The Germ, no. 2

Details

Date: 01.1850
Object Type: book
Catalogue number: K72
Author: The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Designer: Hunt, William Holman, 1827, 1910
Publisher: Aylott and Jones
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1951

The Germ was a magazine established in 1850 at the beginning of the Pre-Raphaelite movement by its founding members Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and, editor and ‘historian’ of the movement, William Michael Rossetti. Born out of an idea of D G Rossetti’s, the magazine sought to circulate the creative work and radical ideas of the Pre-Raphaelites as expressed in poetry, literature and art.

Details

Object Type: glass
Material: stained, painted, leaded glass
Catalogue number: C205a
Designer: Davis, Louis B., 1861, 1941
Glass-painter: Cowell, Thomas, 1870, 1949
Manufacturer: James Powell & Sons, London

One of two stained glass panels with ‘Angel with Censer’ C205b. Louis Davis often collaborated with Thomas Cowell in the creation of stained glass windows. Over the years, the two developed a close working relationship and when Cowell came to decorate his Surbiton home with panels of stained glass, he chose to make versions of some of Davis’s church windows. The Angels in these panels are from Davis’s designs for a window at St.Anselm’s Church, Hatch End, Middlesex.

Details

Date: 1886
Dimensions: 36.5 x 12.7
Object Type: ceramic
Material: stoneware
Catalogue number: C28a
Designer and maker: R W Martin, London and Southall
Credit notes: Mackmurdo bequest, 1942

Robert Wallace Martin was one of four brothers who ran the Martin Brothers pottery in Fulham (1873-7) and Southall (1877-1915). He was part of a movement of Arts and Crafts potters who, inspired by the simplicity and rustic appearance of medieval European and Japanese stoneware (a hard, dense kind of pottery), created salt-glazed stoneware, a strong, non-porous pottery with a distinctive ‘orange-peel’ texture. Martin’s output is characterised by groteque animals, vessels with faces, and rustic sculptural forms. Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo were all avid collectors of Martinware.

Details

Date: 1886
Dimensions: 38.1 x 21.5
Object Type: ceramic
Material: stoneware
Catalogue number: C29a
Designer and maker: R W Martin, London and Southall
Credit notes: Mackmurdo bequest, 1942

Details

Date: 1886
Dimensions: 36.5 x 12.7
Object Type: ceramic
Material: salt-glazed stoneware
Catalogue number: C28
Designer and maker: R W Martin, London and Southall
Credit notes: Mackmurdo bequest, 1942

Details

Date: 1875
Dimensions: 13.9 x 8.8
Object Type: ceramic
Material: stoneware
Catalogue number: C97
Designer: Martin, Robert Wallace (1843 - 1923)
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1962

Details

Date: 1888-1907
Dimensions: 17.8 x 12.1
Object Type: ceramic
Material: earthenware
Catalogue number: C5
Artist: De Morgan, William (1839 - 1917)
Manufacturer: De Morgan, Sands End Pottery, Fulham, London, England
Credit notes: Mackmurdo Bequest, 1942

William Morris met William De Morgan in 1863, and their friendship and professional association would last until Morris’s death. There was a large degree of overlap in their design, production and sale processes. The Firm sold ceramic products of its own design and also those by De Morgan; by the 1880s De Morgan was the main supplier to the Morris shop. De Morgan also made tiles after designs by Morris. From the 1870s Morris & Co. relied on De Morgan to supply high quality coloured enamels, as commerical products contained high levels of borax which compromised the colouration and durability of the tiles. From 1882 – 1888, William De Morgan moved his premises to Merton Abbey, to be closer to Morris, who already had works there, on the banks of the River Wandle. In 1888 he moved to Sands End in Fulham, where this bottle was produced.

De Morgan regularly used motifs of animals to create densely decorated objects. This vase features cranes and snakes. Birds similar to those depicted here can be found throughout his design sketchbook, a pricked design of the bird is at the V&A Museum (E.1428-1917).

Details

Date: c. 1890
Dimensions: 91.4 x 66.0 x 60.9
Object Type: furniture
Material: mahogany
Catalogue number: G61
Designer: Jack, George Washington Henry (1855 - 1931)
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund

George Jack probably designed this armchair for Morris & Co. around 1890. The wavy vertical rails under the arms are similar to a sideboard shown by Morris & Co. at the Manchester Jubilee Exhibition in 1887. When purchased the chair was patched with faded ‘Evenlode’ chintz, and reupholstered in ‘Lodden’ chintz in 1979, however it originally appears to have been upholstered in ‘Strawberry Thief’ chintz. Pieces of original fabrics and braid were retain. The armchair was originally purchased by owned by the parents of Francis Jane Lefroy whose house was furnished mainly by Morris & Co. in the 1890s.

