used the loom for her own tapestry showing an abstract pattern. It is now threaded with a warp and a partially completed tapestry based on the Morris-inspired border design on the cover of one of the Morris & Co catalogues c.1911, worked by the Handweavers Studio, 29 Haroldstone Road, Walthamstow, 1993.

Details

Date: c.1891
Object Type: photograph
Material: photograph
Technique: photographic cartoon
Catalogue number: BLPhA527e
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Photographer: Walker & Boutall

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 Edward 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 by Walker & Boutall, Fleet Street, and these enlarged cartoons were then worked over by the artist in ink, with some sepia and white heightening to bring out contrasts. BLPh527e appears to have been cut from the larger cartoon whilst the latter was still in the possession of Morris & Co.
The full size cartoons for the series are held in the William Morris Gallery (BLPhA527a-e, BLPh528a-b, BLPh529, BLPh530a-c, BLPh531). The series of tapestries is now in the collection of Birmingham City Art Gallery (M60’80).

Details

Date: Designed 1879
Dimensions: 66 x 91.4
Object Type: textile
Material: wools and silks on silk
Catalogue number: F28
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Manufacturer: Alexander Morton & Co.
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Mackmurdo bequest, 1942

Dove and Rose was produced in silk and wool double cloth. The design is formed of leaves, stems, rose sprays, acorns and doves in green and red. According to Morris, writing in a letter to Rosalind Howard, the structure of double cloth made it suitable only for curtains and hangings rather than upholstery.

The cloth was first woven by outworkers at Alexander Morton & Co., Darvel, Scotland. Later, at Merton Abbey, Morris & Co.’s textile workshop, Morris installed hand-operated jacquard looms, which partly automated the weaving process. Large orders were sub-contracted to companies that used steam-powered looms. Morris welcomed technological progress that genuinely saved repetitive labour without compromising the quality of the final product. He believed that “it is the allowing of machines to be our masters and not our servants that so injures the beauty of life nowadays”.

To weave the ‘Dove and Rose’ textile, Morris’s original design was painted on point-paper (see original design in WMG: BLA451). This was used to make a series of punch cards, which were fed into the loom and controlled the production of the pattern. Morris felt uneasy about subjecting his employees to the “deafening clatter” of the weaving shed, but accepted it as a necessary evil to produce fine fabrics in silk and wool. According to Morris, writing in a letter to Rosalind Howard, the structure of this fabric made it suitable only for curtains and hangings rather than upholstery.

Details

Date: 1880s/early 1900s
Dimensions: 73.7 x 119.4
Object Type: design
Material: watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: A34
Attributed artist: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Attributed artist: Dearle, John Henry (1859 - 1932)
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1940

John Henry Dearle, Morris & Co’s chief designer, drew this design for a tapestry sofa. The use of the scrolling acanthus leaves relates to other tapestries created by the Firm in the 1880’s, such as ‘The Woodpecker’ and ‘The Forest’ . However, Dearle designed other tapestries for upholstery in the 1900s and this could be one of his designs, following earlier styles.
The original tapestry was purchased by Ann Getty, Los Angeles, USA.

Details

Date: designed 1878
Object Type: textile
Material: woven wool
Technique: hand-loom jacquard woven
Catalogue number: F269a
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)

William Morris designed Bird woven wool in 1878. The pattern features pairs of birds, both standing and in flight, surrounded by scrolling acanthus leaves and yellow sunflowers. For earlier designs, Morris had relied on Philip Webb to draw the birds, as seen in the Trellis wallpaper. However, on 25 March 1877, Morris wrote to his friend, the textile manufacturer Thomas Wardle (1831–1909), stating: ‘I am studying birds now to see if I can’t get some of them into my next design.’ Bird is the first in a series of textile designs by Morris to feature his own drawings of birds.

In April 1878, around the time this design was created, Morris moved into Kelmscott House in Hammersmith, where he subsequently adorned every wall of the first-floor drawing room with Bird woven wool curtains.

The original design is held in the collection of the William Morris Society, London (D31).

Details

Date: designed 1878
Dimensions: 188 x 124.5
Object Type: textile
Material: woven wool
Technique: hand-loom jacquard woven
Catalogue number: F269
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1964

The original design is held in the collection of the William Morris Society, London (D31).

