Blacksmith’s Shop

Details

Dimensions: 57 x 33 x 33
Object Type: sculpture
Material: plaster
Catalogue number: S59
Owner: Waltham Forest Labour Party

Plaster bust of William Morris, formerly on display in the William Morris Hall, Somers Road, Walthamstow. The hall was financed by local subscription and erected by voluntary labour in 1909 by members of the William Morris Co-operative Society as a “home” for the Socialist/Trades Union/Co-Operative movement in Walthamstow. After the hall closed in 1980, the bust was lent to William Morris School. It was given to the Gallery in 1989.

Details

Dimensions: 34 x 13 x 15
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze and marble
Catalogue number: BrS5
Artist: Drury, Alfred (1856 - 1944)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Standing female figure in long dress and bare head, a sleeping baby on her right shoulder supported by one arm, her left arm holding the outstretched hand of a little boy standing in front of her, partly enveloped in her billowing cloak.

This small bronze group is closely related to the colossal bronze allegory of Education which Drury made for Vauxhall Bridge in 1909, along with the groups of Art, Science, and Local Goverment. The figures for Education stand on the piers of the Westminster side of the bridge.

Details

Date: c.1894-95
Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.3
Object Type: print
Material: paper
Technique: lithograph
Catalogue number: BrP177
Designer and maker: Fantin-Latour, Ignace Henri Jean (1836 - 1904)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1936

This lithograph shows a scene from the opera ‘The Trojans of Carthage’. There are several states of this lithograph which Fantin did c.1894-95. The print is inscribed in Fantin’s hand to ‘Mrs A Edwards’. It was through Fantin’s friendship with Whistler, whom he visited in London in 1859, that he was intoduced to the Edwards whom he met on a subsequent visit in 1861, being introduced to them by the painter W Ridley. Edwards was an accomplished amateur painter and etcher and was keenly interested in art; his wife was a pianist and the couple shared a great love of music which they transmitted to Fantin.

Mr and Mrs Edwards supported Fantin for many years by purchasing and finding buyers for his flower studies some of which were painted on their estate at Sunbury-on-Thames. A portrait of Mrs Edwards was begun on his visit to England in 1861 and completed on a later visit in 1863. A double portrait of Mr and Mrs Edwards was exhibited at the Salon of 1875, now in the Tate Gallery. At the end of the Franco-Prussian war in 1871, Edwards took the contents of Fantin’s studio to sell in England, where the paintings had a great success and Edwards became Fantin’s agent in London; after Edwards death in 1879, Fantin continued to correspond with Mrs Edwards.

Details

Date: 1861
Dimensions: 60.9 x 91.4
Object Type: design
Material: pen, ink, wash on paper
Catalogue number: A268
Designer: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882

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: 1890
Dimensions: 66 x 55.9
Object Type: drawing
Material: pastel on paper
Catalogue number: D74
Sitter: Fawcett, Philippa Garrett (4 April 1868 - 10 June 1948)
Artist: Rathbone, Harold Steward (1858 - 1929)
Credit notes: Gift of Philippa Garrett Fawcett, 1938

The subject of this portrait, Phillippa Garrett Fawcett (1868-1948) was the daughter of the pioneer suffragist Millicent Fawcett, she won early fame by achieving high marks in the Mathematics Tripos at Cambridge University- at the time women were not admitted to the University’s degrees. It is said that Fawcett inspired William Morris to use her name for one of the characters in his novel ‘News From Nowhere’. ‘Mistress Philippa’ is the skilled stone-carver whom William Guest meets during his journey up the Thames to Kelmcott.

The portrait is by Harold Steward Rathbone, after studying at the Slade School and in Paris, Rathbone worked as a pupil of Ford Madox Brown, assisting him with the murals at Manchester Town Hall. He played an active role in the Arts and Crafts Movement and in 1893 set up the Della Robbia Art Pottery in Birkenhead.

Details

Date: design registered 27 February 1896
Dimensions: 80 x 77.4
Object Type: textile
Material: printed cotton
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: F15
Designer: Dearle, John Henry (1859 - 1932)
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1940

‘Compton’ was previously thought to have been William Morris’s last design for a wallpaper (and adapted as a pattern for fabric). This was confirmed by May Morris in her ‘Collected Works of William Morris’. However, following Linda Parry’s research it is thought to have in fact been designed by Morris & Co.’s Chief Designer Henry Dearle. Morris and Co. redesigned the the residence of Laurence W. Hodson, Compton Hall near Wolverhampton in 1895-6, although Morris had a hand in some of the designs (this is confirmed in surviving letters), there is no evidence that he was sole designer for any of the house designs. Rather, he and Dearle worked together, sending designs back and forth and correcting each other’s work. The evidence to suggest this is in fact Dearle’s design, is further strengthened by its similarity to his other work, particularly ‘Leicester’ wallpaper.

