Ruby Lustre Sunflower tile

Details

Date: 1894-1910
Dimensions: 21.5 x 8
Object Type: watercolour
Material: watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: BrW74
Artist: Shields, Frederic James (1833 - 1911)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1950

Shields was commissioned to decorate the interior of The Chapel of the Ascension, Bayswater by its benefactress, Emilia Russell Gurney. Shields first met Gurney in 1882, and later she sent both Shields and architect Herbert Horne to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore della Pietrasanta in Naples for inspiration. After the building’s exterior was completed by Horne in 1894, Shields began work on his series of murals and panels depicting imagery from both the Old and New Testaments, including this watercolour of Malachi (see also a design for St Jude from the same scheme, also in WMG’s collection: BrD77). Sheilds discusses the paintings in his pamphlet Chapel of the Ascension: Its Story and Scheme (twelve editions published by the Women’s Printing Society between 1897 and 1935). The work was finally completed in 1910; however, the Chapel and its decorative scheme were destroyed during the Blitz in 1944.

Details

Object Type: drawing
Catalogue number: BrD77
Artist: Shields, Frederic James (1833 - 1911)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1948

Shields was commissioned to decorate the interior of The Chapel of the Ascension, Bayswater by its benefactress, Emilia Russell Gurney. Shields first met Gurney in 1882, and later she sent both Shields and architect Herbert Horne to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore della Pietrasanta in Naples for inspiration. After the building’s exterior was completed by Horne in 1894, Shields began work on his series of murals and panels depicting imagery from both the Old and New Testaments, including this design for St Jude (see also a watercolur of Malachi from the same scheme, also in WMG’s collection: BrW74). Sheilds discusses the paintings in his pamphlet Chapel of the Ascension: Its Story and Scheme (twelve editions published by the Women’s Printing Society between 1897 and 1935). The work was finally completed in 1910; however, the Chapel and its decorative scheme were destroyed during the Blitz in 1944.

Details

Date: 1874
Dimensions: 27 x 20
Object Type: watercolour
Material: watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: BrW85
Artist: Shields, Frederic James (1833 - 1911)
Sitter: Booth, Matilda (1856)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1950

Watercolour portrait of the artist’s wife, Matilda Booth, known as Cissy. She was frequently used by Shields as a model; they were married in 1874, the year in which the present watercolour was painted, when Shields was 40 and Matilda 16. The watercolour was formerly in the collection of Mrs. E. Middleton, who wrote the life of Shields’.

Details

Date: c.1895-7
Dimensions: 25 x 17.5
Object Type: drawing
Catalogue number: D192
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1954

This pencil drawing by Edward Burne-Jones was a preliminary drawing for an illustration in William Morris’s Kelmscott Press edition of Sigurd the Volsung published in January 1898. The Kelmscott Press edition of Sigurd was first proposed in November 1891. At the time Burne-Jones was already working on the illustrations for the Kelmcott Press edition of The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, but agreed to provide 25 illustrations to the Sigurd. He found the subject much less congenial than working on Chaucer and his illustrations progressed slowly. Morris’s death in October 1896 put an end to the idea of a fully illustrated folio and in the final edition as printed, only two illustrations were used, ‘The Dwelling of Volsung’ (frontispiece) and ‘Gudrun Setting Fire to the Palace of Atli’. Another drawing, similar to this one, is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Details

Date: c.1863-64
Dimensions: 15.2 x 15.2
Object Type: ceramic
Material: earthenware tiles painted in enamels
Catalogue number: C202.1
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Painter: Orrinsmith (née Faulkner) | Lucy
Credit notes: Purchased with the aid of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Friends of the William Morris Gallery

This series of 10 tiles depicts the story of Cinderella. It was designed by Edward Burne-Jones and painted by Lucy Faulkner. Burne-Jones account book for September 30, 1862 refers to : “10 designs for tiles, Cinderella paid £7.10s” which may well be the set made for Myles Birket Foster’s house, The Hill at Witley Surrey. The tiles were intended for an overmantel panel and four two tile figures, the original designs are in the V&A and Fitzwilliam. This set is said to have been from a house adjacent to Bracken Dene, Low Fell, Gateshead (home of James Leathart, patron of the Pre-Raphaelites) Other sets exist in the Gallery’s collection (C82), the Walker Art Gallery and the Sanford and Helen Berger Collection, The Huntington Library in California.

