The British literary figure and designer William Morris (1834-1896), a founder of the British Arts and Crafts Movement, was especially known for his wallpaper designs. These were created for the firm he founded with his partners in 1861, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, and later for Morris and Company. He created fifty different block-printed wallpapers, all with intricate, stylised patterns based on nature, particularly upon the native flowers and plants of Britain. His wallpapers and textile designs had a major effect on British interior designs, and then upon the subsequent Art Nouveau movement in Europe and the United States.[1]
His partners in the company were members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of painters who rejected the art and design of the Victorian era, and sought to revive earlier themes and techniques of art and craftsmanship.[2] The first wallpaper pattern he designed for his company was the Trellis wallpaper in 1864. It was inspired by the roses he grew on the trellis at his residence, the Red House. However, two years passed between the time he designed the paper and the time he was able to print it to his satisfaction. His primary objective was to make the wallpaper by hand, with transparent oil colours on zinc plates. However, when he could not make this work to his satisfaction, he gave the task to an established wallpaper firm, Jeffrey and company, which printed it with wood blocks and distemper colours. Since Morris was a perfectionist, this also was a long process. He was dissatisfied by the early versions, and at one point threw away the entire set of printing blocks. The final versions were printed in different colours. For the bedroom of his own residence Kelmscott House, which he decorated in 1879, he used the trellis design with a blue background. [3]
Design for Trellis wallpaper (1862)
Finished Trellis wallpaper printed in 1864
Daisy Design (1864)
Fruit or pomegranate (1866) (Metropolitan Museum)
In the following years, he made two more floral designs, Daisy (1864), and Fruit/Pomegranate (1866). All three were created in a variety of different colours. The multitude of colours used and the careful work involved made these wallpapers particularly expensive. Since he was running a business, he had to adapt to the wishes of the market. At the end of the 1860s, in order to bring in more orders, he created an entirely different group of four papers based on a new design, called the Indian. Since they had only two colours, they were less expensive. [4] In 1868, though he disliked the Victorian idea of using several different designs of wallpaper in the same room, intended especially for the ceilings of rooms. [5]
The early 1870s - mastery of technique
In the 1870s, through practice and continual refinement, he achieved a mastery of the technique and a more sophisticated and subtle style, with a finer balance between color, variety, and structure. He wrote later in his 1881 lecture, Some hints on pattern designing, of the necessity "to mask the construction of our pattern enough to prevent people from counting the repeats of our pattern, while we manage to lull their curiosity to trace it out." The purpose of a good pattern, he wrote, "was a look of satisfying mystery, which is essential in all patterned goods, and which must be done by the designer." He added that "colour above all should be modest," since the wallpaper was part of the household, meant to be lived with and seen only in passing, not meant to attract attention to itself. [6]
During this period he created some of this most famous designs, creating an illusion of three dimension, with lavish flowers interwoven with a complex and lush background. His designs in this period included 'Larkspur' (1872), 'Jasmine' (1872), 'Willow' (1874), 'Marigold' (1875), 'Wreath' and 'Chrysanthemum' (both 1876). The Morris wallpapers were expensive to produce. A typical Morris wallpaper in the 1870s required as much as four weeks to manufacture, using thirty different printing blocks and fifteen separate colours.[7]
The wallpapers of Morris were regarded as strange and excessive for most wealthy Victorians, who preferred the more geometric and traditional French styles. The early clients of Morris' wallpapers were mostly his avant-garde artist friends. His early designs were purchased by his close friend painter Edward Burne-Jones, and Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne. He also had as few avant-garde aristocratic clients, including the Earl and Countess of Carlisle, who used the 'Bird and Anemone' and two sunflower designs in their home at Castle Howard in Yorkshire.[8]
Larkspur design (1874) (Cooper-Hewitt Museum)
Powdered wallpaper (1874)
Acanthus design (1875) (Victoria and Albert Museum)
Marigold design (1875)(Metropolitan Museum)
Pimpernel design at Two Temple Place, London (1876)
Late 1870s to the 1890s - Royal attention and final wallpapers
The period between 1876 and 1882 was the most productive for Morris; he created sixteen different wallpaper designs. In his wallpapers of this period, he reverted to more naturalistic themes, somewhat less three-dimensional than his earlier work, but with an exceptional harmony and rhythm, as in his designs Poppy (1885) and Acorn.
