Decoration of Chevalier of Order of Crown of Italy.

Details

Date: c.1890-1910
Dimensions: 21.6 x 13.6
Object Type: textile
Material: wool on cotton
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F215
Owner: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Artist: Dodsworth, Lily
Credit notes: Miss Mary Ann Sloane bequest, 1962

The embroidery was done by 13 year old Lily Dodsworth whilst a student at the Municipal School of Art, Birmingham and given to May Morris, presumably when she taught there. The panel depicts a deer grazing beside a flowering tree with a crescent moon above. It is worked in coloured wools on a dark blue piece of cotton in chain stitch, running stitch, stem stitch and satin stitch.

Details

Date: c.1861
Dimensions: 61.6 x 60.3
Object Type: design
Catalogue number: A267
Designer: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: WMG purchase with a Victoria & Albert Museum grant, 1956

One of seven designs (WMG A263 -A269) by Gabriel Dante Rossetti from 1861, for stained glass executed by Morris, Marshall Faulkner & Co., for St. Martin’s Scarborough . The series is referred to in a letter from Rossetti to Ford Madox Brown (1 December 1861) (Doughty & Wahl, ‘Letters of D G Rossetti’. O.U.P. 1965, Vol.ii p.426): ‘I’m doing the Parable of the Vineyard for the shop glass; I think you have a number of ‘The Pictorial History of England’ with a Saxon wine-press in it. Would you kindly send it to me by book post? If you’ve anything else in the Vineyard line you might include it …’.
The seven panels were designed for the East Window of St. Martin’s, together with a Christ on the Cross with the Virgin and St. John by Ford Madox Brown. All seven panels were shown at the International Exhibition, London 1862 before being installed in the church.

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: Miss Mary Ann 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: 79 x 106.9
Object Type: textile
Material: wool on linen
Technique: embroidery
Catalogue number: F430
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Designer: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Purchased with grants from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 2004

This embroidered panel was designed by Philip Webb and William Morris and produced by Morris & Co.’s embroidery department. The panel is cut from a larger embroidery and depicts a peacock (designed by Webb) surrounded by a repeating pattern of grapes and vines (designed by Morris). Webb’s full-size drawing for the central peacock is also in the Gallery’s collection (see A209). Webb was primarily an architect, notably designing Morris’s Red House, but was also a gifted draughtsman with a particular interest in the natural world. As a young boy, he studied the illustrations of Thomas Bewick, the influence of whom remained evident throughout Webb’s artistic output. William Morris would often ask Webb to draw the animals within his designs for wallpapers, tapestries and textiles, recognising his superior skill. See for example ‘Trellis’, Morris’s first wallpaper design (William Morris Gallery BLA472), and ‘The Forest’, a large tapestry woven at Merton Abbey in 1887, which also incorporates a peacock into its design alongside Morris’s swirling acanthus leaves.

Details

Date: designed 1878
Object Type: textile
Material: woven wool
Technique: hand-loom jacquard woven
Catalogue number: F26civ
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1940

‘Peacock and Dragon’ was designed by William Morris in 1878. It was first hand-woven on jacquard looms at Morris & Co’s premises in Queen Square, London and later at the firm’s factory Merton Abbey, Surrey. It was available in two widths: 183 cm (72 in.) and also in 137 cm (54 in). It was available in two colourways, Morris & Co. pattern no: 200 (5 colourways) and 5623 (2 colourways). The size of pattern repeat: 109 x 90 cm. (43 x 35.5 in.).

This example is one width of a double width pair of curtains made by the Gallery for display in the 1960s, the four widths were separated around 1988 to form four lengths (see F26). The curtains were made from an original 30 yard length of 54 inch width five colourway fabric, acquired from Morris & Co. when it closed in 1940.

Details

Date: c.1910-30
Dimensions: 232.4 x 226.1
Object Type: textile
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F203
Designer and maker: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Credit notes: Mary Annie Sloane bequest, 1962

This bedspread was made by May Morris. It is embroidered with embroidered knotwork, alternating with sprays of roses and other hedgerow flowers, berries and mistletoe. May used a similar knotwork pattern on one of her most successful designs, a bedspread for William Morris (Kelmscott Manor). The uncharacteristically bright coloured threads in this bedcover (May typically used natural coloured silk thread) suggests it was made towards the end of her life when a greater range of good quality synthetically dyed threads were available. The design for this is also in the collection (A221)

Details

Date: c.1930
Dimensions: 203.2 x 160.7
Object Type: textile
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F202
Designer and maker: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Credit notes: Mary Annie Sloane bequest, 1962

This bedspread was made by May Morris. It is embroidered in ivory silk on a white cotton background. May mainly used her favourite embroidery stitch- chain stitch- to create an overall design of geometric network filled with flowers, wreaths and birds. The bedcover belonged to May’s friend Mary Annie Sloane, who exhibited it under May’s name at the exhibition of Cotswold Craftsmanship in 1951.

Details

Dimensions: 88.9 x 81.3
Object Type: textile
Material: velveteen
Technique: woven and block-printed
Catalogue number: F200a
Designer: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Manufacturer: Century Guild

This is one of the Century Guild’s most successful designs, it features scrolling and interwoven brambles with clusters of blackberries, enclosing pairs of squirrels holding nuts. The Century Guild monogram is incorporated in the design. Whilst some of AH Mackmurdo’s designs for textiles were too large and busy, this design features clear outlines, a harmonious repeat and is an approriate scale for a furnishing fabric. The design was also produced in as a cotton in red and yellow colourways.

Details

Date: c. 1882
Dimensions: 189.9 x 78.7
Object Type: textile
Material: cotton velvet
Technique: woven and block-printed
Catalogue number: F200
Designer: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Manufacturer: Century Guild
Manufacturer: Simpson & Godlee
Credit notes: Presented by Miss E.Pugh, 1961

Details

Date: 1925
Object Type: archival
Catalogue number: H14.14
Owner: Brangwyn, Frank, Sir (1867 - 1956)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1956

Frank Brangwyn’s Certificate of Honour in appreciation of services rendered to the British Empire Exhibition, 1925. Opened on 23 April 23 1924 by George V, the exhibition ran until 1 November 1924. Due to its popularity, it then ran again from from 9 May to 31 October 1925. Brangwyn contributed illustrations for the catalogue and posters. The exhibition was conceived by the British Empire League and ultimately acted as a form of propaganda to promote a white supremacist racial hierarchy. The exhibition featured ‘Human zoos’, with mocked up villages populated by 273 people on display from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, kept in compounds on the Wembley site for several months of the exhibition.

Details

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

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

Details

Date: c.1888
Dimensions: 19 x 14.5
Object Type: drawing
Catalogue number: D75
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: Presented by John William Mackail, 1930

This original drawing was used for the etched frontispiece to the 1888 edition of Morris’s ‘A Dream of John Ball’ published by Reeves and Turner (see K518a). Morris’s work had previously been published in serial form in ‘The Commonweal’ in 1887. The same design, this time a woodcut, was used with a border and capital lettering for the frontispiece of the Kelmscott Press edition of ‘A Dream of John Ball’ printed 1892, and for a leaflet for the Ancloats Brotherhood, printed by the Press in 1894 (see K25). The illustration was again reproduced in the ‘Daily Chronicle’ in 1895 as part of a collection of 24 illustrations by nearly all the well-known artists of the day, assembled by Joseph Pennell with the object of furthering the cause of the Reform Party at the L.C.C. elections. The title on this occasion was ‘Labour’ set in modern typeface and it was purported that the illustration had been specially drawn for the ‘Daily Chronicle’.

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