Flower Garden Portière, design for embroidery

Details

Date: c.1892
Dimensions: 274 x 55.9
Object Type: design
Material: ink on paper
Catalogue number: A218
Designer: Morris & Co.
Artist: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938

This design by May Morris was created for Morris & Co., probably around 1892. The design is called ‘Flower Garden’ and is for a pair of large embroidered portière (hangings) with a symmetrical design of acanthus leaves, tulips, peonies, poppies, daffodils and iris with a central palmette motif. An inscription on the top reads “Summer is y-cumen in Loudly sing cucu”. This is taken from a medieval round or rota of the mid-13th century; it is also known variously as the Summer Canon and the Cuckoo Song. A finished version embroidered in silk thread on green silk damask is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1983.160a) as well as its pair with the next verse of the song: ‘Growth sed & blowth med & springeth wod nu” (1983.160b). These panels compliment another wider set of embroidered panels called Fruit Garden (designed before 1890) also in Boston (1893.160c & d). The four panels were commissioned by Mary Monroe Longyear of Marquette, Michigan, on 30 May 1892. The wider pair (Fruit Garden) cost £95 and the narrower pair (Flower Garden) £87. The panels hung either side of a reception room in Longyear’s home in Brookline, Massachusetts.

This design drawing was one of a number bequethed to the V&A by May Morris, and later transferred to the William Morris Gallery in 1954.

Details

Date: 1886
Dimensions: 45.8 x 33
Object Type: design
Material: ink on paper
Catalogue number: A208.3
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1953

The third of four cartoons designed and made for the window of a landing in the artist’s house in Rottingdean, Sussex. The windows (now in the V&A: C.623 to 626-1920) encapsulate the story of the Quest for the Sangreal (Holy Grail) and the failure of Sir Sir Launcelot (because of his adultery with Guinevere), Sir Gawaiane (because he fails to live up to courtly ideals), and Sir Galahad, depicted in this cartoon (because of his worldliness), and the achievement of Sir Lancelot, due to his purity of spirit.

For references to the windows, see Angela Thirkell ‘Three Houses’, OUP 1931 p. 123.

Details

Date: c. 1861
Dimensions: 73.5 x 54.2
Object Type: design
Material: ink on paper
Catalogue number: A210
Artist: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882
Credit notes: Cecil French bequest, 1954

This is a finished design for the central panel of a stained glass window in the south aisle of All Saints, Selsley, Cloucestershire. The church was refurbished by the architect G.F. Bodley, who entrusted the making of stained glass to Morris and Philip Webb. They in turn recruited Rossetti, who was asked to make a series of designs for glass in the chancel as well as for the glass to which the present cartoon is related, showing The Sermon on the Mount, in the church’s south aisle. The standing figure of Christ is seen with hands raised as he preaches. Seated on the left of Christ, and to whom he faces, are the figures of the Virgin and Mary Magdalene, and behind them Saints John and James, while on the right, and to whom Christ turns his back, appear St Peter and Judas Iscariot. Several of Rossetti’s friends are said to have sat as models for the various figures; George Meredith, the novelist for the figure of Christ; Christina Rossetti for the Virgin, though the face is not unlike that of Elisabeth Siddal; Mary Magdelene bears a strong strong resemblance to Fanny Cornforth, whilst Algernon Swinburne and Simeon Soloman were said to be the models for St John and St James; William Morris as St Peter and Gambart, the art dealer (whom Rossetti disliked) as Judas. Another preparatory drawing for the window is in Leeds City Art Gallery.

Details

Date: 1889
Dimensions: 23.8 x 16.4
Object Type: book
Material: ink on paper
Technique: woodblock
Catalogue number: K113
Designer: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942

Preface and pp.1-2 of periodical. Initium ‘T’ decorated with ivy for following text.A PREFACE. THE ISSUE OF THIS PERIO/ DICAL BY THE PROPRIETORS DIRECTLY/ FROM THE CHISWICK PRESS, SO THAT THEY/ MAY MORE NEARLY CARRY OUT THEIR ORI/ GINAL INTENTION, SEEMS TO PRESENT A FITTING OCCASION ON WHICH TO SUM UP AND/ MAKE CLEAR, WHAT, AS YET, LIES SCATTERED/ THROUGH THE SUCCESSIVE NUMBERS OF/ THE PAPER, NAMELY, ITS PRECISE AIMS AND/ THE VIEW OF ART SET FORTH IN IT. BRIEF/ LY, THEN, AS FAR AS SO WIDE-REACHING A/ SUBJECT CAN BE THUS TREATED IN THE/ SPACE OF A FEW PAGES, THESE CHIEFLY ARE/ THE PRINCIPLES OF WHAT WE HAVE EN/ DEVOURED TO SAY AND DO, IN THE THREE/ YEARS DURING WHICH THIS PERIODICAL HAS BEEN PUBLISHED.

Details

Date: 1903
Dimensions: 17.8 x 22.3
Object Type: book
Material: ink on paper
Technique: woodblock
Catalogue number: K245
Attributed designer: Image, Selwyn, 1849, 1930

This christmas card was designed by Selwyn image for Harold Hodge. It features a rabbit and tree design on the front and a poem by Emily Brontë printed inside

Details

Dimensions: 17.25 x 23.15
Object Type: print
Material: ink on paper
Technique: woodblock
Catalogue number: K622
Designer: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Designer: Horne, Herbert Percy, 1864, 1916
Credit notes: Mackmurdo bequest, 1942

Advertising booklet for the Century Guild, featuring a woodblock design of knights on horseback on the cover. The text within the booklet describes the Century Guild’s services as affordable designers and producers of furniture, metalwork, textiles, wallpapers, stained glass and decorative painting. “…While recognizing the cost, which, of necessity, accompanies decoration in its more sumptuous and elaborate forms, Messrs. Mackmurdo and Horne are prepared to decorate and furnish houses in a simple, yet effective manner, which, while endeavouring to fulfil the more exacting canons of taste, will not be beyond the means of those, to whom expense is a matter of material concern.”

Details

Date: 1861
Dimensions: 61.6 x 60.9
Object Type: design
Material: ink on paper
Catalogue number: A263
Designer: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882

One of seven designs (WMG A263 -A269) by Gabriel Dante Rossetti from 1861, for stained glass executed by Morris, Marshall Faulkner & Co., for St. Martin’s Scarborough . The series is referred to in a letter from Rossetti to Ford Madox Brown (1 December 1861) (Doughty & Wahl, ‘Letters of D G Rossetti’. O.U.P. 1965, Vol.ii p.426): ‘I’m doing the Parable of the Vineyard for the shop glass; I think you have a number of ‘The Pictorial History of England’ with a Saxon wine-press in it. Would you kindly send it to me by book post? If you’ve anything else in the Vineyard line you might include it …’.
The seven panels were designed for the East Window of St. Martin’s, together with a Christ on the Cross with the Virgin and St. John by Ford Madox Brown. All seven panels were shown at the International Exhibition, London 1862 before being installed in the church.

Details

Date: 1861
Dimensions: 61.6 x 60.9
Object Type: design
Material: ink on paper
Catalogue number: A264
Designer: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882

Material: ink on paper

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