Lecture Illustration after Assyrian Sacred Tree Designs

Details

Date: 1881
Dimensions: 97.5 x 57
Object Type: design
Material: ink and watercolour
Catalogue number: A240
Illustrator: Morris, William, 1834, 1896

This large illustration is one of 17 (See A234-A242) used by William Morris to illustrate his lecture ‘Some Hints on Pattern Designing’ given at the Working Men’s College, London on 10 December 1881. The patterns derive mainly from plates illustrating similar motifs in the Egyption section of Owen Jones ‘Grammer of Ornament’. This particulalar illustration is a close copy of a similar motif in Jones’ ‘Grammer of Ornament’ from the Assyrian and Persian Art Section, pl.XII no 14.

Details

Date: 1881
Dimensions: 67 x 77.7
Object Type: design
Material: ink and watercolour
Catalogue number: A237
Illustrator: Morris, William, 1834, 1896

This large illustration is one of 17 (See A234-A242) used by William Morris to illustrate his lecture ‘Some Hints on Pattern Designing’ given at the Working Men’s College, London on 10 December 1881. The patterns derive mainly from plates illustrating similar motifs in the Egyption section of Owen Jones ‘Grammer of Ornament’. In fact this particulalr illustration is a close copy of a similar motif in Jones’ ‘Grammer of Ornament’ from the Egyptian Section, pl.IV no 16.

Details

Date: 1864-66
Dimensions: 66 x 48.3
Object Type: design
Catalogue number: A21
Artist: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1940

This designs of two angels was probably made in 1864 specifically for the west window of St Oswald’s, Durham (a three-light window with tracery) in which the main lights showing six scenes from the life of St Oswald were designed by Ford Madox Brown. The quarry panels below have shields bearing the arms of Elliott, Fogg and Fogg-Elliott by Philip Webb, while Morris was responsible for designing the half-length angels in circlets set in quarry panels between the upper and lower scenes in the main lights and for the angels in the tracery above. The angels, for which A21 is the design, appear in the second tier of tracery in two panel lights.
The same cartoon was used for windows in: Bradford Cathedral, 1864, Bloxham, 1869, Christ Church, Oxford, 1871, Knaresborough, 1873, Over Stowey, 1873, West Wratting, 1910, Wirksworth, 1909, and Wormington, 1912.

Details

Date: 11.02.1876
Dimensions: 81.3 x 65.1
Object Type: design
Material: pencil and watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: A39
Artist: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1940

Despite Morris’s desire to create products using traditional handcrafts, he also designed carpets to be manufactured by machine. Morris’s machine-woven carpets were of a higher quality than other commercially available examples and were used in many fashionable homes. ‘Honeycomb’, one of five carpet designs registered in 1876, is a woven wool carpet that was manufactured by H.C. McCrea and later at Morris’s own premises at Merton Abbey. ‘Honeycomb’ is relatively unusual among Morris’s patterns in so boldly emphasising the underlying stucture of the design rather than the floral/foliage motifs. Any risk of too geometric a character is avoided, however, by the skilful interweaving of the willows and flower-heads with the hexagons, like plants growing against a masonry wall.

Object Type: design

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