Details

Date: 19.1.1898
Object Type: book
Material: paper
Catalogue number: K694
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Maker: Catterson-Smith, Robert (1853 - 1938)
Maker: Hooper, William Harcourt (1834 - 1912)
Printer: Kelmscott Press | 1891 | 1898
Publisher: Kelmscott Press | 1891 | 1898
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1954

The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs is an epic poem by William Morris, first published in 1876. The first refernce to a Kelmscott Press’s edition is found in the Press’s Secretary Sydney Cockerell’s diary on 5 November 1891 where he mentions “Saw … a trial page of Sigurd”. The following year, Morris was proposing it should be an illustrated folio and by 1895 it was announced as being in preparation in the lists by the Kelmscott Press. The folio was intended to be printed in Troy type with 25 illustrations by Burne-Jones, the number of these later being increased to 40. Burne-Jones was however reluctant to illustrate the book and made slow progress on the drawings. Two trial pages were set up and four borders were designed by Morris for the book, but in the end the scheme of printing it as a folio was abandoned. Two of the borders were later used for the Kelmscott Chaucer (pp. 470-471) the remaining two were never used, though one was engraved.

After Morris’s death, 32 copies of the folio pages were privately distributed to Morris’s friends in January 1897. Cockerell persuaded Burne-Jones to supply two illustrations for a more modest edition in small folio – a drawing for one of the illustrations “Gudrun setting fire to the Palace of Atli” (appears on the penultimate page) is now in the WMG’s collection, D192. The borders used in the small folio edition were almost the last Morris designed. They had originally been made for an edition of ‘The Hill of Venus’, which was to have been written in a prose version by Morris and illustrated by Burne-Jones. The foliage of the borders was suggested, according to Cockerell, by ornament in two Psalters of the last half of the 13th century in Morris’s library at Kelmscott House (see similarities of borders with those of the Windmill Psalter). This book was finally printed in 1898, two yeras after Morris’s death and is one of 160 copies printed on paper at 6 guineas (6 were printed on vellum at 20 guineas).

Details

Date: c.1890s
Dimensions: 127 x 163.8
Object Type: textile
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F205
Designer and maker: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Credit notes: Presented by Mary Annie Sloane, 1962

Wrap or cloak made from fine navy blue woven wool cloth with broad band of Chinese embroidery around neck and down one side along front opening and around cuffs and sleeves with pink chrysanthemums and butterflies. Coloured silk and metal thread worked in satin, stem, long and short, French knots and running stitches. The wrap is thought to have been made by May Morris and the embroidery is likely to be 19th century and of Chinese origin. It was acquired by May’s friend the artist Mary Sloane at the Kelmscott Manor Auction in 1938, Lot 124, for £2.6s.

Details

Date: c.1890-1910
Object Type: textile
Technique: embroidery
Catalogue number: F461
Attributed designer: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 2025

This Morris & Co. design is currently the only known example of Squirrel. It was originally set into a firescreeen (now removed) and features two squirrels collecting hazelnuts. The design bears similarities to May Morris’s embroidery designs for the Firm. Another design by May Morris to feature squirrels, is the William Morris Gallery’s large panel Battye Embroidered Wall Hanging (F101), which was designed by May but executed by Frances Battye around 1900. The animals in this smaller panel are more refined and may reflect the work of a skilled embroiderer such as May or one of the employees in the Firm’s embroidery section.

The design is embroidered onto Morris & Co’s St James’s silk damask. May also embroidered on damask for the Spring and Summer panels (c. 1895–1900, private collection), which are applied to a ground of Morris & Co. Oak damask as well as Fruit Garden portières. These pieces are recorded in the Firm’s Embroidery Day Book (1892-1896) now in the National Art Library (V&A:86.CC.31). The choice of Morris & Co. damask for the background made these works more costly than those with a more common cotton background.

