The Designs of William Morris Book

William Morris was undoubtedly a design revolutionary; he was a man of tremendous energy and manifold talents. His career spanned over 40 years and he produced a huge array of designs and patterns on such as stained glass, wallpaper, carpet, tapestry, printed textiles and a range of small items in addition to the books that he produced.

He was born on 24 March 1834 in Walthamstow and his school days were spent at Marlborough College and Exeter College, Oxford. It was while at Oxford that he found himself one of a group of artistic students, one of whom was Edward Burne-Jones who not only shared Morris' enthusiasms but was to remain a lifelong friend.

Morris took to the artistic life so well that he decided to abandon his intended career as a clergyman and in 1856 he entered the offices of G E Street, the Gothic Revival architect. Even though his time there was brief, he did meet the architect Philip Webb who was one of a group of friends who persuaded him to try his hand at art.

He moved into a London apartment with Burne-Jones and one of their early commissions was to decorate the Oxford Union debating hall, a project in which they were assisted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It was during this project that he met Jane Burden, who he married in Oxford in 1859.

Having settled in Bexleyheath, the Red House, as his residence was named, became the centre for the Morris circle and it was probably there that the design firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co was formed in 1861. This was a collaboration of seven friends, Morris, Burne-Jones, Webb, Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, Charles Faulkner and Peter Paul Marshall and they exhibited furniture, stained glass and embroideries in the Medieval Court of the 1862 Great Exhibition. They won two medals and gained a number of important commissions from their efforts at the Exhibition.

The firm went from strength to strength but in travelling to and from London, Morris' health suffered and after a short stint living in Queens Square, the family moved to Lechlade in Gloucestershire where they rented Kelmscott Manor. His marriage began to fall apart, due mainly to the presence of Rossetti, so he travelled to Iceland where his interest in Icelandic legend flourished.

In 1875 the friends' partnership was dissolved and Morris & Co was set up, opening showrooms in Oxford Street two years later. And when the business expanded he took a workshop at Merton Abbey on the banks of the River Wardle in Surrey. It was here that Morris was to produce some of his finest work and where he explored his interest in textiles, carpet weaving and tapestries, with the help of his younger daughter, May, who took over that side of the business in 1885.

It was not only as a designer that he found fame in his lifetime for he was a writer of visionary, romantic verse (even turning down the offer of the Poet Laureateship on Tennyson's death) and 'News from Nowhere' his great Utopian novel, published in 1890. A year later he founded the Kelmscott Press in Hammersmith and printed around 50 gloriously decorated titles. It was his work with the Kelmscott Press that almost fully occupied his last five years before he died in October 1896.


This book presents an excellent full colour cross section of his, and his firms', work that amply demonstrates that his appeal is as irresistible today as it was a century ago.