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Happy Birthday, William Morris!
01/04/2025
Happy Birthday, William Morris! Founder of the Arts & Crafts Movement
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"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful"
Most of us know this famous quote by William Morris and as today is his birthday today on 24th March, I thought I’d share a few more interesting, maybe less known aspects of him.
William Morris was also a poet, writer, publisher, environmentalist, and a fervent social and political activist.
He was deeply disturbed by Victorian industrialisation and capitalism, that in his view created a massive divide between rich and poor. However as often is the case life is more complex. It was this process also that also enabled his family to accumulate great wealth from shares in the copper and later arsenic mining company Devon Great Consols which William Morris also benefitted from for his own business. He gave up all shares and connection before becoming a socialist and later co-founded the Socialist League in 1884 with Eleanor Marx, Karl's Marx’ daughter, to promote a more radical, revolutionary socialist vision.
William Morris’ desire to produce beautiful things with care rather than mass produced were his answer to what he viewed as the ugly things of the society he lived in. His views were greatly influenced by Ruskin whom he met at Oxford university. Ruskin set up a connection of art and theory of social responsibility. In Morris’ time the wallpaper industry was inundated with the naturalist, illusionist French style and he was very derogative of its popular use.
In his view, good pattern should embody order, imagination and beauty. As a result he moved to a more geometric and stylized style. For him, imagination was a matter of communication. Wallpapers should mean something . there should be a connection, a binding agent, between imagination and beauty and it should be restful.
Interestingly, William Morris always considered wallpaper secondary to actual tapestries, yet his wallpapers became his best known products.
Fast forward 190 years William Morris’ designs are everywhere, mass produced and available to everyone. I do wonder what his take on this would be?
I highly recommend visiting the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow London as well as the V&A Museum.
To find out more fascinating background on William Morris, listen to BBC Sounds podcast ‘In Our Time'
Most of us know this famous quote by William Morris and as today is his birthday today on 24th March, I thought I’d share a few more interesting, maybe less known aspects of him.
William Morris was also a poet, writer, publisher, environmentalist, and a fervent social and political activist.
He was deeply disturbed by Victorian industrialisation and capitalism, that in his view created a massive divide between rich and poor. However as often is the case life is more complex. It was this process also that also enabled his family to accumulate great wealth from shares in the copper and later arsenic mining company Devon Great Consols which William Morris also benefitted from for his own business. He gave up all shares and connection before becoming a socialist and later co-founded the Socialist League in 1884 with Eleanor Marx, Karl's Marx’ daughter, to promote a more radical, revolutionary socialist vision.
William Morris’ desire to produce beautiful things with care rather than mass produced were his answer to what he viewed as the ugly things of the society he lived in. His views were greatly influenced by Ruskin whom he met at Oxford university. Ruskin set up a connection of art and theory of social responsibility. In Morris’ time the wallpaper industry was inundated with the naturalist, illusionist French style and he was very derogative of its popular use.
In his view, good pattern should embody order, imagination and beauty. As a result he moved to a more geometric and stylized style. For him, imagination was a matter of communication. Wallpapers should mean something . there should be a connection, a binding agent, between imagination and beauty and it should be restful.
Interestingly, William Morris always considered wallpaper secondary to actual tapestries, yet his wallpapers became his best known products.
Fast forward 190 years William Morris’ designs are everywhere, mass produced and available to everyone. I do wonder what his take on this would be?
I highly recommend visiting the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow London as well as the V&A Museum.
To find out more fascinating background on William Morris, listen to BBC Sounds podcast ‘In Our Time'
