Beguinage Bruges

Details

Date: 1929
Dimensions: 26 x 18.5 x 1 cm
Object Type: book
Catalogue number: K936
Author: Image, Selwyn, 1849, 1930
Publisher: Sanders Philips & Co, The Baynard Press
Credit notes: Gift of Eleanor Pugh, 1963

Small 4to, quarter cloth with blue paper boards, inscription ‘A.H. Mackmurdo from S.I. Decr 15. 1929.’ on free front endpaper, hand numbered ‘4’, 22 collotype illustration plates.

Details

Date: 1932
Dimensions: 23 x 15 x 2
Object Type: book
Catalogue number: K884
Author: Image, Selwyn, 1849, 1930
Editor: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Photographer: Walker | Emery | 1851 | 1933

8vo, quarter blue buckram boards with gilt title on spine, in dust jacket, torn, soiled, missing spine, inscription in ink on free front endpaper ‘To my niece Elinor Pugh From the Editor A.H. Mackmurdo 30.7.32’, limited edition of 560 copies, photogravure frontispiece portrait of Selwyn Image by Russell & Sons, engraved by Emery Walker, reproduction of Image letter to Mackmurdo tipped in after p. 12.

Details

Date: c.1867
Dimensions: 15 x 15
Object Type: ceramic
Material: earthenware
Technique: hand-painted
Catalogue number: C231
Designer: Holiday, Henry, 1839, 1927
Credit notes: Private donation, 2000

One of a series of six painted tiles by Henry Holiday illustrating Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’. This scene accompanies the part of the story “She longs to become a mortal, and obtains from a witch a potion which will effect the change”. The decoration is painted in over glaze enamels on glazed blank tile by Minton, Hollins & Co. The original designs for these tiles are at Standen (National Trust), four tiles (inclusing this design) are also in the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford.

Details

Date: c.1867
Dimensions: 7.6 x 9.6
Object Type: ceramic
Material: earthenware
Technique: hand-painted
Catalogue number: C223
Maker: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Presented by Richard and Hilary Myers, 1997

This design of alternating swans and leaf scroll motif is attributed to William Morris c.1862. The tiles were decorated in Morris & Co.’s workshops on an imported Dutch tin-glaze tile. Morris later transferred production to the Netherlands, those tiles are slightly larger and decorated using the more durable ‘in-glaze’ technique (see C191), as opposed to the hand painted ‘on-glaze’ technique of this earlier smaller tile. This example was from ‘The Orchard’ in Claygate, nr. Esher, the Surrey home of the writer’s William and Mary Howitt.

Details

Date: 03.02.1889
Dimensions: 16.5 x 10.5
Object Type: photograph
Material: photograph
Catalogue number: P652
Sitter: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Credit notes: Presented by Miss Dorothy Walker, 1955

This striking photograph of May Morris was taken on 3 February 1889 at Hammersmith Terrace, London. Standing with her guitar by a Morris & Co. Sussex chair, May was likely rehearsing for a Socialist League performance.

The photograph is one of a series taken that day, including one of her seated (see WMG:P660) 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: 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.

Details

Date: c.1885
Dimensions: 25 x 12.5
Object Type: textile
Material: silk on cotton
Catalogue number: F454
Maker: Burden, Elizabeth (13.12.1841 - 22.08.1924)
Credit notes: The widow of Tim Langley, purchased with assistance from the Friends of the William Morris Gallery and the Art Fund, 2018

This embroidery is a part of a chalice cover or pall- used to cover the chalice cup for holy communion. It is stitched by Elizabeth (Bessie) Burden, the sister-in-law of William Morris. The figurative design of a young winged angel minstrel, clothed in medieval style dress holding two clashing cymbals is based on Morris’s c.1867 design for stained glass. A design drawing for a chalice cover from from the same series, depicting an angel with a harp, is in the William Morris Society collection (D213)

Burden’s innovative application of Morris’s design appears to have been inspired by medieval embroidery. The figure is embroidered in silk, using the eponymous ‘Burden Stitch’, applied here to great effect, particularly in the fine features of the angel’s face. The background is intricately embroidered with couched gold thread to create a three dimensional pattern of flowers. At some point in the embroidery’s history it has been framed and Burden’s signature affixed below.

