(b Walthamstow [now in London], 24 March 1834; d London, 3 Oct 1896). English designer, writer and activist. His importance as both a designer and propagandist for the arts cannot easily be overestimated, and his influence has continued to be felt throughout the 20th century. He was a committed Socialist whose aim was that, as in the Middle Ages, art should be for the people and by the people, a view expressed in several of his writings. After abandoning his training as an architect, he studied painting among members of the Pre-Raphaelites. In 1861 he founded his own firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (from 1875 Morris & Co.), which produced stained glass, furniture, wallpaper and fabrics (see

See the Abbreviations for further details.

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William Morris (1834-1896), one of the most versatile and influential men of his age, was the last of the major English romantics and a leading champion and promoter of revolutionary ideas as poet, critic, artist, designer, manufacturer, and socialist.

Born at Walthamstow, Essex, on March 24, 1834, William Morris was the eldest son of a bill and discount broker with wealth and status approaching those of a private banker. Nature and reading were the passions of William's childhood, and the novels of Walter Scott inspired him with an abiding love of the Middle Ages. Morris was educated at Marlborough and Exeter College, Oxford, where he formed a close friendship with Edward Burne-Jones.

Originally intended for holy orders, Morris decided to take up the "useful trade" of architect after reading Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, and he was apprenticed to G.E. Street, who had a considerable ecclesiastical practice, in 1856. But Burne-Jones introduced him to the group of artists known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and by the end of the year Dante Gabriel Rossetti had advised him to become a painter, which he did.

In 1859 Morris married Jane Burden, a Rossetti-type beauty; they had two daughters, Jane and Mary (May). In 1861 he founded the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company to carry out in furniture, decoration, and the applied arts the artistic concepts of his friends. In 1875 Morris reorganized the firm and became sole owner. He himself designed furniture (the Morris chair has become a classic), wallpaper, and textiles.

Literary Career

Morris's literary career had commenced at Oxford, where he wrote prose romances for the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. His fame was confined to a small circle of admirers until The Earthy Paradise (3 vols., 1868-1870) established him as a major romantic poet. He chose the device of legendary poems from classical and medieval sources recited by Norwegian seamen who had sailed westward to find the earthly paradise.

In 1868 Morris took up the study of Icelandic, published a translation of the Grettis Saga with the assistance of Eiríkr Magnússon (1869), and visited Iceland in 1871 and 1873. Morris also translated The Aeneids (sic; 1875), the Odyssey (1887), Beowulf (1895), and Old French Romances (1896). He regarded as his finest literary achievement Sigurd the Volsung, and Fall of the Niblungs (1876), his own retelling in verse of the Icelandic prose Volsunga saga, a version J. W. Mackail (1899) described as "the most Homeric poem which has been written since Homer."

His Politics

Morris first entered the arena of politics in 1876 to attack Disraeli's Tory government and call for British intervention against the Turks for savagely suppressing a nationalist revolt of oppressed Bulgarians. In his appeal To the Working Men of England (1877) he denounced capitalist selfishness on grounds that appealed to both Liberals and Communists. The debate on Morris as a Socialist has given rise to a considerable literature, for the nobility of his utterances led almost every political camp to claim him, including orthodox Marxists. In 1886 Friedrich Engels described him scornfully as "a settled sentimental Socialist." A year later, in ignorance of this criticism, Morris wrote to a friend that he had an Englishman's horror of government interference and centralization, "which some of our friends who are built in the German pattern are not quite enough afraid of I think."

Arts and Crafts Movement

From a series of notable homes - the Red House, Upton, Kent; Kelmscott Manor on the upper Thames; and Kelmscott House, Morris's London house from 1878 - he carried on a prodigious activity as a public speaker, member of committees and radical organizations, and leader of the Arts and Craft movement. He founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1877 and the Kelmscott press in 1890. He died at Kelmscott House on Oct. 3, 1896.

Morris's plea for an integrated society in which everything made by man should be beautiful radically distinguishes him from other social theorists. His insistence on beauty as a central goal makes most modern approaches to a welfare society seem lacking in an essential nobility. For him art was the very highest of realities, the spontaneous expression of the pleasure of life innate in the whole people. An esthetic doctrine underlies his most political writings, like The Dream of John Ball (1888). Paradoxically, the designer-manufacturer who failed to grasp the esthetic possibilities of the machine was the father of modern industrial design, which aims to create a beautiful environment for mankind freed from poverty. A notable advance on his theory was made by the Bauhaus, the famed school of architecture and applied art in Germany, where Walter Gropius and his colleagues applied Morris's principles to the machine and scientific technology.