Details

Date: designed 1862, printed 1950
Dimensions: 66.7 x 49.5
Object Type: wallpaper
Catalogue number: B8b
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Manufacturer: Arthur Sanderson and Sons Ltd
Credit notes: Presented by Arthur Sanderson & Sons Ltd, 1950

William Morris designed Daisy in 1862, but did not register the design until 1 February 1864. The pattern is a simple design of unconnected clumps of yellow daisies, red columbine and red and white meadow flowers against a background suggestive of blades of grass. The simplicity and cosy naturalism of the flower clump would prove endlessly adaptable for Morris, who used them as decoration for tiles, stained glass (including his first home the Red House) and book illustrations. The size of the repeat is 35.6 x 26.7 cm

This version was printed in 1950, using original Morris & Co. blocks by the firm Arthur Sanderson & Sons Ltd., who acquired the blocks from Morris & Co. when they closed in 1940. A label on the reverse provides the the Sanderson colourway number ‘3 Daisy’.

Details

Date: 1881
Dimensions: 16.5 x 8.6
Object Type: design
Catalogue number: A519
Designer and maker: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs E. A. Yates, 1973

This design for a stained glass window of St. Cecilia was created for St. Nicholas’ Church, Halewood, near Liverpool. It features a single standing figure of St Cecelia in white robe, blue mantle with red lining, holding portable organ at right, turned slightly to the right. Red halo; stands on green grass, against purple/red ground, with diamond shaped floral patterned quarries above in head of light and below figure; bands for inscription below figure and at foot of window. Below the design is the inscription: Morris & Company, with the second and third lines reading 26 Queen Square WC being crossed out and replaced by Merton Abbey Surrey.

Details

Date: c. 1897
Object Type: glass
Material: stained, painted, leaded glass
Catalogue number: C76
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Glass painter: Walters, 1833, 1898
Glass painter: Wren, 1893, 1907
Glass painter: Campfield, George, 1861, 1898

St. Cecilia was made in 1897 for ‘The Hill’ at Witley in Surrey, the house built for Myles Birket Foster in 1863, and where he lived until 1893 when the house was purchased by Mr. Edgar Horne, who presumably commissioned both this window and another single light, ‘Flora’ (BJ 434) which appears in the Morris & Co. ‘Catalogue of Designs for Stained Glass’ dated 8 April 1896. The entry in the Catalogue of Designs for C76 is dated 1897 January and names the glass painters as follows: figure of St. Cecilia by Walters, quarries by Wren, scroll drawn and lettered by Campfield and painted by Wren. A small scale drawing, annotated ‘The Hill, Witley’, is in the Gallery’s collection (BL A 313).

The original Burne-Jones cartoon (BJ 50) for this figure was first used at Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge (south transept, south window, 3rd tier) in 1873; also used at St.Nicholas, Halewood, Lancashire in left light of a two-light window (south transept, memorial to Edith E. Bardswell) in 1881; and at Holy Trinity, Sloan Street, Chelsea (east window, 4th tier) in 1894-95).

During the early years of the Firm, Morris & Co. had a close association with ‘The Hill’ house when it was owned by Myles Birket Foster. The house contained several works by Burne-Jones, Rosetti, Ford Madox Brown, and Morris & Co. Stained glass windows within the home included a series of 7 panels designed by Burne-Jones illustrating Chaucer’s ‘Good Women’, a series of roundels containing classical and Chaucerian heroines, Chaucer himself, Homer, King David and St.Cecilia, also by Burne-Jones. Four panels, ‘Architecture’ (Madox Brown), ‘Music’ (Rosetti), ‘Painting’ (Burne-Jones) and ‘Sculpture’ (Burne-Jones), illustrating imaginary incidents in King Rene’s Honeymoon and which are probably those now in the Victoria & Albert Museum. Phillip Webb’s account book contains two references to furniture designs for Birket Foster – a design for a cabinet for Foster’s pictures (1.1.1866), and a design for a book case (8.2.1868). Apart from a series of seven canvases painted by Burne-Jones with the story of St.George which formed a frieze around three sides of the dining room and a screen with 16 scenes from the Life of St.Frideswide made up of cartoons for the window designed by Burne-Jones for the Latin Chapel in Christchurch Cathedral, Oxford. Burne-Jones also designed a number of tile panels which were made by Morris & Co. – a series of tiles with the story of Cinderella for a fireplace in one of the ground floor rooms and tile panels with the story of Sleeping Beauty and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ for the bedrooms. The latter is now in the WMG (C75).