Details

Date: 1863
Object Type: glass
Material: stained, painted, leaded glass
Catalogue number: C232
Designer: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915
Designer: Brown, Ford Madox, 1821, 1893
Manufacturer: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Neil Phillips, John Hardman Studios, 2000

This stained glass panel depicts a man cutting wood in the branches of a tree. An owl can be seen looking up at him from the bottom right and the top right of the image features a ram, possibly a reference to the zodiac symbol Aries. The window was designed by Ford Madox Brown and Philip Webb for Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., the precursor to Morris & Co.

The window may have been part of a glazing scheme for Silsden House, Keighley, Yorkshire from 1863 to 1864. Brown’s account book in 1864 includes an entry about a design for ‘cutting trees down’. The original design for the window is at Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford.

Details

Date: c. 1868-70
Dimensions: 89 x 33.5
Object Type: glass
Material: stained, painted, leaded glass
Catalogue number: C221ii
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Maker: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance from the V&A/MGC Purchase Grant Fund, Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 1997

This window is one of a pair (see C221i) made for The Grange, the home of Edward and Georgiana Burne-Jones built from November 1867.

The minstrel figures are from a set of twelve designed by William Morris in the mid-1860s. They were also used for painted tiles (e.g. for Novello & Co.’s shop in Berners Street, now in the V&A Museum) and, with the addition of wings, as Minstrel Angels in many church windows (e.g. at Furneaux Pelham Church, Hertfordshire). Since the figures in the Grange window are identical in size to those used for two tile panels, it seems likely that the cartoons were made directly from the tile drawings.

The ’round glass’ surrounding the figures is made of cast discs manufactured to simulate the appearance of spun glass roundels. This type of glazing, often seen in room interiors in 15th century Netherlandish paintings (e.g Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding), was a favourite motif in the Morris firm’s stained glass. Also notable is the use of ‘spolit ruby’ glass, with its swirling, ireegular, red colouring for the robe of the right-hand Minstrel.

A photograph (1887) by Frederick Hollyer and a watercolour (1898) by T.M. Rooke, both show the windows in situ in the Burne-Jones’s house. After Edward Burne-Jones’s death in 1898, the glass was re-installed at the family’s house in Rottingdean (1904/5), from where it was removed in the 1970s.

Details

Date: c.1868
Dimensions: 10.8 x 16
Object Type: book
Technique: wood engraving
Catalogue number: K726
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Maker: Burden, Elizabeth (13.12.1841 - 22.08.1924)
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. This particular illustration was engraved by Elizabeth Burden, it was the only one she did for the series. 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.

For another early proof on proof paper see WMG: K726a.

Details

Date: 1885
Object Type: book
Material: paper
Catalogue number: K604a
Author: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Author: Bax, Ernest Belford (1854 - 1926)
Publisher: Socialist League Office
Credit notes: Transfer from Walthamstow Central Library, 1951

Written on New Year’s Day 1885 by William Morris and Ernest Belfort Bax, the Manifesto of the Socialist League sets out the aims of the fledgling political group. After splitting from the Social Democratic Federation, Morris along with Bax, Edward Aveling, Eleanor Marx and others founded the Socialist League as a more radical group that sought ‘the realization of complete revolutionary Socialism’.

Ernest Belfort Bax was a barrister and historian described by May Morris, William’s younger daughter, as ‘the learned and distinguished philosopher’. Bax taught Morris economics and Marxism in regular sessions that Morris referred to as ‘compulsory Baxination’.

The Socialist League logo featured on this pamphlet was designed by Walter Crane. Crane also produced illustrations for membership cards, invitations and posters for the group. His monochrome illustrations and engravings came to define socialist and trade union imagery for the next thirty years.

Details

Dimensions: 52 x 54.3
Object Type: design
Material: watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: A250
Artist: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915

Sailing ship with emblem of sun on main sail, on a rolling sea with seabird (aguillemot) in the foreground; part of border on left side. The drawing of the seabird is especially characteristic of Webb, who was renowned for his sympathetic depiction of animals and birds. The purpose of this embrodiery is unknown, it may have been designed as a fire screen or banner. Inscribed in pencil in Philip Webb’s hand writing with detailed instructions as to colours, silks and cloth appliqués.

The design was in the collection of May Morris.

Details

Date: unknown date
Dimensions: 76.2 x 62.3
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil, sepia and watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: D237
Attributed artist: Ruskin, John, 1819, 1900
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1961

This work has been attributed to the artist, critic and thinker John Ruskin, although it is unsigned. Ruskin first saw Rouen in 1835 and wrote of the west porch of the cathedral in his book The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) as ‘the most exquisite piece of pure flamboyant work existing‘. Morris was also impressed by this building, writing ‘no words can tell you how its mingled beauty, history and romance took hold of me’.