Further Reading

The Collected Works of William Morris (24 vols., 1910-1915) was edited by his daughter May, and The Letters of William Morris to His Family and Friends (1950) was edited by Philip Henderson. The classic work on Morris is J. W. Mackail, The Life of William Morris (2 vols., 1899; repr. 1968, 1995). A readable narrative biography with excellent illustrations is Philip Henderson, William Morris: His Life, Work and Friends (1967). An outstanding, comprehensive study is Edward P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (1955). Paul Thompson, The Work of William Morris (1967), deals especially with Morris's art in relation to its Victorian background and discusses his writings and social theory in the light of recent research. R. Page Arnot, William Morris: The Man and His Myth (1964), is an ingenious attempt to claim Morris as an orthodox Marxist.

Additional Sources

Bloomfield, Paul, William Morris, Philadelphia: R. West, 1978.

Bradley, Ian C., William Morris and his world, London: Thames and Hudson, 1978.

Cary, Elisabeth Luther, William Morris, poet, craftsman, socialist, Philadelphia: R. West, 1978, 1902.

Faulkner, Peter, Against the age: an introduction to William Morris, London; Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1980.

Harvey, Charles, William Morris: design and enterprise in Victorian Britain, Manchester England; New York: Manchester University Press; New York, NY, USA: Distributed exclusively in the USA and Canada by St. Martin's Press, 1991.

Lindsay, Jack, William Morris: his life and work, New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1979, 1975.

MacCarthy, Fiona, William Morris: a life for our time, New York: Knopf, 1995.

Vallance, Aymer, William Morris, his art, his writings, and his public life: a record, Boston: Longwood Press, 1977.

For more information on William Morris, visit Britannica.com.

Morris, William (1834-96). Poet, artist, craftsman, and socialist, Morris was educated at Marlborough and Oxford. At first intended for the church, he became a painter under the influence of Rossetti. He quickly realized he had no great talent for painting but that he could design, and in 1861 founded Morris & Co. to produce wallpapers, furnishings, and stained-glass windows. He raised the standards of English design and craftsmanship and through his Kelmscott Press, founded 1890, had a similar effect on book design and printing.

(1834-96)

A leading figure in 19th-century British art and design practice and ideology, as well as a socialist, reformer, writer, and poet, Morris was also the founder of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1877. He is most commonly associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement which his theories and practice did much to sustain. Morris firmly believed in the idea of bringing together once more the designer and maker as a means of endowing the production of domestic and ecclesiastical goods with the ‘joy of making’, a process which had been eroded in the 19th century by the increasing use of the division of labour in industrial production. The latter was often seen as alienating, dehumanizing, and oppressive, a by-product of the relentless industrialization which dominated urban life in 19th-century Britain. Conversely, the Middle Ages, with its high levels of craftsmanship, respect for materials, and belief in spiritual fulfilment, was often held up by writers and theorists such as A. W. G. Pugin, John Ruskin, and Morris as a source of inspiration for the contemporary production of artefacts. However, Morris's commitment to craft-based, labour-intensive production generally rendered the resulting products affordable only for a wealthy clientele rather than the general public indicated by his socialist leanings.

