Unidentified Martyrdom

Details

Dimensions: 7.6
Object Type: ceramic
Material: earthenware
Catalogue number: C99
Designer and maker: Martin, Robert Wallace (1843 - 1923)
Credit notes: Miss E Pugh bequest, 1963

Robert Wallace Martin was one of four brothers who ran the Martin Brothers pottery in Fulham (1873-7) and Southall (1877-1915). He was part of a movement of Arts and Crafts potters who, inspired by the simplicity and rustic appearance of medieval European and Japanese stoneware (a hard, dense kind of pottery), created salt-glazed stoneware, a strong, non-porous pottery with a distinctive ‘orange-peel’ texture. Martin’s output is characterised by groteque animals, vessels with faces, and rustic sculptural forms.

Details

Date: 1875
Dimensions: 13.9 x 8.8
Object Type: ceramic
Material: stoneware
Catalogue number: C97
Designer: Martin, Robert Wallace (1843 - 1923)
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1962

Details

Date: 1862
Dimensions: 15.2 x 15.2
Object Type: ceramic
Material: earthenware tiles painted in enamels
Technique: hand-painted
Catalogue number: C83a
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Illustrator: Orrinsmith (née Faulkner) | Lucy
Retailer: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs L Hitch, 1954

Edward Burne-Jones designed the Sleeping Beauty tile series in 1863-4 for Myles Birket Foster’s house The Hill at Witley. The decoration of the house was one of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.’s first commissions. This pair (see C83a) of rejected, misfired tiles were perhaps intended for the overmantle at The Hill, however they remained in the personal collection of Lucy Orrinsmith who decorated them. A finished complete panel of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is in the V&A (CIRC.520-1953), it is similar to another panel of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ in the William Morris Gallery’s collection (C75), also from The Hill.

The composition is similar to a later watercolour by Burne-Jones- the first painting of the very first series of the ‘Legend of the Briar Rose’ (another title for ‘Sleeping Beauty’) that he executed between 1871-73 (now in the Museo de Arte, Ponce, Puerto Rico).

Details

Date: 1862
Dimensions: 15.2 x 15.2
Object Type: ceramic
Material: earthenware tiles painted in enamels
Technique: hand-painted
Catalogue number: C83
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Illustrator: Orrinsmith (née Faulkner) | Lucy
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs L Hitch, 1954

Details

Date: designed c.1882
Dimensions: 92.7 x 81.9
Object Type: textile
Material: printed cotton
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: F65
Designer: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Retailer: Century Guild
Manufacturer: Simpson & Godlee
Credit notes: Mackmurdo bequest, 1942

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 cotton in a red colourway and also as a velveteen.

Details

Date: designed c.1882
Dimensions: 43.2 x 61
Object Type: textile
Material: printed cotton
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: F64
Designer: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Retailer: Century Guild
Manufacturer: Simpson & Godlee
Credit notes: Mackmurdo bequest, 1942

Details

Date: mid-1880s
Dimensions: 94 x 81.3
Object Type: textile
Material: velveteen
Catalogue number: F63
Designer: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Retailer: Century Guild
Manufacturer: Simpson & Godlee
Credit notes: Mackmurdo bequest, 1942

Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo’s design features a central pomegranate bush with pairs of ravens in deep blue eating the fruit, and flowing horizontal bands of large flower heads with leaves. This version appears to be from the beginning of a ‘bolt’ of cloth and shows poor registration in the colour printing, here somewhat further emphasised by the softer outline necessarily obtained in printing on velvet fabrics.

Details

Date: designed c. 1880
Object Type: textile
Material: printed cotton
Technique: indigo discharge and block-printed
Catalogue number: F54d
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Presented by Miss F.J Lefroy, 1951

Part of a collection of sixteen fragments of various sizes, originally from an upholstered Morris & Co. armchair. As the production process used three separate printing dyes; indigo, red (alizarin) & yellow (weld), it took a number of days to produce ‘Strawberry Thief’ and was consequently one of the firms most expensive cottons. However, it remained to be one of Morris’ most popular designs.