Details

Date: 1870
Dimensions: 94 x 61
Object Type: watercolour
Material: watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: W142
Artist: Brown, Ford Madox, 1821, 1893
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1958

This watercolour is based on a scene from Byron’s play ‘Two Foscari’ (1847-55). Set in fifteenth-century Venice, Foscari, the Doge’s son, has been imprisoned for murder, and is saying farewell to his wife Marina. The layers of pigment have been built up to give the effect of an oil painting. Ford Madox Brown originally designed this as an engraved illustration to Moxon’s edition of ‘The Poetical Works of Lord Byron’ (1870). During his career he painted a dozen scenes from Byron’s work, often changing the scale or medium.

Details

Date: 1862
Dimensions: 12.7 x 12.7 each tile
Object Type: ceramic
Material: hand-painted overglaze earthenware
Catalogue number: C216
Manufacturer: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Designer: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882
Designer: Brown, Ford Madox, 1821, 1893
Designer: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915
Painter: Orrinsmith (née Faulkner), Lucy (1839 - 1910)
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance from the V&A/MGC Purchase Grant Fund, National Heritage Memorial Fund, Friends of the William Morris Gallery and Walthamstow Historical Society, 1995

The figures in these tiles each symbolise a month of the year and depict a relevant seasonal activity or pastime. The ‘Labours of the months’ was an artistic theme that featured in medieval and early-Renaissance art. The rural activities were, as they are here, also sometimes paired with the signs of the zodiac.

This panel was created in the very early days of Morris’s company. A similar series was commissioned for the firm by G.F. Bodley in 1862 for the over mantel in the Dining Hall of Queens’ College, Cambridge. Although substantially the same, there are several differences: at Queens’ the figure symbolising June is a man with a scythe (by Morris or Madox Brown) rather than Madox Brown’s Sheep-Shearer; the Queens’ tiles lack the small inset pictures of zodiac symbols designed by Webb; and at Queens’ 6-inch rather than these 5-inch tiles are used.

These tiles were all painted by Lucy Orrinsmith nee Faulkner (the February tile is signed with her LJF monogram in the lower right yellow border) and designed by Morris and friends. Some of the artists are known, yet there is uncertainty as to the precise attribution of all the figure panels:

January- Possibly Morris/Burne-Jones or Webb
February- Burne-Jones
March- Madox Brown
April- Morris
May- Madox Brown
June- Madox Brown
July- possibly Morris
August- Rossetti
September- possibly Rossetti
October- Burne-Jones
November- Madox Brown
December- Rossetti

Like a number of other tiles from the 1860s, this series of The Labours of the Month seems to have been acquired for display in Morris & Co.’s shop in the early twentieth century, when the subjects April (Flower-bearer) and May (Falconry) were set in the incorrect sequence. Their earlier history is unknown.

Details

Date: c.1857
Dimensions: 13.8 x 12.1
Object Type: drawing
Material: pen, pencil on paper
Catalogue number: D222
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1954

Edward Burne-Jones had no formal art training and the rather awkward perspective and drawing of the figure in this work suggests it was drawn at an early date. The cross-hatching for the modelling figure, shadows and shading suggests the drawing was made for an illustration, possibly Cupid’s daughter by his forge from Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem The Parlement of Fowles:

Under a tree, besyde a welle, I say

Cupyde our lord his arwes forge and fyle;

And at his fete his bowe al redy lay,

And wel his doghter tempred al this whyle

The hedes in the welle, and with hir wyle

She couched hem after as they shulde serve,

Some for to slee, and some to wounde and kerve

This drawing was possibly reused in Burne-Jones watercolour ‘Cupid’s Forge’ (1861) now in a Private Collection.

Previous attempts to identify the drawing by Waters & Harrison suggested that the subject shown is ‘an Arthurian incident, possibly the Lady of Shalott’. However, there is no loom, no mirror, no river and the figure of the man beyond the open window, though singing, hardly resembles ‘the bold Sir Lancelot’ of Tennyson’s poem ‘The Lady of Shalott’. A later alternative suggested it was from ‘King Grisly-Beard’ in Grimm’s ‘Fairy Tales’, a source of inspiration for other works by Morris and Burne-Jones at this early date. This story tells of a king’s daughter who spurns so many suitors that her father makes her marry the first beggar who comes to the palace. He turns out to be a strolling musician (King Grisly-Beard, one of the rejected suitors in disguise) who takes her to live in a cottage in a forest where she is made to cook and do other menial tasks.