Morris was educated at Marlborough School (1848-51) and Exeter College, Oxford University (1853-5), where he became friends with Edward Burne-Jones, who later went on to become a leading British artist and designer. Whilst up at Oxford Morris decided to become an architect, leading him to become a pupil of the leading Gothic Revival architect George Edmund Street in 1856. He soon made friends with Philip Webb, who was working in Street's Oxford practice at the time. However, Morris left Oxford for London at the end of the year, setting up a studio with Burne-Jones in Red Lion Square and becoming involved in many aspects of drawing, painting, and designing. In 1857, in the manner of artists of the early Renaissance he was involved with a group of artists (including the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Burne-Jones) in painting the walls and ceiling of the Debating Hall of the Oxford Union in a decorative medieval scheme in tempera. Following his marriage in 1859 he was heavily involved with setting up a new home, designed in close collaboration with Philip Webb. Situated in Kent, the Red House (so called on account of the red brick from which it was constructed) drew on Vernacular traditions. It provided Morris with an early opportunity to explore the idea of furnishing and decorating a home with artefacts that embraced high levels of craftsmanship and aesthetic sensibility. This process provided an important impetus for the establishment in 1861 of the manufacturing and decorating firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (which also included as partners Rossetti, Webb, Burne-Jones, and Ford Madox Brown) in Red Lion Square, London. Geared to both ecclesiastical and domestic furnishing and decoration, the firm's output included furniture, stained glass, wallpaper, textiles, tapestries, carpets, and jewellery. Having exhibited at the 1862 International Exhibition in London, attracting favourable critical notice, the firm soon built up its business with commissions including the decorative Green Dining Room at the Victoria and Albert Museum (1866). Morris himself produced a number of wallpaper patterns in the mid-1860s, drawing on natural motifs as a source of inspiration rather than the general Victorian predilection for historical motifs or heavy, imposing patterns. However, despite a number of significant commissions and sales the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. was dissolved for a number of reasons in the mid-1870s, with Morris himself taking charge of Morris & Co. from 1875. At that, further reflecting his interest in earlier periods and practices as sources of inspiration for contemporary production, Morris became involved in experimenting with vegetable dyes for cottons, silks, and wools at the works of Thomas Wardle in Leek, Staffordshire. These natural dyes were a far remove from the strong aniline dyes that had tended to dominate the Victorian market place. Wardle produced a number of Morris's textile designs, including Honeysuckle (1875), before Morris established his own print factory at Merton Abbey in 1881. There a number of other Morris textile designs, including Anemone and Daffodil, were printed and a number of carpets woven. From the 1870s Morris had also been engaged in illumination and he took this interest a stage further in an effort to revive the art of printing, establishing the Kelmscott Press in Hammersmith, London, in 1891. He designed three typefaces, ornamental letters, and borders and also oversaw the printing and production of a wide range of books that included his own writings and reprints of an extensive range of English classics including the Kelmscott Chaucer (1896).

Morris was also an eloquent poet and writer and was prolific and varied in his output which developed from the 1850s onwards with volumes such as The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858), Earthly Paradise (1868-90), The House of the Wolfings (1889), and News from Nowhere (1891). The socialist principles which underlay much of his thinking about design was very much reflected in his political activities, which were at their most acute in the 1880s. Morris joined the radical working-class Democratic Federation in 1883, supporting the organization with money as well as vigorous campaigning. Subsequently he played a leading role in the Socialist League, one of the Federation's offshoots, founded in 1884, producing many pamphlets, bankrolling its Commonweal magazine and addressing meetings in industrial cities throughout Britain. However, towards the end of the decade the League's membership began to fall away and the organization was taken over by anarchists, leading to Morris's withdrawal in 1890.

However, although Morris was in many ways resistant to mass manufacture and the detrimental effects of relentless industrialization, a significant number of his designs were put into mass production. For instance, he designed wallpapers that were produced by Jeffrey & Co. and carpet designs that were manufactured by Wilton, Kidderminster, and other major companies. Furthermore, the historian Nikolaus Pevsner in his 1936 text Pioneers of the Modern Movement saw Morris as a seminal figure (or ‘pioneer’) in the development of Modernism. Pevsner believed that Morris's commitment to honest craftsmanship and truth to materials blended with socialist principles signposted the way for designers associated with the Deutscher Werkbund and the Bauhaus to reconcile such principles with liberating possibilities of new materials and mass-production technology. Such an outlook was seen as realistic in the social utopian drive to bring about the possibility of better standards of design for the majority.

(1834–96)

English artist, poet, craftsman, medievalist, and printer, who had a profound effect on architecture. Early in his career he studied the medieval churches of England and France. Working briefly (1856) in Street's office, he met Philip Webb, with whom he became friendly, and was influenced by the ideas of Ruskin. Disappointed by contemporary architecture and design, he commissioned Webb to build his own dwelling, the Red House, Bexleyheath, Kent (1859–60): with its unpretentious brick walls, fenestration arranged where needed, and tiled roof, it drew on vernacular, Gothic, and other traditions, treated in a very free way, and was influential, especially in the search for a style-less architecture. The difficulties of finding furniture and furnishings for the house led Morris to found Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, & Co., ‘Fine Art Workmen in Painting, Carving, Furniture, and the Metals’ in London (1861—after 1874 Morris & Co.).

Morris founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB—1877) in response to the over-zealous and destructive ideas of church-‘restorers’. He was anxious to publicize not only the concept of conservation (as opposed to wholesale renovation) but the qualities of hitherto unappreciated vernacular buildings, all of which led him to be regarded as a founding-father of the Arts-and-Crafts movement, the Domestic Revival, conservation, and the search for a society in which work would be a joy. His was the inspiration behind the establishment of the Art-Workers' Guild (1884), the first Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society exhibition (1888), and many other late-C19 organizations intended to improve design, craftsmanship, and the appreciation of art. His published works include The Earthly Paradise (1868–70), various beautifully produced volumes from his Kelmscott Press (which had a great influence on typography), and the Utopian News from Nowhere (1891) in which by the end of C21 London was rebuilt in a way inspired by medieval architecture (this suggests that Gropius's claims to have been influenced by Morris were absurd).

