Coastal Scene, Spain

Details

Date: 1906
Dimensions: 47.5 x 52.8
Object Type: print
Material: paper
Technique: etching on copper
Catalogue number: BrP109
Artist: Brangwyn, Frank, Sir (1867 - 1956)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1936

Frank Brangwyn made this etching from a drawing he made in Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey) c. 1896. 70 proofs of the etching were made before the plate was destroyed.
A part cut from this plate showing the group of figures around the well was printed in 1919 as a separate etching, ‘The Turkish Well’ (‘Un Puits Turc’) 15 x 21 cm. with the addition of a different background showing houses with arcaded facades.

The view shows Santa Sophia, built in 532-7 during the reign of the Emperor Justinian it was one of the most famous of Byzantine churches; it was turned into a mosque after the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453.

Details

Date: 1879
Dimensions: 18.2 x 46.5
Object Type: design
Catalogue number: BLA451
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896

This design shows one half of the pattern for Dove and Rose, intended for a woven double cloth. The design is formed of leaves, stems, rose sprays, acorns and doves in green and red.

At Merton Abbey, Morris & Co.’s textile workshop, Morris had 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. 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.

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