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

Details

Date: 1868
Dimensions: 62 x 48
Object Type: watercolour
Material: watercolour and gouache on paper
Catalogue number: BrW12
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1937

The romantic story of the chivalrous knight who became England’s patron saint appealed strongly to Morris’s artistic circle. Burne-Jones featured him in a series of painted panels for the dining room in Miles Birket Foster’s Surrey home. He made this watercolour shortly afterwards.

Legend had it that the dragon was terrorising the inhabitants of Silene (possibly Cyrene in modern Libya), who appeased it with animal and human sacrifices. George, a Roman soldier, appears just as the young princess Sabra is about to be sacrificed. Protected by the sign of the cross, George slays the dragon.

Burne-Jones’s treatment of the tale is lyrical rather than dramatic; the struggle isn’t violent, and the princess is relegated to the background. He based the dragon (whose armadillo-like skin echoes the knight’s armour) on an early sixteenth century German print attributed to Hans Leinberger, which Burne Jones probably copied in the British Museum.

Details

Date: c. 1856-1860
Dimensions: 96.5 x 126 x 50.8
Object Type: furniture
Material: mahogany
Catalogue number: G58
Owner: Brown, Ford Madox, 1821, 1893
Manufacturer: Priestley, Frederick
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund

The piano once belonged to the Pre-Raphaelite artist Ford Madox Brown who was fond of performing German music and English songs with his family and friends. It appeared as lot 4 in the sale of Madox Brown’s effects on Tuesday, 29 May, 1894, where it is described as having a panel designed by William Morris. The piano came into Madox Brown’s possession before 1860 as it was seen and admired by Edward Burne-Jones in the Madox Brown’s house, as described in Georgiana Burne-Jones’s “Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones”, 1904, vol. 1 p. 207:

“Mrs Catherwood gave us a piano (as a present for their wedding in 1860) made by Priestley of Berners Street, who had patented a small one of inoffensive shape that we had seen and admired at Madox Brown’s house; we had ours made of unpolished American walnut, a perfectly plain wood of pleasing colour, so that Edward could paint upon it. The little instrument when opened shows inside the lid a very early design for the “Chant d’Amour” and on the panel beneath the keyboard there is a gilded and lacquered picute of Death, veiled and crowned, standing outside the gate of a garden where a number of girls, unconscious of his approach are resting and listening to music.”

The Burne-Jones’s piano was given by the Burne-Jones family to the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1926 (Museum No. 43-1926.)

The patented Priestley piano had an ingeniously simplified piano action with only two moving parts as well as a compact soundboard.

Details

Date: c. 1907
Dimensions: 140.5 x 64 x 45
Object Type: furniture
Catalogue number: G33
Designer: Voysey, Charles Francis Annesley, 1857, 1941
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1962

Designed for the Essex and Suffolk Equitable Insurance company, Capel House, New Broad Street, London, E.C.2. The client who commissioned the work from Voysey on the Company’s behalf was S.C. Turner, for whom Voysey had designed The Homestead in Second Avenue at Frinton-on-Sea, Essex in 1905. The contractor for the work was F. Muntzer, a friend and pupil of Voysey. A perspective design view of the Board Room in the V&A Museum London shows the set of board-room chairs of which a third is in the V&A. Voysey described the scheme in ‘The Builder’, 1909: “We put in new windows, doors, fireplaces and floors and furnished the offices; everything being designed by me, even the calendars, ink-stands, pen tray etc. The principle we worked on was to have everything durable, and minimise the cleaning as much as possible. Thus the upkeep is reduced to a minimum. All the woodwork and furniture is in oak, left in its natural colour…” The present dark stain was added subsequently.

Details

Date: 1884
Dimensions: 73 x 43.5
Object Type: metalwork
Material: brass and glass
Technique: repousse
Catalogue number: L3
Designer: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Maker: Esling | George
Manufacturer: Century Guild
Credit notes: Mackmurdo bequest, 1942

Brass hanging lamp, the lower part with plain glazed panels, the upper part a drum with pierced brass work of thistle pattern, a broad rim above the drum, surmounted by brass balls. The open work repousee pattern of thistle leaves and heads is identical to that found on the drum of another hanging lamp now at the Colchester & Ipswich Museum (COLEM:1932.66), gifted by Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo. The Colchester example is illustrated in The Studio, Vol XVI, 1899 ‘Mr Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo and the Century Guild’ by Aymer Vallance, p.191.

