William Morris and Frederick Henry Evans had shared interests in typography, literature and architecture. Evans was a talented photographer and had supplied Morris with lantern slides for his lectures on architecture. In 1896 Morris invited Evans to photograph Kelmscott Manor, his country home in Oxfordshire. 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.
Evans was a skilled architectural photographer, in this series he captures the unspoiled craftsmanship and organic feel that first attracted Morris to Kelmscott. After Morris’s death he assembled a number of these images in a memorial portfolio.
This photograph shows the Green Room on the ground floor of the north west angle of the house. Above the seventeenth century carved fireplace is a section of wooden panelling (since removed) designed by Philip Webb, who also supervised the installation of the Morris & Co. painted tiling. The walls are hung with Kennet pattern chintz, designed by Morris in 1883. On the right is a Morris & Co. Sussex rush seated chair.