Details

Date: designed 1878, manufactured 1902
Dimensions: 84 x 62
Object Type: glass
Material: stained, painted, leaded glass
Catalogue number: C211
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Purchased with a grant from the Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 1994

George MacCulloch was an Australian mining magnate and patron on Morris & Co. This stained glass panel was part of a series of eight windows made for the residence and later removed from the home, along with seven other Morris & Co. windows which were sold to the trade at which time the upper and lower portions of the window may have been lost or destroyed. Burne-Jones’s ‘Praising Angel’ figure is one of four designed in 1878 for windows in Salisbury Cathedral. Subsequently, the cartoons were used for stained glass elsewhere, including Painswick church, Gloucestershire (1898) and Crescent Street Church in Montreal (1901), as well as the Mcculloch house. In 1894 the cartoons were also adapted for tapestries, of which examples exist at Brockhampton Church, Herefordshire and the V&A Museum.

Details

Date: c. 1870s
Dimensions: 85.1 137.2 x 41
Object Type: furniture
Material: turned, ebonised wood with rush seat
Catalogue number: G35a
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Lady Richmond, 1963

Rush-seated settle in turned, ebonised wood frame. This settle is an extended version of a single chair, widely attributed to the designer Philip Webb in the early 1860s. It was manufactured by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. and continuously produced by Morris & Co. until the twentieth century. The full range included this three-seater settle as well as armchairs and armless chairs. The name ‘Sussex’ chair can be attributed to Morris’s biographer J.W. Mackail who commented that the chair was adapted from a country chair found in Sussex.

Details

Date: c.1636
Dimensions: 34.3 x 24.1
Object Type: book
Catalogue number: K776
Author: Gerard, John (1545 - 1612)
Credit notes: WMG Purchase, 1956

This 17th century herbal belonged to William Morris and contained useful information about the dye properties of various plants. The edition has 18thC Russian gilt binding (gold tooled border on exterior and interior of front and back covers) and a spine with raised blind bands

The book was in Westdean Library from 1813, acquired by William Morris 1890 (?) sold by Jane Morris, Sotheby’s December 1898, purchased by Wilfred Scawen Blunt by whom given Christmas 1906 to Sir Sydney Cockerell. Sold at Cockerell sale Sotheby’s 10 Dec 1956 (lot 115) bought by William Morris Gallery.

A note inside shows that Wilfred Scawen Blunt ‘coloured the figures as I found each plant, mostly at Newbuildings’, the name of his residence in West Sussex.

Details

Date: 1913
Dimensions: 720 x 620 mm (framed)
Object Type: design
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: A1401
Designer: Jack, George Washington Henry (1855 - 1931)
Credit notes: Gift of John Brandon Jones, 1997

The architect Halsey Ricardo (1854-1928) built 8 Addison Road, Kensington for Sir Ernest Debenham, the department store owner and his family. The house was elaborately decorated and includes work by Ernest Gimson, William Aumonier and E.S. Prior as well as extensive series of tiled fireplaces and surfaces by William De Morgan (with whom Ricardo had been in partnership). In March 1912, Ricardo asked George Jack to design and prepare cartoons for part of the mosaic decoration of the main hall of the house, and also to design the carved marble balustrade around the first floor gallery space. The following month Jack travelled to Italy with his friend Thomas Hamilton Crawford to make a study of Byzantine mosaics in preparation for the work. Jack’s final designs incorporates floral patterns of both Persian, Ottoman and Byzantine influence. Another design drawing in the Gallery’s collection shows a different, and the final design for the dome (see: A1396). The subsequent design for the lower wall surface was in the end exectuted to designs by Henry Payne (1868-1940).

Details

Date: c. 1895
Dimensions: 47.5 x 31 x 33
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze
Catalogue number: BrS2
Artist: John, William Goscombe, Sir (1860 - 1952)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Boy standing balancing himself on one foot, reaching forward with other foot to touch a knucklebone on ground in front of him; he must recover his position behind the line without putting his foot to the ground.

Goscombe John was born in Cardiff and began his career assisting his father, a stonemason, on William Burge’s restoration of Cardiff Castle. He then studied in London, at Lambeth and the R.A. Schools, before travelling in Europe and working for a time with Rodin in Paris. He made many public monuments as well as statuettes and designed the regalia for the future King Edward VIII’s investiture as Prince of Wales in 1911. Goscombe John made the bronze memorial to Canon Guy, William Morris’s tutor, in the Chapel of Forest School, Walthamstow (1897).