Details

Object Type: printing block
Material: pearwood
Catalogue number: R450
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Manufacturer: Barrett's of Bethnal Green Road
Credit notes: Gift of John Lewis Partnership, 1980

This printing wood block with used to print Morris & Co.’s designs onto cotton and was made by the firm of Barrett, 249 Bethnal Green Road. William Morris’s original drawing, or those of his other chief designer’s, would be transferred onto a pearwood surface using tracing paper. Morris would check all the blocks for accuracy before the pattern was carved into the surface by Barrett’s carvers. Each block was cut to match a different colour of the design and had to register correctly to ensure the pattern was printed accurately. Small pins were inserted in the edge of the block which when printed left tiny dots of colour. This allowed the printer to line the blocks up in the right place.

At Merton Abbey the cloth was stretched over a blanket underlay on one of the long tables in the printing shop. The printer would press the printing block into a dye-pad and then lay it into position on the fabric. The block was then tapped with a mall (a led weighted mallet) to ensure an even impression on the cloth. The printer then lifted the block, applied more colour and repeated the process down the whole length of the fabric. By this time the first colour had dried, allowing the application of second colour.

Details

Date: 1876
Dimensions: 167.6 x 91.4
Object Type: design
Material: pencil, ink and watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: A31
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1940

A design for a tile panel composed of 66 earthenware tiles with painted underglaze decorated with a ‘drop’ design of foliage of Persian inspiration, in green and blue on a blue ground. This tile panel was designed by William Morris and produced by William De Morgan in 1876 and is one of six; one of which is WMG C176. They were commissioned by the banker, Edward Baring, for his bathroom at Membland Hall, north of Plymouth (now demolished).

William De Morgan had set up his pottery in Chelsea in 1872 and had already designed tile panels, and as many as 300 six inch tiles by 1877. The Membland Hall commission was to be the largest panel he had attempted. Each panel measures 1600mm x 915mm, and is made up of 66 six inch tiles. It was a remarkable achievement to have produced these large panels on such small premises.

The design for these panels is composed differently to Morris’s wallpaper designs of that period, having larger motifs and more free space. The wallpapers had smaller detail and denser patterning. The repeat design at the edges indicates that the panels were intended to be set close together so that the pattern could progress laterally.

The design for these tile panels appeared in the Morris firm’s stock-list as late as 1913. It is unlikely that Morris designed anything as large again.

Membland Hall was demolished in 1928 for its lead and fireplaces. The six panels appeared on the London market in 1972. They had been found in a cupboard at Membland Hall. Another tile of the six is on display at the V&A, London. A tile of this design is in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts, Cologne (E04941) and was acquired in 1978.

Details

Date: 1905
Dimensions: 8.6 x 13.7
Object Type: photograph
Material: photograph
Catalogue number: P680
Sitter: Morris, Jenny (1861 - 1935)
Sitter: Culmer (neé Peerless), Ada ( - 1939)
Sitter: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Sitter: Morris (née Burden) | Jane | 1839 | 1914
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs Charles Bramley, 1962

This postcard shows a photograph of the female members of the Morris family in the garden at Kelmscott Manor. Jane Morris is lying in a hammock, with her youngest daughter May Morris seated beside her on the ground and Jenny Morris her eldest daughter seated on a chair right. Ada Culmer (neé Peerless), Jenny’s carer is seated on the ground far left. Marie Spartali Stillman is sat on a chair on the left, dressed in black with another unidentified woman sat beside her.

Details

Date: c.1870
Dimensions: 15.2 x 15.2
Object Type: ceramic
Catalogue number: C191
Artist: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Retailer: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.

This design of alternating swans and leaf scroll motif is attributed to William Morris c.1862 and was manuaftured in the Netherlands after 1870. The tiles were originally decorated in Morris & Co.’s workshops on an imported Dutch tin-glaze tile but Morris transferred production to the Netherlands c.1870, this tile is slightly larger and decorated using the more durable ‘in-glaze’ technique, as opposed to the hand painted ‘on-glaze’ technique of the earlier smaller tiles (see C178&a).