In the 1880s, his work finally received royal attention: In 1880 he was asked to redecorate rooms St. James's Palace in London. He created a particularly complex design, named 'St. James's', which used sixty-eight separate printing blocks to make a section of two wallpaper widths, with a height 127 centimeters. In 1887 Queen Victoria again commissioned Morris & Company, this time to another special design for wallpaper at Balmoral Castle, based on the 'VRI' initials of the Queen. [9]
During this time, however, Morris was devoting more and more of his time to literary and political work. He also became increasingly involved in other media, especially textile and tapestry weaving. He relocated the workshops of his company to Merton Abbey in the 1880s to focus on these. He also began to create wallpapers with a single color, such as Acorn and Sunflower, which were much simpler and much less expensive to produce. Among his final wallpapers was the Red Poppy design.
Between 1864 and 1867, for his early wallpapers such as the Trellis, Fruit/Pomegranate, he experimented with printing them with blocks of zinc but decided that this was too complex and took too long. He turned to a commercial company, Barrett of Bethnal Green, which made the first blocks for him in the traditional way from pearwood. For the printing, he turned to the firm of M.M. Jeffrey & Company of Islington, which eventually produced all of his papers.[10]
The technique used by Morris for making wallpaper was described in some detail in Arts and Crafts Essays by Members of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society published in 1893. The chapter on wallpaper was written by Walter Crane. He describes how the wallpapers of Morris were made using pieces of paper thirty-feet long and twenty-one inches wide. (French wallpaper was eighteen inches wide). The design therefore could not exceed twenty-one inches square, unless a double block was used. This was the greatest width for which the craftsman could comfortably handle and print the paper with a block.
The block itself was made of wood twenty-one inches wide. The design was first outlined on the block, and carved in wood, cutting away everything except for the part of the design to be printed in one colour. Details and fine lines were reproduced with flat brass wires that were driven edgewise into the block. The pigments, made with natural ingredients, were mixed with sizing or a binder, and then put into shallow trays, called wells. The long papers were passed over on wooden rods overhead, with the section of paper to be printed placed flat on a table in front of the craftsman.
One block was used for each colour. The typical Morris design used as many as twenty different colours, but some were more complex. The Saint James design (1881) required sixty-eight different blocks. The printer painted a pad with the first colour, then pressed the block down onto the pad to put the paint onto its surfaces. Then he moved the block to the paper and used a hand press to print the color onto the paper. The location of the block was marked precisely with pins, so all the colours would align. This process was repeated time after time for the length of the first paper. When the colour on the first sheet was dry, he took another block and printed the next colour over the first and so on, colour after colour, until the design was complete.[11]
Producing a single set of a wallpaper design with this process could often take as long as four weeks.[12]
The Morris Style
In the 1850s, during the Victorian era prior to Morris, most English wallpaper was inspired by the geometric and historical designs of Augustus Welby Pugin, who had created the neo-Gothic interiors of Westminster Palace, and Owen Jones, notable for his abstract geometric patterns. Wallpaper design was also strongly influenced by imitations of the colorful and highly ornate French wallpaper of the Napoleon III style.[10]
Morris's friend Walter Crane wrote, "...Mr. William Morris has shown what beauty and character in pattern, and good and delicate choice of tint can do for us, giving in short a new impulse to design, a great amount of ingenuity and enterprise has been spent on wallpapers in England, and in the better minds a very distinct advance has been made upon the patterns of inconceivable hideousness, often of French origin, of the period of the Second Empire - a period which perhaps represents the most degraded level of taste in decoration generally."[13]
Morris wrote that his object was to find the balance between color and variety on the one hand and structure. He declared in an 1881 essay, Some Hints on Pattern Designing of the need to "mask the construction of our pattern enough to prevent people from counting the repeats of our pattern, while we manage to lull their curiosity to trace it out." The goal, he wrote, was "to attain a satisfying mystery, which is essential in all patterned goods, and which must be done by the designer." He also declared that "colours of all things should be modest, designed to be seen only in passing, and not drawing attention to themselves."[6]