Burden, along with her sister Jane, Morris’s wife, was to play a central role in the production of many of Morris’s finest embroideries. She helped stitch the medieval inspired hangings that furnished William and Jane’s first home, Red House and would later play a central role in his firm’s embroidery department. Although Morris and Burden had a fractious personal relationship, Morris described her as ‘a First-rate needle-woman’ with a ‘complete mastery of the theory & practice of all kinds of needlework’.

In addition to working for Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., Burden supplemented her income by teaching embroidery at the home she shared with her sister and brother-in-law at 26 Queen Square in Bloomsbury and later became an instructor at the Royal School of Needlework (RSN). Whilst at the School she popularised a type of tapestry stitch that could be used to great effect for embroidery figures, as exemplified in this embroidery. The stitch was renamed ‘Burden Stitch’ in the School’s Handbook of Embroidery in recognition of Bessie’s contribution; a woodcut showing the stitch was also included in the volume on the grounds that the RSN was frequently asked to describe it.

Most interestingly, it bears a striking resemblance to c.1890s embroidery ‘Minstrel with Cymbals’ by Morris’s daughter May, now in the collection of the William Morris Society. Although there are noticeable differences- Burden’s Angel is winged and set against a gold couched background, whereas May’s figure is without wings and the background is of an orange tree, the similarities, from the folds in the Angel’s clothes, to the details in the hands, makes it possible that this example by Burden, the older and more experienced embroider, inspired her niece May to create her own later version of the design.

Details

Date: designed c.1898
Object Type: textile
Material: woven wool
Technique: hand-loom jacquard woven
Catalogue number: F460
Designer: Dearle, John Henry (1859 - 1932)
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.

This woven wool was designed by John Henry Dearle for Morris & Co. around 1898. The repeating pattern is formed of orange coloured squirrels amongst a grape vine heavy with fruit. Originally entitled Fox and Grape after the Aesop fable, it was later changed to Squirrel, presumably because the animals more closely resembled the form of a red squirrel. Although many of Morris & Co’s patterns feature birds, beside the rabbits in the popular ‘Brother Rabbit’ pattern and these squirrels, there are no other examples of animals in the Firm’s repeating textile patterns. This example was once one of a pair of curtains and features two widths of decorative fringing at the bottom. The wool was produced on a jaquard hand-loom at Morris & Co’s factory Merton Abbey and came in three colourways. Dearle’s original design drawing is in the Huntington Art Collection, USA.

Details

Date: 1864-66
Dimensions: 66 x 48.3
Object Type: design
Catalogue number: A21
Artist: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1940

This designs of two angels was probably made in 1864 specifically for the west window of St Oswald’s, Durham (a three-light window with tracery) in which the main lights showing six scenes from the life of St Oswald were designed by Ford Madox Brown. The quarry panels below have shields bearing the arms of Elliott, Fogg and Fogg-Elliott by Philip Webb, while Morris was responsible for designing the half-length angels in circlets set in quarry panels between the upper and lower scenes in the main lights and for the angels in the tracery above. The angels, for which A21 is the design, appear in the second tier of tracery in two panel lights.
The same cartoon was used for windows in: Bradford Cathedral, 1864, Bloxham, 1869, Christ Church, Oxford, 1871, Knaresborough, 1873, Over Stowey, 1873, West Wratting, 1910, Wirksworth, 1909, and Wormington, 1912.

Details

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

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

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

Details

Dimensions: 49 x 36 x 23
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze
Catalogue number: BrS34
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

A copy of Roman work in the Naples Museum.

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