Details

Date: June 1890
Dimensions: 25.9 x 19.6
Object Type: print
Material: paper
Technique: woodblock
Catalogue number: P807
Artist: Crane, Walter, 1845, 1915
Owner: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Maker: Hooper, William Harcourt (1834 - 1912)

This woodblock printed bookplate, inscribed ‘From the Branch to its Flower’, was designed by Walter Crane and engraved by W.H. Hooper to accompany a wedding gift of books from the Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist League to May Morris. The gift was accompanied with a message signed by 30 members saying ‘You have lived among us and have worked for us with your best strength’. The bookplate’s design incorporates three ‘caps of liberty’ in each corner.

Details

Date: 1893
Dimensions: 20.6 x 14 (closed)
Object Type: book
Material: paper with half holland binding
Catalogue number: K5
Author: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Printer: Kelmscott Press | 1891 | 1898
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Designer: Gere | Charles March | 1869 | 1957
Maker: Hooper, William Harcourt (1834 - 1912)
Seller: Reeves & Turner
Credit notes: Transferred from Walthamstow Central Library, 1950

Morris’s ‘News From Nowhere’ was first published in serial form in The Commonweal , January – October 1890. In 1891, it was reprinted in book form by Reeves and Turner. It was from this later edition with a few corrections that the text for the Kelmscott Press edition was set up. The illustrated frontispiece, designed by Charles March Gere, shows the entrance to Kelmscott Manor, Morris’s country home on the Oxfordshire/Gloucestershire border near Lechlade, after which he named his house in Hammersmith and the Press itself. 300 copies printed on paper at 2 guineas, 10 on vellum at 10 guineas.

Details of the wood engraving are as follows:
‘View of the entrance to Kelmscott Manor’
wood engaving 11.4 x 10.5 cm.
Monogrammed lower right CMG

Flagged footpath leading up to doorway of stone built house with gabled front, another wing of the house right and rose trees flanking path.

The inscription below (in upper case Golden type0:
THIS IS THE PICTURE OF THE OLD / HOUSE BY THE THAMES TO WHICH / THE PEOPLE OF THE STORY WENT. / HEREAFTER FOLLOWS THE BOOK IT- / SELF WHICH IS CALLED NEWS FROM / NOWHERE OR AN EPOCH OF REST & / IS WRITTEN BY WILLIAM / MORRIS

The inscription and lettering set in narrow border of scrolling leaves were designed by Morris.

The illustration was used again, without border and with title below: A VIEW OF THE MANOR HOUSE AT KELMSCOTT IN OXFORDSHIRE, FROM THE GARDEN GATE in the small booklet “Gossip about an old house on the Upper Thames by William Morris” printed by the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft Press in November 1895.

Details

Date: c.1902
Object Type: photograph
Material: photograph
Catalogue number: J1179b
Sitter: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Artist: Jack, George Washington Henry (1855 - 1931)
Photographer: Gardner, Fairford

This photograph shows George Jack’s carved bas-relief panel created for the Memorial Cottages at Kelmscott, Lechlade, built in 1902 and designed by Philip Webb. The panel is placed centrally on the front façade of the two semi-detached cottages, and it depicts William Morris seated beneath a tree with his satchel by his leg. The panel was worked up by Jack from a pencil sketch by Philip Webb. A photograph of a preparatory plaster panel is also in the Gallery’s collection, see J1179a.

Details

Date: 1881
Dimensions: 43 x 23
Object Type: sculpture
Catalogue number: H54
Owner: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: Transfer from Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, 2011

This drinking horn was made in Iceland, the carved inscription reads ‘HVITINGR’ (drinking horn) 1881. William Morris visited Iceland twice, firstly in 1871, then in 1873. The horn was donated to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter in 1939 by Mary Lobb, May Morris’s companion and later transferred to the William Morris Gallery.

Details

Date: 1870-1880
Dimensions: 28 x 22
Object Type: sculpture
Catalogue number: H53
Owner: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: Transfer from Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, 2011

This drinking horn was acquired by William Morris in Iceland, possibly a gift from a friend.

The horn was donated to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter in 1939 by Mary Lobb, May Morris’s companion and later transferred to the William Morris Gallery.

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

Date: 19th century
Dimensions: 3.2 x 15.3
Object Type: ceramic
Material: hand-painted overglaze earthenware
Catalogue number: H3b
Owner: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: Presented by Professor and Mrs J W Mackail, 1938.

The cup and saucer was used by William Morris at The Grange, the Burne-Jones’ Fulham house, where he kept it especially for his own use when he dined there because he objected to the small size of the Burne-Jones’ coffee cups.
According to a handwritten note in the WMG file by J. W. Mackail, dated 11 May 1938 …”it was kept there and always used by him, and by no one else, either then or since.” The cup and saucer are described as Flemish by Mackail. (SH)
The cup does not exactly match the saucer.

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