William Morris Study Notes

To unify art and craftsmanship,

mind and hand

Poet, novelist, translator, socialist

activist, environmentalist,
entrepreneur.

A love of beautiful things and a

hatred of contemporary society.

Welcome to a set of very disjointed

notes on the life and work of William
Morris. I offer these as a way of an
absolute beginner gaining access to
the life of someone who sought a
certain harmony throughout his life.
Seeking a peaceful resolution
between rich and poor, art and
craft, head and heart, his life seems
to me to have been one which held
the hands of tensions that were
often at war with each other.

Outline biography

• Born 1834, upper middle class family, successful investments and wallpaper.
• Childhood influenced greatly by Arthurian legend.
• Father died when William was 13.
• Early dislike of his family’s middle-of-the-road Protestantism.
• Educated at Marlborough and Exeter College Oxford. Influenced by Anglo-
Catholicism. Is influenced by students who have been brought up in
sprawling urban centres.
• Apprenticed to “Gothic revival” architects (Re: High Anglican revival)
• Writes poetry and paints, associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,
greatly admires the writings of Ruskin.
• 1859 marries Jane Burden (a model of Rossetti’s). The marriage appears to
have been happy for about 10 years. Rossetti had a long lasting affair with
Jane and the Morris’ remained married until William’s death.
• 1861 forms a design partnership with Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel
Rossetti
• Partnership features work in stained glass, wallpaper and textiles all using
observations from nature (plants) as a main influence and an idealised view
of medieval period as a golden age (i.e. pre-industrial pre-machine society)
• 1874 Morris assumes the running of the company after buying out main
partners. Morris & Co is the eventual incarnation of his later business life.
 • Growing dissatisfaction with the developing capitalist system art cannot
have a real life and growth under the present system of commercialism and
profit mongering
• Growing dissatisfaction with the fact that his products could only be afforded
by the rich. His solution was to look into ways of redistributing wealth rather
than producing inferior goods.
• Morris worked directly with Eleanor Marx and Engels and is credited as one
of England’s first socialists.
• 1881 founder member of the Social Democratic Federation.
• 1884 created model interiors for worker's housing in Manchester believing a
worker and a lord should be able to afford the same furniture but his own
designs came in 2Ox the cost of usual working class furniture - eventually
gave up on the idea and turned to other ways of reforming society.
• 1884 forms the Socialist League. Lectures and speak widely. agitate,
educate, organize
• Died 1896

Artistic Principles

• Designer must understand the medium and be true to its materials

• Labour must be a pleasure therefore no laborious work and no division of
labour (cogs in a machine - allienation) …designer and then maker together,
not a division of labour – alienation (“workmen permanently degraded into
machines”)
• Products must make the world a better place (social reform is an extension
of aesthetic reform Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
useful or believe to be beautiful
• Useful work v useless toil
• He was in favour of all machines that eliminated or alleviated heavy
laborious work, or that saved human beings from work that required them to
act like machines or as cogs in a machine. He was equally clear that, under
capitalism, the fundamental importance of the profit motive meant that
machines were used to increase production rather than to save labour.
•

Artistic Scope
• Stained glass
• Wallpaper and fabrics (printed and woven)
• Embroidery and tapestry
• Furniture
• Book printing, print design, typography
• Poetry, prose romances, translation of Icelandic sagas
• Drawing and painting

Influences
• Pre-industrial societies (pre-capitalist)
• Medieval
• Romantics
• Iceland
 • High Anglicanism (Anglo-Catholicism)

Immediate questions

• How important is wallpaper?

Can beautiful things change
people?
• Will capitalism always result in
poor quality goods for the poor
and high quality goods for the
rich.
• Art can only be accessed by
educated people?
• Commerce and socialism are
mutually exclusive?
• What should one do when one's
utopian dream proves
unattainable?
• Was there ever (could there
ever be) a Golden Age?
• Religion should be beautiful
(and affordable – York Minster).