Venetian Scenes

Details

Date: c.1868
Dimensions: 18.1 x 25.2
Object Type: print
Material: paper
Technique: etching
Catalogue number: BrP191
Designer and maker: Palmer, Samuel (1805 - 1881)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1936

Samuel Palmer started working on The Early Ploughman’s when he was living in Kensington in the 1850s, he worked on the plate intermittently for the rest of his life, finally re-biting it in January 1880. In the intervening years it was published in P.G. Hamerton’s Etching and Etchers, in 1868 (in the fourth state) which this versinon is, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1873 (a seventh state printed by Frederick Goulding) as ‘The morning spread upon the mountains’.

Details

Date: 1930
Dimensions: 19 x 24
Object Type: print
Material: paper
Technique: etching
Catalogue number: BrP163
Designer and maker: Griggs, Frederick Landseer Maur, 1876, 1938
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1936

Owlpen Manor near Uley Gloucestershire was built, and the trees planted in 1515; it remained in the hands of the Daunt family until 1925 when it was bought and restored by the architect Norman Jewson, a close friend of the artist. The first state of the plate in fact carried an inscription in the lower margin: To my friend NORMAN JEWSON, who, with only one purpose, at his own cost and loss, possessed himself of the demesne of OWLPEN, when for the first time in seven hundred years, it passed into alien hands, and with great care and skill saved this ancient house from ruin.

Only five proofs were taken of this first state. In the second state, the lower margin and inscription were removed and the plate initialled and dated as above on the steps on the back. 48 impressions, stamped DHP and numbered in Arabic numerals on the back. In the third state, to which BrP163 belongs, the plate was reduced on both sides. 45 impressions were taken, stamped DHP and numbered in Roman numerals on the back.

The DHP monogram on the back stands for Dover’s House Press, from the name of Grigg’s house at Chipping Campden; the printing press was in his house in 1921, and thereafter almost all prints were taken at Campden; the DHP mark was cut for him by Eric Gill.
A pencil drawing 8 1/8 x 11 3/8 in (20.6 x 28.9 cm), done on the spot for the etching, is in Boston Public Library.

Griggs did the etchings for May Morris’s The Collected Works of William Morris, translating Emery Walker’s photographs for the plates.

Details

Date: designed 1887
Dimensions: 54.3 x 55.9
Object Type: wallpaper
Catalogue number: B81a
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Manufacturer: Arthur Sanderson and Sons Ltd
Credit notes: Presented by Arthur Sanderson & Sons Ltd, 1962

‘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: designed 1884, printed before 1940
Object Type: wallpaper
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: B68a
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Manufacturer: Jeffrey & Co.

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.

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