Details

Date: c.1890
Dimensions: 95 x 131.4
Object Type: drawing
Catalogue number: D187
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: Cecil French Bequest, 1954

An oil painting of this composition was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1893 but is now missing (reproduced in ‘Sir Edward Burne-Jones: A Record and a Review’ George Bell 1989 facing p.68). The oil painting shows minor variations in pose – the figure of Pilgrim for instance looks towards Love at right in oil painting and not at the seated female figure as in sketch and similarly the female figure looks out towards spectator and not at the Pilgrim as in this version. Love in the oil painting also carries arrows as well as a bow. The background is also more elaborate in the oil painting, with lilies and irises in foreground, details of architecture at left and right and a wood with briars at left and three birds flying near figure of Pilgrim./

The subject is another drawn from Chaucer’s ‘Romaunt of the Rose’, which had been used for an extensive series of embroideries (c. 1872-1878) designed by Morris and Burne-Jones and worked by Margaret, wife of Sir Lowthian Bell, and her daughter for the frieze of the dining room at Rounton Grange, Northallerton, Yorkshire, though in the embroideries, the treatment of this specific scene is different. Different treatments of the same scene are also to be found in the Kelmscott Chaucer illustrations and in a tapestry of which one is now in a private collection, the other in the Museum of Karlsruhe.

Details

Object Type: printing block
Material: pearwood
Catalogue number: R598
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Manufacturer: Barrett's of Bethnal Green Road
Credit notes: Gift of John Lewis Partnership, 1980

Details

Date: 1885
Object Type: book
Material: paper
Catalogue number: K3030
Author: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Author: Bax, Ernest Belford (1854 - 1926)
Publisher: Socialist League Office
Credit notes: Purchased from Lord Tom Sawyer by the Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 2015

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: Diameter 7.3 x base diameter 3.5
Object Type: ceramic
Material: porcelain
Catalogue number: C280

Small tea bowl in white porcelain, segmented sides and shaped rim, interior decorated in blue underglaze with central motif of landscape with water and three floral sprays; an outline in blue around the rim. Makers mark on underside. Presumably Chinese, date unknown.

Details

Date: designed 1877, made 1877-1900
Dimensions: 200.7 x 142.2
Object Type: textile
Material: wool on linen
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F335
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Maker: Godman, Ada Phoebe ( - Jan 1900)
Credit notes: Purchased 1978

One panel of a set designed and made to hang in the drawing room of Smeaton Manor, Northallerton, North Yorkshire. The panels are embroidered in wool on linen and features a pattern of alternating rows of clumps of stylised flowers, large blue artichoke heads and blue flower-heads against a background arabesque pattern of stems, leaves and small flowers. It is embroidered using stem, satin, long & short, French knots, split and back stich.

The panels were worked by Mrs Ada Phoebe Godman, who lived at Smeaton Manor. She was the daughter of Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, a wealthy customer of Morris & Co.. Godman commissioned William Morris to produce the design and her diary records its arrival on 31 August 1877. A surviving drawing shows her still working on the embroideries in 1900. The design was not exclusive, a pair of hangings from the same design were worked in silks by Mrs Margaret Beale and her daughters for their country home, Standen, East Sussex.

The two other panels from the Smeaton Manor set are in the collections of the Fitzwilliam and the V&A and a fourth, designed for a doorway was sold at auction September 2018.

Details

Date: 1897
Dimensions: 33.6 x 23.5
Object Type: print
Material: paper
Technique: lithograph
Catalogue number: BrP289
Designer and maker: Rothenstein, William (1872 - 1945)
Sitter: Ricketts, Charles de Sousy, 1866, 1931
Sitter: Shannon, Charles Hazelwood, 1863, 1937
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Lithograph portrait of artists Charles Ricketts (right) and Charles Shannon (right). The two artists were partners in their artistc career, as well as in their personal life. Together they founded The Dial, a magazine, which had five issues from 1889 to 1897, and the Vale Press, named after their house, The Vale, in Chelsea, London and inspired by William Morris’s The Kelmscott Press.