Details

Date: 1906/1907
Dimensions: 21.5 x 15
Object Type: metalwork
Material: silver
Technique: embossed
Catalogue number: L36
Designer: Wilson, Henry (1864 - 1934)
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance from the Friends of William Morris Gallery and the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 2005

Domed base on four leaf-shaped feet, all edged with twisted wire work; shaft with spiralling vine and line motif embossed; spherical knop with vine and line decoration; top of shaft and drip-cup with wirework decoration. Designed by Henry Wilson, a leading Arts & Crafts metalworker. Wilson set up his own studio workshops in Kensington, London, circa 1895, and Sevenoaks, Kent in 1902. He was a founding member of the Art Worker’s Guild, and regularly taught at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and at the Royal College of Art.

Details

Date: 1883
Dimensions: 24 x 17.3
Object Type: book
Material: paper
Catalogue number: K935
Artist: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Printer: Hazell, Watson & Viney Ltd., London
Publisher: Allen, George
Credit notes: Miss E.M. Pugh Bequest, 1963

Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo and William Morris met through their involvement in the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. This book was published to increase appreciation for the work of seventeenth-century architect Christopher Wren, but it was the title-page that caused the greatest stir. The print on the cover show sinuous, undulating leaves and flowers through which a streamer bearing the title winds, it is flanked at either side by the attenuated form of a peacock.

This edition is smaller edition is in the octavo format and does not feature the Century Guild’s stamp which is seen on the front cover of the larger, quarto editions.

Details

Date: 1868
Dimensions: 20.8 x 14.9 x 3.9
Object Type: book
Material: paper in green cloth binding
Catalogue number: K3451
Publisher: Ellis, Frederick Startridge (1830 - 1901)
Author: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: Gift from Alex Bray, 2021

Taking the form of a compendium of different narratives, ‘The Earthly Paradise’ is an epic poem structured as a frame story, similar to Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’. It tells the story of a group of Norsemen who have fled a plague in Europe in search of the mythical earthly paradise. Eventually they come to a land where the inhabitants still worship the ancient Greek gods. They decide to stay here and each month the wanderers and the city elders exchange tales. ‘The Earthly Paradise’ contains the tales from a whole year, comprising twenty-four stories. Through this narrative Morris draws both upon Greek myths and Medieval Romance tales, including Icelandic Eddas and Sagas.

This first edition contains parts I and II covering the general prologue, ‘The Wanderers’, and months March to August. It includes tales such as ‘The Story of Cupid and Psyche’, ‘The Son of Crœsus’ and ‘Pygmalion and the Image’. The first edition of the poem was very well received and Morris went on to publish parts III and IV to complete the twelve-month cycle.

As the first edition of parts I and II did not specify it only contained the first two parts of the full 24 story collection, a revised title-page and spine label for the first volume was included in the first edition of part IV. The spine label and title page were amended for subsequent editions published by F.S. Ellis.

Details

Date: 1861
Dimensions: 51 x 41
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil and ink on paper
Catalogue number: D223
Artist: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Sitter: Morris (née Burden) | Jane | 1839 | 1914
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1955

Originally thought to depict Iseult boarding a ship from the classic chivalric romance ‘Tristan and Iseult’, this portrait of Jane Morris in medieval costume is instead most likely to be a depiction of her as Helen of Troy. Morris chose the subject of ‘Tristan and Iseult’ for the mural he painted in the Oxford Union library building from 1857-1859, he created various sketches for the scene over the summer of 1857 and began work on his only easel painting on a similar theme, ‘La Belle Iseult’, now in the Tate collection.

However, this drawing’s paper is watermarked with the date of 1861 which places it after the Oxford Union murals were completed. Instead it is more likely to be a study for a mural planned for the staircase at Red House depicting the Trojan War. In the drawing Jane is climbing a small ladder to enter a ship, a likely reference to Helen of Troy whose great beauty, according to legend, triggered the Trojan War.

Morris’s interest in pattern design is already evident in the elaborate sleeve lining shown in this piece. Jane was a talented needlewoman and may well have made this costume herself.

Details

Date: 5.1877
Object Type: archival
Catalogue number: J143
Designer and maker: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs. J,W. Mackail, 1946

William Morris’s original hand written manuscript on the Eastern Question Association (May 1877). The finished tract read:

Friends and fellow-citizens:–
there is danger of war; bestir yourselves to face that danger. If you go to sleep, saying we do not understand it, and the danger is far away you may wake and find the evil fallen upon you, for even now it is at the door. Take heed in time and consider it well, for a hard matter it will be for most of us to bear war taxes, war prices, war losses of wealth and work, and friends and kindred; we shall pay heavily, and you, friends of the working classes, will pay the heaviest.

And what shall we buy at this heavy price? Will it be glory and wealth and peace for those that come after us?

Alas! no; for those are the gains of a just war; but, if we wage the unjust war that fools and cowards are bidding us wage to-day, our loss of work will buy us loss of hope, our loss of friends and kindred will buy us enemies from father to son.