Morris sought to depict nature, particularly the plants and flowers of England, without excessive naturalism. He placed his flowers and plants in series which were carefully created to be rhythmic and balanced, giving a sense of order and harmony. He did not want his wallpapers to be the center of attention in a room. In the 1870s and 1880s his designs became denser, richer and more complex, but they preserved the sense of and harmony and equilibrium which he sought.[14]
Associated artists
In later years the Morris style influenced and was adapted by the other designers who worked for Morris and Company. The most prominent were John Henry Dearle, who collaborated closely with Morris on many of his projects, and issued them under the name of Morris. He replaced Morris as chief designer of the company after the death of Morris. The sisters and designers Kate Faulkner and Lucy Faulkner Orrinsmith also collaborated with Morris, and adapted elements of his philosophy and style in their own work.[6]
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that the artist cuts away carry no ink, while characters or images at surface level carry the ink to produce the print. The block is cut along the wood grain. The surface is covered with ink by rolling over the surface with an ink-covered roller (brayer), leaving ink upon the flat surface but not in the non-printing areas.
Wallpaper is used in interior decoration to cover the interior walls of domestic and public buildings. It is usually sold in rolls and is applied onto a wall using wallpaper paste. Wallpapers can come plain as "lining paper" to help cover uneven surfaces and minor wall defects, "textured", plain with a regular repeating pattern design, or with a single non-repeating large design carried over a set of sheets.
Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (1861–1875) was a furnishings and decorative arts manufacturer and retailer founded by the artist and designer William Morris with friends from the Pre-Raphaelites. With its successor Morris & Co. (1875–1940) the firm's medieval-inspired aesthetic and respect for hand-craftsmanship and traditional textile arts had a profound influence on the decoration of churches and houses into the early 20th century.
Charles Francis Annesley Voysey was an English architect and furniture and textile designer. Voysey's early work was as a designer of wallpapers, fabrics and furnishings in a Arts and Crafts style and he made important contribution to the Modern Style, and was recognized by the seminal The Studio magazine. He is renowned as the architect of several country houses.
Textile printing is the process of applying color to fabric in definite patterns or designs. In properly printed fabrics the colour is bonded with the fibre, so as to resist washing and friction. Textile printing is related to dyeing but in dyeing properly the whole fabric is uniformly covered with one colour, whereas in printing one or more colours are applied to it in certain parts only, and in sharply defined patterns.
Victorian decorative arts refers to the style of decorative arts during the Victorian era. Victorian design is widely viewed as having indulged in a grand excess of ornament. The Victorian era is known for its interpretation and eclectic revival of historic styles mixed with the introduction of Asian and Middle Eastern influences in furniture, fittings, and interior decoration. The Arts and Crafts movement, the aesthetic movement, Anglo-Japanese style, and Art Nouveau style have their beginnings in the late Victorian era and gothic period.
Maija Sofia Isola was a Finnish designer of printed textiles, and the creator of over 500 patterns, including Unikko ("Poppy"). The bold, colourful prints she created as the head designer of Marimekko made the Finnish company famous in the 1960s. She also had a successful career as a visual artist.
Undisputedly the most famous textile designer... at Marimekko
John Henry Dearle was a British textile and stained-glass designer trained by the artist and craftsman William Morris who was much influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Dearle designed many of the later wallpapers and textiles released by Morris & Co., and contributed background and foliage patterns to tapestry designs featuring figures by Edward Burne-Jones and others. Beginning in his teens as a shop assistant and then design apprentice, Dearle rose to become Morris & Co.'s chief designer by 1890, creating designs for tapestries, embroidery, wallpapers, woven and printed textiles, stained glass, and carpets. Following Morris's death in 1896, Dearle was appointed Art Director of the firm, and became its principal stained glass designer on the death of Burne-Jones in 1898.