Bibliography

• A. Crawford & C.Cunningham (eds.) (1977)
• C. Harvey & Press (1996)
• Henderson (1967)
• Leatham (1994)
• MacCarthy (1979, 1994)
• Morris (1966)
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)
• Pevsner (1968, 1972, 1974a)
• Stansky (1996)
• P. Thompson (1993)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Morris, William (1834–96), British author, designer, and socialist. Although Morris did not write original fairy tales, he used fairy‐tale and folk materials throughout his literary career, beginning with the pseudo‐medieval tales he wrote for the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (1856) and the Arthurian and supernatural poems for the Defence of Guenevere volume (1858). The 24 tales that comprise The Earthly Paradise (1858–70) use plots, motifs, and characters from The Arabian Nights, Gesta Romanorum, the Grimms' (Kinder‐ und Hausmärchen/Children's and Household Tales), and Scandinavian saga and folklore. His late romances or ‘fairy novels’, especially The Wood beyond the World (1894) and The Well at the World's End (1896) influenced the work of William Butler Yeats, Lord Dunsany, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and others.

— Carole Silver

1834–96, English poet, artist, craftsman, designer, social reformer, and printer. He has long been considered one of the great Victorians and has been called the greatest English designer of the 19th cent.

While at Oxford, Morris, along with his lifelong friend Edward Burne-Jones, became deeply interested in the ritual and architecture of the Middle Ages. However, Morris's great awakening came through his readings of John Ruskin, whose ideas on aestheticism and social progress he gradually adopted. In 1856, after being apprenticed to an architect, Morris attached himself to the brotherhood of Pre-Raphaelites and through the encouragement of Dante Gabriel Rossetti began to paint and write. In 1858 he published his first volume of poems, The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems. This was followed by The Life and Death of Jason (1867) and The Earthly Paradise (3 vol., 1868–70), in which a group of medieval Norse wanderers seek a land where there is no death or misery. Although popular in its time, his poetry is not widely read today.

With friends, he started (1861) the firm of decorators later famous as Morris and Company, which, in reaction to growing industrialism, sought a return to the working operations of the Middle Ages and a revitalization of the splendor of medieval decorative arts (see arts and crafts). He made carvings, stained glass, tapestries, carpets, wallpaper, chintzes, and furniture. Today he is especially known for his fabric and wallpaper designs, gracefully elaborate all-over patterns usually based on floral or animal motifs. In the 1870s he founded the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings.

Morris also became interested in politics and reform, joining (1883) the socialist Democratic Federation and forming (1884) the Socialist League. Two notable prose works came out of this political phase, The Dream of John Ball (1888) and News from Nowhere (1891). In these works Morris contrasts the ugliness of the machine world with the poetry and beauty of the Middle Ages, setting forth the doctrine that art is the expression of joy in labor rather than an exclusive luxury. He made no distinction between art and craft and saw fine design and workmanship as the salvation of the industrial society. His last artistic venture, and one of his most important, was the Kelmscott Press in Hammersmith (est. 1890), where he designed the type, page borders, and bindings of fine books. Morris had a profound influence on the printing industry with his brilliant graphic contrast of ink with page and his elegantly designed type.

Bibliography

See his collected works (24 vol., 1910–15; repr. 1966); his lectures, ed. by E. D. Le Mire (1969); selections, ed. by his daughter, May Morris (1936, repr. 1962); biographies by J. W. Mackail (1912, repr. 1970), P. Henderson (1967), and F. MacCarthy (1995); studies by P. R. Thompson (1967) and R. Watkinson (1967).

Quotes:

"I love art, and I love history, but it is living art and living history that I love. It is in the interest of living art and living history that I oppose so-called restoration. What history can there be in a building bedaubed with ornament, which cannot at the best be anything but a hopeless and lifeless imitation of the hope and vigor of the earlier world?"

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

"If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

"Art is man's expression of his joy in labor."

"I pondered all these things, and how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name."

"Of rich men it telleth, and strange is the story how they have, and they hanker, and grip far and wide; And they live and they die, and the earth and its glory has been but a burden they scarce might abide."

See more famous quotes by William Morris

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