“An unjust war!” I say: for do not be deceived; if we go to war with Russia now, it will not be to punish her for evil deeds done, or to hinder her from evil deeds hereafter, but to put down just insurrection against the thieves and murderers of Turkey; to stir up a faint pleasure in the hearts of the no-nothing fools that cry out without meaning for a “spirited foreign policy,” to guard our well-beloved rule in India from the coward fear of an invasion that may happen a hundred years hence – or never; to exhibit our army and navy once more before the wondering Eyes of Europe; to give a little hope to our holders of Turkish bonds:– Working-men of England, which of these things do you think worth starving for, worth dying for? Do all of them rallied into one make that body of ENGLISH INTERESTS we have heard of lately?

And who are they who flaunt in our faces the banner inscribed on one side “ENGLISH INTERESTS,” and on the other “RUSSIAN MISDEEDS?” Who are they that are leading us into war? Let us look at these saviours of England’s honour, these champions of Poland, these scourgers of Russia’s iniquities! Do you know them? Greedy gamblers on the Stock Exchange, idle officers of the army and navy (poor fellows!), worn-out mockers of the clubs, desperate purveyors of exciting war news for the comfortable breakfast tables of those who have nothing to lose by war; and lastly, in the place of honour, the Tory Rump, that we fools, weary of peace, reason, and justice, chose at the last election to represent us; and above all their captain, the ancient place-hunter, who, having at last climbed into an earl’s chair, grins down thence into the anxious face of England, while his empty heart and shifty head is compassing the stroke that will bring on – our destruction perhaps, our confusion certainly. O shame and double shame if we march under such leadership as this in an UNJUST WAR against a people who are NOT our enemies, against Europe, against freedom, against nature, against the hope of the world.

Working men of England, one word of warning yet. I doubt if you know the bitterness of hatred against freedom and progress that lies at the hearts of a certain part of the richer classes in this country; their newspapers veil it in a kind of decent language, but if you were to hear them talking among themselves, as I have done, I know not whether scorn or anger would prevail in you at their folly and insolence. These men cannot speak of your order, of its aims, of its leaders, without a sneer or an insult. These men, if they had the power (may England perish rather!) would thwart your just aspirations, would silence you, would deliver you bound hand and foot for ever to irresponsible capital. And these men, I say it deliberately, are the heart and soul of the party that is driving us to an UNJUST WAR. They can harm us but little now; but if war comes, UNJUST WAR, with all its confusion and anger, who shall say what their power may be, what step backward we may make. Fellow-citizens, look to it, and if you have any wrongs to be redressed, if you long to lessen those inequalities which have been our stumbling block since the beginning of the world, then cast aside sloth, and cry out against an UNJUST WAR, and urge us of the Middle Classes to do no less, so that we may all protest solemnly and perseveringly against out being dragged (and who knows for why?) into an UNJUST WAR, in which, if we are victorious, we shall win shame, loss and rebuke, and if we are overpowered – what then?

Working-men of England, I do not believe that in the face of your strenuous opposition, the opposition of those men whom War most concerns, any English Government will be so mad as to wrap England and Europe in an UNJUST WAR.

“A LOVER OF JUSTICE.”

Details

Date: 3.1894
Object Type: book
Material: paper
Catalogue number: K25
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Publisher: Kelmscott Press | 1891 | 1898
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs J. W. Mackail, 1946

This leaflet advertises the Ancoats Brotherhood, Manchester, printed by the Kelmscott Press. The Ancoats Brotherhood was founded by Charles Rowley in 1882 as the Ancoats Recreation Committee. In 1889, it was reformed as the Ancoats Brotherhood, offering a year-long programme of lectures, musical evenings, concerts, dances, walks, art exhibitions, and social gatherings. Notable guests included William Morris, Walter Crane, and George Bernard Shaw. Morris lectured there annually until 1894.

The leaflet features extracts from Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and John Ruskin, along with wood-engraved initials, borders, and a press device designed by Morris. It includes the illustration When Adam Delved and Eve Span, designed by Edward Burne-Jones with lettering by Morris. This image first appeared as an etched frontispiece in the 1888 Reeves & Turner edition of Morris’s A Dream of John Ball (see K6), which was originally serialized in The Commonweal in 1887.

Details

Date: 10.10.1885
Dimensions: 27.3 x 23.8
Object Type: print
Catalogue number: K2037
Author: Stafford, John Phillip (1851 - 1899)
Maker: W. H.
Sitter: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: Presented by Miss Effie M Morris, 1954

This cartoon appeared on the front cover of ‘Funny Folk’s on 10 October 1885. It shows a jaunty William Morris having his boots cleaned by a policeman; referring to Morris’s arrest on September 21, 1885 at Thames Magistrates Court for shouting “shame” during a trial. The arrest occurred after Morris protested the sentence of Lewis Lyons, a tailor, who was given two months of hard labor for allegedly resisting arrest at a public protest. Morris was arrested but because of his social position got off lightly in comparison to the sentences and fines imposed on other demonstrators.