A set of printing blocks for Strawberry Thief, cut by the Firm of Barretts of Bethnal Green Road, London, are now in the V&A Museum.

Details

Date: designed c. 1880
Dimensions: 47 x 64.7
Object Type: textile
Material: printed cotton
Technique: indigo discharge and block-printed
Catalogue number: F54c
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Presented by Miss F.J Lefroy, 1951

Part of a collection of sixteen fragments of various sizes, originally from an upholstered Morris & Co. armchair.

As the production process used three separate printing dyes; indigo, red (alizarin) & yellow (weld), it took a number of days to produce ‘Strawberry Thief’ and was consequently one of the firms most expensive cottons. However, it remained to be one of Morris’ most popular designs. A set of printing blocks for Strawberry Thief, cut by the firm of Barretts of Bethnal Green Road, London, are now in the V&A Museum, London.

Details

Date: designed c. 1880
Dimensions: 33.6 x 71.7
Object Type: textile
Material: printed cotton
Technique: indigo discharge and block-printed
Catalogue number: F54b
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Presented by Miss F.J. Lefroy, 1951

A set of printing blocks for Strawberry Thief, cut by the Firm of Barretts of Bethnal Green Road, London, are now in the V&A Museum.

Details

Date: c. 1860s
Dimensions: 86.4 x 49 x 41.3
Object Type: furniture
Material: turned, ebonised wood with rush seat
Catalogue number: G27b
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Retailer: Morris & 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 G27a, 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.

Details

Date: designed c. 1880
Dimensions: 78.1 x 9.5
Object Type: textile
Material: printed cotton
Technique: indigo discharge and block-printed
Catalogue number: F54a
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Presented by Miss F.J Lefroy, 1951

Part of a collection of sixteen fragments of various sizes, originally from an upholstered Morris & Co. armchair.

Details

Date: c. 1886-87
Dimensions: 152.4 x 190.5 x 66
Object Type: furniture
Catalogue number: G26.1
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Designer: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Maker: Wilkinson & Sons (Manufacturers and Agents for Furniture and Stuffs)
Credit notes: Presented by Miss Martha Lugg Wooldridge, 1955

The settle was once part of the furnishings of 31, Upper Bedford Place, London, home of the Revd. Stewart Headlam (1847-1924), Christian Socialist and anti-prudery campaigner, whose rooms were extensively decorated in 1886-87 by A. H. Mackmurdo and Selwyn Image. It was exhibited at Messrs. Wilkinsons’ showroom in Bond Street in 1888 along with other pieces of Century Guild furniture and illustrated in ‘The Building News’ (March 30, 1888). It was purchased from Morris & Co. c. 1893 by the donor for her house, Wavertree which she shared with Headlam and which she furnished with Morris & Co. The original curtaining was replaced by the present Morris & Co. ‘Borage’ chintzes during the 1900s.

Details

Date: c.1870-80
Dimensions: 241.3 x 115 x 49.5
Object Type: furniture
Material: oak with gilt and oil paint
Catalogue number: G25
Designer: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915
Artist: De Morgan, William (1839 - 1917)
Retailer: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1955

This cabinet was designed by Philip Webb and decorated by William de Morgan for Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. It was originally one of a pair (the other with panels showing St George & the Dragon also by William De Morgan) made for Isabel Olga Lucas, née D’avigdor (1843-1926) widow of the artist Horatio Joseph Lucas. The painted panel on the left has a scene of two figures variously described as (female on the left) Hera/Juno or Muse Erato or Maia with (male boy on right) the young Hermes/Mercury with the first lyre; the painted panel on the right with a scene of two male figures variously described as (on right ) Pan or Silenus instructing Dionysus/Bacchus (on left) to play pipes.
The cabinet was sold back to Morris & Co by Mrs Lucas’s daughter Ruth Lousada who then sold it to Mrs Lucius Gubbins. Old photographs when in the possession of Ruth Lousada, show the cabinet originally had the back covered with a stamped, embossed leather paper, however this seems to have been removed by a subsequent owner who replaced it with 12 ruby lustre animal tiles by William De Morgan; these were still in situ when the cabinet was acquired by the William Morris Gallery in 1955. The tiles were removed in 1957 (now catalogued as C85-96) when the back was filled with new waxed oak panels to match the rest of the piece.