Details

Date: c. 1878
Object Type: oil
Material: oil on canvas
Catalogue number: O94
Artist: Hughes, Arthur, 1832, 1915
Sitter: Orrinsmith, Mabel (29.10.1871 - 1880)
Sitter: Orrinsmith, Ruth (23.02.1873 - 1954)
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs Hitch, 1954

These two children were daughters of Harvey and Lucy Orrinsmith (nee Faulkner). Before her marriage, Lucy and her sister Kate Faulkner, sisters of Charles Faulkner who was a partner in the Morris firm in its early years, worked for Morris & Co. executing embroideries and decorating ceramics. Lucy also engraved at least one block for the illustrations to a proposed edition of Morris’s The Earthly Paradise. Painted circa 1878 when Mabel was eight and Ruth seven. An unpublished letter among the Leathart Papers, University of Columbia Special Collections, from Arthur Hughes to James Leathart (15 August 1878) mentions the painting being sent to Newcastle for an exhibition.

Hughes came into contact with the Pre-Raphaelites while a student at the Royal Academy Schools in the 1840s. In 1857, Hughes joined Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Morris in painting the Arthurian murals at the Oxford Union. Although invited to become a partner in Morris, Marshall. Faulkner & Co., he withdrew shortly before the enterprise was launched in 1861. Hughes’s later work retains the sentiment, if not the technique, of his early Pre-Raphaelite pictures.

Two pastel portrait studies for the oil painting are also in the Gallery’s collection, see D189. Both painting and pastels were donated to the Gallery by Lucy Orrinsmith’s grandaughter, Mrs L. Hitch.

Details

Date: c.1904
Dimensions: 37 length
Object Type: metalwork
Material: gold, garnets, sapphires and seed pearls
Catalogue number: L18
Designer and maker: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Credit notes: Presented by Miss Lyndon Lang, 1954

This short necklace was made by May Morris. Four gemstones (two saphires, pyrope garnet (front), almandine garnet (clasp) and seed pearls) are set in closed-back settings over heavily tinted foils to enhance their colour. May would have set the gemstones herself, probably using a gas torch and hand tools. She is unlikely to have made the gold belcher chain. The necklace was given to Marie Lyndon-Lang on her 21st birthday in 1904. Her father, the ophthalmic surgeon, befriended William Morris in his youth and was an enthusiastic customer of the Kelsmcott Press.

Details

Date: c.1873-75
Dimensions: 44 x 39
Object Type: drawing
Material: chalk on paper
Catalogue number: D186
Artist: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882
Sitter: Wilding, Alexa (1845 - 25.04.1884)
Credit notes: Cecil French Bequest, 1954

The subject of this drawing, The Blessed Damozel, is taken from the artist Gabriel Dante Rossetti’s poem by the same title, which was first published in February 1850 in the Pre-Raphaelite magazine The Germ. The subject is a young woman who has died and waits for her lover to join her in heaven. The poem’s opening lines are: The blessed damozel looked out/From the gold bar of heaven/ Her eyes were deeper than the depth/ Of waters stilled at even.

This study was for an oil painting (now in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, USA). The painting was commissioned from Rossetti by the Scottish politician and art patron William Graham in 1871, and completed in 1877. The model was Alexa Wilding, a favourite of Rossetti who modelled for many of his paintings.