The plaster version of this statuette was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1895 and in the following year a larger bronze was purchased by the Tate Gallery.

Details

Date: 1885
Object Type: book
Material: paper
Catalogue number: K604
Author: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Author: Bax, Ernest Belford (1854 - 1926)
Publisher: Socialist League Office
Credit notes: Transfer from Walthamstow Central Library, 1951

Written on New Year’s Day 1885 by William Morris and Ernest Belfort Bax, the Manifesto of the Socialist League sets out the aims of the fledgling political group. After splitting from the Social Democratic Federation, Morris along with Bax, Edward Aveling, Eleanor Marx and others founded the Socialist League as a more radical group that sought ‘the realization of complete revolutionary Socialism’.

Ernest Belfort Bax was a barrister and historian described by May Morris, William’s younger daughter, as ‘the learned and distinguished philosopher’. Bax taught Morris economics and Marxism in regular sessions that Morris referred to as ‘compulsory Baxination’.

The Socialist League logo featured on this pamphlet was designed by Walter Crane. Crane also produced illustrations for membership cards, invitations and posters for the group. His monochrome illustrations and engravings came to define socialist and trade union imagery for the next thirty years.

Details

Date: 1863
Dimensions: 36.2 x 51.4
Object Type: oil
Material: oil on canvas
Catalogue number: BrO53
Artist: Scott, William Bell, 1811, 1890
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1938

This painting shows a rock-strewn beach on the north-east coast of England. The rather melancholy character of the scene is emphasised by the carcass of a dead sea bird in the foreground and the ghostly silhouettes of two sailing ships in the distance. Son of Robert Scott, an Edinburgh engraver, and brother of the historical painter David Scott, William Bell Scott studied under his father and at Trustee’ Academy before moving to London in 1837. In 1843 he was appointed master of the Government School of Design in Newcastle, where his influence did much to popularise the work of the Pre-Raphaelites. The painting is one of several empty seascape scenes by Scott, dating from the 1860s including ‘The Incoming Tide’ (1861) , ‘North Sea by Moonlight’ (1863) and ‘Breakers on a Beach’ (1864). This painting, with its carefully delineated foreground detail of rocks, pebbles and seaweed, illustrates fully the impact of Pre-Raphaelitism on Scott’s work. The art historian Allen Staley however argues that the twilight, the emptiness of the composition and the overall lack of subject matter show the influence of German Romantic artists such as Caspar David Friedrich. Scott was the author of books on Durer and on modern German painting in the 1870s. He was also a poet and his ‘Autobiographical Notes’ provide an interesting record of his friendship with Rosetti, Morris and other artists.

Details

Date: 1875-1876
Dimensions: 79 x 106.9
Object Type: textile
Material: wool on linen
Technique: embroidery
Catalogue number: F430
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Designer: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Purchased with grants from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 2004

This embroidered panel was designed by Philip Webb and William Morris and produced by Morris & Co.’s embroidery department. The panel is cut from a larger embroidery and depicts a peacock (designed by Webb) surrounded by a repeating pattern of grapes and vines (designed by Morris). Webb’s full-size drawing for the central peacock is also in the Gallery’s collection (see A209). Webb was primarily an architect, notably designing Morris’s Red House, but was also a gifted draughtsman with a particular interest in the natural world. As a young boy, he studied the illustrations of Thomas Bewick, the influence of whom remained evident throughout Webb’s artistic output. William Morris would often ask Webb to draw the animals within his designs for wallpapers, tapestries and textiles, recognising his superior skill. See for example ‘Trellis’, Morris’s first wallpaper design (William Morris Gallery BLA472), and ‘The Forest’, a large tapestry woven at Merton Abbey in 1887, which also incorporates a peacock into its design alongside Morris’s swirling acanthus leaves.

Details

Date: c.1890-1910
Object Type: textile
Technique: embroidery
Catalogue number: F461
Attributed designer: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 2025

This Morris & Co. design is currently the only known example of Squirrel. It was originally set into a firescreeen (now removed) and features two squirrels collecting hazelnuts. The design bears similarities to May Morris’s embroidery designs for the Firm. Another design by May Morris to feature squirrels, is the William Morris Gallery’s large panel Battye Embroidered Wall Hanging (F101), which was designed by May but executed by Frances Battye around 1900. The animals in this smaller panel are more refined and may reflect the work of a skilled embroiderer such as May or one of the employees in the Firm’s embroidery section.