Details

Date: designed c.1884
Dimensions: 132.1 x 117.5
Object Type: textile
Material: printed velveteen
Catalogue number: F40a
Designer: Horne, Herbert Percy, 1864, 1916
Retailer: Century Guild
Manufacturer: Simpson & Godlee
Credit notes: Mackmurdo bequest, 1942

This design is one of the most iconic designs of the Century Guild. Known as ‘Angel with Trumpet’ or ‘Praise of the Soul’, it was designed by Herbert Horne and exhibited at a number of exhibitions for the Century Guild. Not all contemporary critics were impressed, one reviewer of the Manchester Royal Jubilee exhibition in the Journal of Decorative Art (Nov. 1887) described it as ‘at the best a very weak effort’. Nevertheless it is now seen as exemplifying the Guild’s swirling designs that preempted the Art Nouveau era. As well as velveteen it was also produced as a printed cotton (see other examples in the collection). The two differ in one detail; in the cotton the Angel’s halo contains a cross (usually signifying Jesus Christ), in the velveteen it has a dot, suggesting Horne ammended the design and that the velveteen was produced after the cotton.

Details

Date: designed c.1884
Dimensions: 348 x 78.7
Object Type: textile
Material: printed velveteen
Catalogue number: F40
Designer: Horne, Herbert Percy, 1864, 1916
Retailer: Century Guild
Credit notes: Mackmurdo bequest, 1942

This design is one of the most iconic designs of the Century Guild. Known as ‘Angel with Trumpet’ or ‘Praise of the Soul’, it was designed by Herbert Horne and exhibited at a number of exhibitions for the Century Guild. Not all contemporary critics were impressed, one reviewer of the Manchester Royal Jubilee exhibition in the Journal of Decorative Art (Nov. 1887) described it as ‘at the best a very weak effort’. Nevertheless it is now seen as exemplifying the Guild’s swirling designs that preempted the Art Nouveau era. As well as a velveteen it was also produced as a printed cotton (see various examples in the collection). The two differ in one detail; in the cotton the Angel’s halo contains a cross (usually signifying Jesus Christ), in the velveteen it has a dot, suggesting Horne ammended the design and that the velveteen was produced after the cotton.

Details

Date: c. 1882
Dimensions: 91.4 x 81.3
Object Type: textile
Material: cotton
Technique: rollerprinted
Catalogue number: F37
Designer: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Retailer: Century Guild
Maker: Simpson & Godlee
Credit notes: Mackmurdo bequest, 1942

Details

Date: c. 1870
Dimensions: 81.3 x 43.2 x 38.1
Object Type: furniture
Material: wood, rushed seat, Utrecht velvet
Catalogue number: G24a
Designer: Burges, William (1827 - 1881)
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs L. Hitch, 1954

This chair (one of a pair) appear in the volume of photographs “The House of William Burges ARA “(1885) compiled by Burges’ brother-in-law, R.P. Pullan, now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (V. & A. 51 E 54) plate 19 and a sketch for merman and mermaid chair backs on sheets, 27 and 30 in the V&A Burges’ ‘Furniture Album’ (93. E8) originally with rush seating. The chairs were used at Tower House, the home Burges designed for himself in Melbury Road, Kensington, London. Similar chairs are recorded as being based on bedside chairs in Burges’ rooms at 15 Buckingham Street, Strand, London. Such painted furniture by Burges is considered to have influenced some of the Morris firm’s early work.

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