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’.

Details

Date: 1896
Object Type: book
Material: paper with half holland binding
Catalogue number: K20
Manufacturer: Kelmscott Press | 1891 | 1898
Author: Chaucer, Geoffrey (1340 - 1400)
Artist: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Illustrator: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1951

During the last years of William Morris’s life, he was often occupied with the ambitious Kelmscott Press edition of ‘The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer’. The project involved printing a new edition of the complete works of Geoffrey Chaucer with decorated borders and initials, a newly designed typeface and numerous illustrations by Edward Burne-Jones. The book took over four years to complete and included eighty-seven woodcut illustrations by Burne-Jones.

The Kelmscott ‘Chaucer’ was the last great project of Morris’s life and combined his passions for literature and design. The printing of the book also reflected ideas from Morris’s socialist philosophy regarding the division of labour and the rejection of modern mechanisation. In total 438 copies of the book were printed over two years, thirteen were printed on vellum and 425 on handmade paper. Forty-eight paper editions were specially bound in white pig’s skin featuring a design Morris had created. A few months before his death, Morris was shown a copy of the specially bound edition for the first time, which he described as ‘very satisfactory’.

Shown here is the first page of a paper edition of the Kelmscott ‘Chaucer’. The title page, initial letters, and border decoration were all designed by Morris. The first woodcut illustration by Burne-Jones can also be seen and shows a portrait of Chaucer. Morris had to scale down his ‘Troy’ typeface for the Kelmscott Chaucer creating the font seen here. Despite the scaled down font, the book is by far the largest produced by the Kelmscott Press.

Details

Date: 4.1884
Dimensions: 20.3 x 25.4
Object Type: book
Material: paper
Catalogue number: K918
Artist: Image, Selwyn, 1849, 1930
Editor: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Author: Horne, Herbert Percy, 1864, 1916
Publisher: Allen, George
Credit notes: Miss Elinor M. Pugh Bequest, 1963

The Hobby Horse was founded chiefly to publish the aims and ideas of the Century Guild. With the exception of an article by Florence Marshall on a cantata by Henry Holmes, all the articles and poems in the first number were contributed by Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo, Herbert Horne and Sellwyn Image; the latter was also responsible for the textual illustrations and front cover (repeated as a title page) and the engraved wood block for this is in the Gallery collection (R104).

The magazine received some hostile reviews on its publication most notably in The Academy (1 June 1884 p. 401): “There may reasonably be some difference of opinion as to Mr. Ruskin’s recent utterances. But it has always been possible to gather an idea of that he would be about. There is no imaginable method, however, in the madness of some of his later followers. The affectation of these persons seems to be only commensurate with their ignorance and their conceit with their incapacity.” Having criticised both the content and the appearance of the magazine, the reviewer concluded that ” a long-suffering public could hardly tolerate another instalment of such nonsense.” It was probably largely as a result of such opinions that no further issues appeared until 1886.

The Gallery also has most of the engraved wood blocks and line blocks for printing the headings, tailpieces, initials and other illustrations for this and subsequent issues of the magazine. The majority of these were bequeathed in 1942 by Mackmurdo, the rest being acquired through the bequest of his niece, Miss Pugh in 1963.

Details

Dimensions: 66.0 x 37.0
Object Type: textile
Material: cotton
Catalogue number: H10
Manufacturer: Unknown
Owner: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: Presented by Miss Dorothy Walker, 1953

This satchel belonged to William Morris; he used it to carry books or manuscripts he was reading when commuting to his business in central London . His daughter May Morris, later wrote about how she remembered her father carrying this bag, describing how ‘from the worn brown satchel used for parcel-carrying [he would] produce a modest-looking volume, sometimes protected by a velvet-lined case, sometimes bare, but inside! a fairy-story, a picture-gallery in little of mediaeval life.‘

Details

Date: 1884
Object Type: book
Material: paper
Catalogue number: K591d

This pamphlet was written by William Morris and Henry Hyndman for the Social Democratic Federation, Morris also designed the title page. Morris had always felt uneasy about the disparity between his comfortable lifestyle and the conditions endured by most of the British working classes. In the 1880s he began working towards overthrowing the system that enabled the rich to profit from their labour, going on marches, writing articles and lecturing all over the country.