Details

Date: design registered 2 September 1883
Dimensions: 77.5 x 91.4 (per curtain)
Object Type: textile
Material: cotton
Technique: indigo discharge and block-printed
Catalogue number: F325b
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Purchased with a grant in aid from the V&A, 1978

Details

Date: design registered 2 September 1883
Dimensions: 77.5 x 91.4 (per curtain)
Object Type: textile
Material: cotton
Technique: indigo discharge and block-printed
Catalogue number: F325a
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Purchased with a grant in aid from the V&A, 1978

This design was named after a tributary of the River Thames. The design was based on a piece of seventeenth century Italian cut velvet and purchased in 1883 for the historic textiles collection of the South Kensington Museum, for whom Morris acted as an adviser for collection purchases. This is one of a pair of curtains originally from Miss Frances J. Lefroy, whose parents’ house was decorated by Morris & Co. in the 1890s;

Details

Date: designed 1883
Dimensions: 160.3 x 53.7
Object Type: wallpaper
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: B52a
Designer: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Manufacturer: Jeffrey & Co.
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1955

During her first three years working for Morris & Co, May Morris designed three wallpapers. ‘Honeysuckle’ was her most popular and enduring pattern and its light and uplifting design proved very successful for the firm. The design is based on a net structure of untamed woody stems, small curling leaves in two tones and honeysuckle flowers set against a plain background and was printed in four colourways. The repeat is 54cm.

Until recently questions surround who originally designed ‘Honeysuckle’, with some arguing that May’s father, William Morris was in fact the chief designer of the wallpaper. This is based on its earliest known attribution from 1890 by the writer of an article in The Woman’s World where it was credited to William Morris. However it was not unusual at this time for the designs of both May and Henry Dearle, Morris & Co.’s chief designer, to be credited to the firm’s more famous owner: the association tended to make the products more commercially viable. The first time the design is attributed to May appeared twenty years after The Womans World article in the Morris & Co. wallpaper catalogue from about 1909 and is confirmed in a letter by May.

Details

Date: Designed 1879, manufactured early 20th century
Dimensions: 40 x 43.5
Object Type: textile
Technique: power-loom jacquard woven
Catalogue number: F157
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1955

William Morris designed Flower Garden in 1879. He described it in a letter to a Georgiana Burne-Jones on 4 March 1879: ‘I am…in a whirlwind of dyeing and weaving, and…rather excited by a new piece…which looks beautiful, like a flower garden’. Morris claims to have chosen the colours to ‘suggest the beauties of inlaid metal’. They were almost certainly influenced by a display of items from Damascus he had studied in the dealer Vincent J. Robinson’s shop in London in March 1878 (see letter from WM to May Morris). The irregular shape of this fragment suggests it was used to upholster an armchair or sofa, it was purchased by the Gallery in 1940 from the Estate of Mrs Lucius Gubbins, one of Morris & Co.’s most well known customers.

Details

Date: 1879
Dimensions: 52 x 45.5
Object Type: textile
Catalogue number: F131b
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Presented by the County Technical School, Chiselhurst, 1956

Dove and Rose was produced in silk and wool double cloth. The design is formed of leaves, stems, rose sprays, acorns and doves in green and red. According to Morris, writing in a letter to Rosalind Howard, the structure of double cloth made it suitable only for curtains and hangings rather than upholstery. This piece was part of the original Morris & Co. furnishings at Bullerswood, and formed part of the curtaining of the drawing room. Morris & Co. were commissioned to decorate the interior of Bullerswood, a large house in Chislehurst, Kent- leased by John Sanderson, the owner of a large wool exporting company

The cloth was first woven by outworkers at Alexander Morton & Co. Later, at Merton Abbey, Morris & Co.’s textile workshop, Morris installed hand-operated jacquard looms, which partly automated the weaving process. Large orders were sub-contracted to companies that used steam-powered looms. Morris welcomed technological progress that genuinely saved repetitive labour without compromising the quality of the final product. He believed that “it is the allowing of machines to be our masters and not our servants that so injures the beauty of life nowadays”.

To weave the ‘Dove and Rose’ textile, Morris’s original design was painted on point-paper (see original design in WMG: BLA451). This was used to make a series of punch cards, which were fed into the loom and controlled the production of the pattern. Morris felt uneasy about subjecting his employees to the “deafening clatter” of the weaving shed, but accepted it as a necessary evil to produce fine fabrics in silk and wool. According to Morris, writing in a letter to Rosalind Howard, the structure of this fabric made it suitable only for curtains and hangings rather than upholstery.