Woodblock printing on textiles is the process of printing patterns on textile, usually of linen, cotton or silk, by means of carved wooden blocks.
Désirée Lucienne Lisbeth Dulcie Day OBE RDI FCSD was one of the most influential British textile designers of the 1950s and 1960s. Day drew on inspiration from other arts to develop a new style of abstract pattern-making in post-war British textiles, known as ‘Contemporary’ design. She was also active in other fields, such as wallpapers, ceramics and carpets.
William Kilburn (1745–1818) was an illustrator for William Curtis' Flora Londinensis, as well as a leading designer and printer of calico. A few hundred originals of his water colour designs make up the Kilburn Album, housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Mary Lillian White later Mary Dening was an English textile designer known for several iconic textile prints of the 1950s. Her designs were very popular and extensively copied in many 1950s homes, as well as in cabins aboard the RMS Queen Mary and at Heathrow Airport. She was also a commercial potter and ceramist, who in the 1960s founded Thanet Pottery, in partnership with her brother David White.
Edmund Evans was an English wood-engraver and colour printer during the Victorian era. He specialized in full-colour printing, a technique which, in part because of his work, became popular in the mid-19th century. He employed and collaborated with illustrators such as Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway and Richard Doyle to produce what are now considered to be classic children's books. Little is known about his life, although he wrote a short autobiography before his death in 1905 in which he described his life as a printer in Victorian London.
Strawberry Thief is one of William Morris's most popular repeating designs for textiles. It takes as its subject the thrushes that Morris found stealing fruit in his kitchen garden of his countryside home, Kelmscott Manor, in Oxfordshire. To print the pattern Morris used the painstaking indigo dye textile printing method he admired above all forms of printing. He first attempted to print by this method in 1875 but it was not until 1881, when he moved into his factory at Merton Abbey, near Wimbledon, that he succeeded. In May 1883 Morris wrote to his daughter, "I was a great deal at Merton last week ... anxiously superintending the first printing of the Strawberry thief, which I think we shall manage this time." Pleased with this success, he registered the design with the Patents Office. This pattern was the first design using the technique in which red and yellow (weld) were added to the basic blue and white ground. Discharge printing was used.
Chromoxylography was a colour woodblock printing process, popular from the mid-19th to the early-20th century, commonly used to produce illustrations in children's books, serial pulp magazines, and cover art for yellow-back and penny dreadfuls. The art of relief engraving and chromoxylography was perfected by engravers and printers in the 19th century, most notably in Victorian London by engraver and printer Edmund Evans who was particularly good with the process, producing a wide range of hues and tones through color mixing. Chromoxylography was a complicated technique, requiring intricate engraving and printing for the best results. Less expensive products, such as covers for pulp magazines, had to be produced with few colours, often only two or three, whereas more intricate and expensive books and reproductions of paintings used as many as a dozen or more colors. For each colour used, a separate woodblock had to be carved of the image being reproduced.
Hammer Prints Limited was a company founded in 1954 by Nigel Henderson and Eduardo Paolozzi.
Kate Faulkner (1841–1898), was an Arts and Crafts artist and designer.
William Morris (1834-1898), a founder of the British Arts and Crafts movement, sought to restore the prestige and methods of hand-made crafts, including textiles, in opposition to the 19th century tendency toward factory-produced textiles. With this goal in mind, he created his own workshop and designed dozens of patterns for hand-produced woven and printed cloth, upholstery, and other textiles.
Leonard Shuffrey was a British architect and architectural designer of the late Victorian and Edwardian period. He was a leading figure of the aesthetic movement that had a significant impact on the development of buildings and their interiors and their settings, both across London and the South of England. Noted for his wallpaper, fireplaces and ornate plasterwork, Shuffrey was thought the equal of William Morris in his creativity and skill as a craftsman. His output is often found in decorative schemes with William Morris, Edward Ould, William De Morgan, and other preeminent Arts & Crafts and late Pre-Raphaelite decorative artists of the day.
Jeffrey & Co was an English producer of fine wallpapers that operated from 1836 to the 1930s.
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