Morris and Hyndman had a strained relationship as Morris disagreed with Hyndman’s obsession with parliamentary politics to the detriment of trade union organisation. Morris broke from the SDF in 1884 and went on to establish the Socialist League, a more radical group that sought a revolutionary overturn by the mobilised working classes.

Throughout the decade of his most strenuous political engagement, Morris’s continued to run his business. He did not see campaigning as incompatible with his design work and deeply regretted that his products were so expensive.

Details

Date: c.1890s
Dimensions: 168 x 91
Object Type: textile
Material: painted and embroidered silk
Catalogue number: F432
Maker: Unknown
Credit notes: Presented by Mr Peter Jacobs, 2009. Conserved with the assistance of The Kathy Callow Trust, 2012.

This banner by an unrecorded maker is an extremely rare survival; most have perished through repeated use on street demonstrations and marches. The design, painted on silk, is copied from Burne-Jones illustration to Morris’s socialist fiction, A Dream of John Ball. The inscription (embroidered in gold silk) ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman’ is an attack on the class system.

Details

Date: c.1865-68
Dimensions: 16.1 x 15.7
Object Type: book
Technique: wood engraving
Catalogue number: K792
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Maker: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1956

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.

Details

Date: 1908
Dimensions: 29 x 23 x 26
Object Type: sculpture
Material: clay
Catalogue number: BrS27
Artist: Lanteri, Edouard (1848 - 1918)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Edward (Edouard) Lanteri, (1848-1917), was born in France. He trained in Paris and came to London in 1872 to work as a studio assistant to Joseph Edgar Boehm. From 1880, he taught sculpture at the South Kensington Art Schools (later the Royal College of Art) where he was Professor of Modelling from 1900 to 1910. This model for a bronze sculpture (see BrS11) depicts Sir William Blake Richmond (1842-1921), a painter and sculptor and influential figure in the early Arts and Crafts Movement. In 1878, Richmond succeeded his friend and mentor John Ruskin as the Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford. Richmond was elected to the Royal Academy in 1895, where he served as Professor of Painting from 1895 to 1899 and from 1909 to 1911, he continued to exhibit with the Academy until 1916 and was elected Senior RA at the Academy in 1920.

Details

Date: 1908
Dimensions: 29 x 23 x 26
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze
Catalogue number: BrS11
Artist: Lanteri, Edouard (1848 - 1918)
Sitter: Richmond, William Blake, Sir, 1842, 1921
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Edward (Edouard) Lanteri, (1848-1917), was born in France. He trained in Paris and came to London in 1872 to work as a studio assistant to Joseph Edgar Boehm. From 1880, he taught sculpture at the South Kensington Art Schools (later the Royal College of Art) where he was Professor of Modelling from 1900 to 1910. This bronze sculpture depicts Sir William Blake Richmond (1842-1921), a painter and sculptor and influential figure in the early Arts and Crafts Movement. In 1878, Richmond succeeded his friend and mentor John Ruskin as the Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford. Richmond was elected to the Royal Academy in 1895, where he served as Professor of Painting from 1895 to 1899 and from 1909 to 1911, he continued to exhibit with the Academy until 1916 and was elected Senior RA at the Academy in 1920.

The model for this bronze is also in the Gallery’s collection, se BrS27.

Details

Dimensions: 40.6 x 16.5 x 17.8
Object Type: sculpture
Material: wood
Technique: painted wood
Catalogue number: BrS30
Artist: Unknown
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Details

Date: c.1865-68
Dimensions: 10.5 x 15.8
Object Type: book
Technique: wood engraving
Catalogue number: K791
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Maker: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1956

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.

Details

Date: 1882
Dimensions: 18.5 x 15 x 19
Object Type: sculpture
Material: terracotta
Catalogue number: S32
Artist: Creswick, Benjamin (1853 - 1946)
Credit notes: Mackmurdo bequest, 1942

This terracotta bust shows Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo as a young man, he is depicted with short hair and aquiline features wearing a collarless buttoned-down coat. It was made by Benjamin Creswick a friend and collaborator of Mackmurdo who worked with him on a number of decoration projects, including the Century Guild display at the Inventions Exhibition in 1885. Creswick lived with Mackmurdo for a short time during the 1880s at his house at 20 Fitzroy Street. It is likely the bust was made here during this period.

Details

Date: c.1865-68
Dimensions: 16.1 x 15.7
Object Type: book
Technique: wood engraving
Catalogue number: K730
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.

Details

Date: c.1868
Dimensions: 10.4 x 15.8
Object Type: book
Technique: wood engraving
Catalogue number: K720
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.

Details

Date: c.1868
Dimensions: 10.7 x 16.6
Object Type: print
Technique: wood engraving
Catalogue number: K717
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.

This version is inscribed in Cockerell’s hand in ink ‘Early proof before the margin was trimmed’.

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