William Morris first invited the bookseller and photographer Frederick H. Evans to Kelmscott Manor, his country home in Oxfordshire in 1861. Morris and his wife Jane shared the house with the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti from 1871 to 1874, and it remained a country retreat for Morris and the artists and intellectuals in his circle until his death in 1896. That year Evans photographed the Manor, producing a series of platinum prints. Evans was a skilled architectural photographer, in this series he captures the unspoiled craftsmanship and organic feel that first attracted Morris to Kelmscott.