Details

Date: 1879
Dimensions: 66 x 34.5
Object Type: textile
Catalogue number: F131a
Credit notes: Gift of Lady Pooley, 1953

Details

Dimensions: 57.8 x 87.6
Object Type: textile
Technique: hand-loom jacquard woven
Catalogue number: F198
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Miss E. Pugh, 1961

Details

Dimensions: 95.3 x 68.5 x 78.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: turned ebonised wood
Catalogue number: G38
Designer: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by J. and N. Larkin, 1967

The design of the chair was developed by Philip Webb, c.1866, although Warrington Taylor, the Firm’s business manager from 1865, seems to have been responsible for spotting the original prototype which formed the basis of Webb’s design. A note from Warrington Taylor to Webb contains a sketch of a smilar chair, annotated “back and seat made with bars across to put cushions on, moving on a hinge, a chair model of which I saw with an old carpenter at Herstmonceaux, Sussex, by name Ephraim Colman, your truly W. T.” It has always been supposed that the chair referred to above was an original piece of rural Sussex furniture; however a chair of a very similar design is illustrated in an early 19th century catalogue. Whatever the origins, the chair as designed by Webb for Morris went into production in the mid-1860s and became one of the Firm’s most popular items, still appearing in Morris & Co. catalogues as late as the first decade of this century. According to a letter in the Gallery files from the donor, Mrs Joan Larkin, (4th September, 1967) this chair (G38) originally belonged to the Morrises, and was presented to Dr Robert Steele by May Morris, daughter of William Morris. Robert Steele was May Morris’s executor, and after his death it passed to his family and finally to his grand-daughters, the Misses J and N Larkin, who presented it in 1967. A handwritten green tag, signed by Miss Larkin describes the armchair as “used by William Morris up to time of his death and for a great many years before..” and described in a letter by Joan Larken thus: “..it was a favourite armchair for W.M., he used to read over his writings and proofs therein as recalled by my grandfather,…Miss May Morris passed it on to him…” The chair was damaged in the Blitz (during the Second World War).
Originally the chair was upholstered in Morris ‘Utrecht’ velvet in green for the deep-buttoned back and seat cushions and arm pads; however it was re-upholstered in 1979-80 by the Gallery in Liberty’s reproduction Moris ‘Daffodil’ chintz in dark blue.

Details

Date: c.1911-1912
Dimensions: 61 x 61
Object Type: watercolour
Catalogue number: W211
Artist: Robinson, Frederick Cayley (1862 - 1927)
Credit notes: Cecil French Bequest, 1954

A related tempera sketch, The Landing of St. Patrick in Ireland, (22.7 x 22.2 cm) is in Carlisle City Art Gallery collection No. 20 (Gordon Bottomley Bequest, reproduced Waters & Harrison, Burne Jones, 1973, p.181 fig.270). Both this and W211 are apparently studies for a decorative mural for which, following a competition in 1912, Cayley Robinson was awarded a commission by Sir Hugh Lane. The mural was intended to decorate a proposed Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin.

Details

Date: designed 1878
Dimensions: 163 x 137.2
Object Type: textile
Material: woven wool
Technique: hand-loom jacquard woven
Catalogue number: F26cii
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Retailer: Morris & Co. Art-Workers Ltd., 17 George Street, Hanover Square, London
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1940

‘Peacock and Dragon’ was designed by William Morris in 1878. It was first hand-woven on jacquard looms at Morris & Co’s premises in Queen Square, London and later at the firm’s factory Merton Abbey, Surrey. It was available in two widths: 183 cm (72 in.) and also in 137 cm (54 in). It was available in two colourways, Morris & Co. pattern no: 200 (5 colourways) and 5623 (2 colourways). The size of pattern repeat: 109 x 90 cm. (43 x 35.5 in.).

This example is one width of a double width pair of curtains made by the Gallery for display in the 1960s, the four widths were separated around 1988 to form four lengths (see F26). The curtains were made from an original 30 yard length of 54 inch width five colourway fabric, acquired from Morris & Co. when it closed in 1940.

Archives: Objects

Pages

Archives

Categories