The design is embroidered onto Morris & Co’s St James’s silk damask. May also embroidered on damask for the Spring and Summer panels (c. 1895–1900, private collection), which are applied to a ground of Morris & Co. Oak damask as well as Fruit Garden portières. These pieces are recorded in the Firm’s Embroidery Day Book (1892-1896) now in the National Art Library (V&A:86.CC.31). The choice of Morris & Co. damask for the background made these works more costly than those with a more common cotton background.

Details

Dimensions: 57 x 33 x 33
Object Type: sculpture
Material: plaster
Catalogue number: S59
Owner: Waltham Forest Labour Party

Plaster bust of William Morris, formerly on display in the William Morris Hall, Somers Road, Walthamstow. The hall was financed by local subscription and erected by voluntary labour in 1909 by members of the William Morris Co-operative Society as a “home” for the Socialist/Trades Union/Co-Operative movement in Walthamstow. After the hall closed in 1980, the bust was lent to William Morris School. It was given to the Gallery in 1989.

Details

Dimensions: 34 x 13 x 15
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze and marble
Catalogue number: BrS5
Artist: Drury, Alfred (1856 - 1944)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Standing female figure in long dress and bare head, a sleeping baby on her right shoulder supported by one arm, her left arm holding the outstretched hand of a little boy standing in front of her, partly enveloped in her billowing cloak.

This small bronze group is closely related to the colossal bronze allegory of Education which Drury made for Vauxhall Bridge in 1909, along with the groups of Art, Science, and Local Goverment. The figures for Education stand on the piers of the Westminster side of the bridge.

Details

Date: c.1894-95
Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.3
Object Type: print
Material: paper
Technique: lithograph
Catalogue number: BrP177
Designer and maker: Fantin-Latour, Ignace Henri Jean (1836 - 1904)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1936

This lithograph shows a scene from the opera ‘The Trojans of Carthage’. There are several states of this lithograph which Fantin did c.1894-95. The print is inscribed in Fantin’s hand to ‘Mrs A Edwards’. It was through Fantin’s friendship with Whistler, whom he visited in London in 1859, that he was intoduced to the Edwards whom he met on a subsequent visit in 1861, being introduced to them by the painter W Ridley. Edwards was an accomplished amateur painter and etcher and was keenly interested in art; his wife was a pianist and the couple shared a great love of music which they transmitted to Fantin.

Mr and Mrs Edwards supported Fantin for many years by purchasing and finding buyers for his flower studies some of which were painted on their estate at Sunbury-on-Thames. A portrait of Mrs Edwards was begun on his visit to England in 1861 and completed on a later visit in 1863. A double portrait of Mr and Mrs Edwards was exhibited at the Salon of 1875, now in the Tate Gallery. At the end of the Franco-Prussian war in 1871, Edwards took the contents of Fantin’s studio to sell in England, where the paintings had a great success and Edwards became Fantin’s agent in London; after Edwards death in 1879, Fantin continued to correspond with Mrs Edwards.

Details

Date: 1861
Dimensions: 60.9 x 91.4
Object Type: design
Material: pen, ink, wash on paper
Catalogue number: A268
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: 1890
Dimensions: 66 x 55.9
Object Type: drawing
Material: pastel on paper
Catalogue number: D74
Sitter: Fawcett, Philippa Garrett (4 April 1868 - 10 June 1948)
Artist: Rathbone, Harold Steward (1858 - 1929)
Credit notes: Gift of Philippa Garrett Fawcett, 1938

The subject of this portrait, Phillippa Garrett Fawcett (1868-1948) was the daughter of the pioneer suffragist Millicent Fawcett, she won early fame by achieving high marks in the Mathematics Tripos at Cambridge University- at the time women were not admitted to the University’s degrees. It is said that Fawcett inspired William Morris to use her name for one of the characters in his novel ‘News From Nowhere’. ‘Mistress Philippa’ is the skilled stone-carver whom William Guest meets during his journey up the Thames to Kelmcott.

The portrait is by Harold Steward Rathbone, after studying at the Slade School and in Paris, Rathbone worked as a pupil of Ford Madox Brown, assisting him with the murals at Manchester Town Hall. He played an active role in the Arts and Crafts Movement and in 1893 set up the Della Robbia Art Pottery in Birkenhead.

Details

Date: design registered 27 February 1896
Dimensions: 80 x 77.4
Object Type: textile
Material: printed cotton
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: F15
Designer: Dearle, John Henry (1859 - 1932)
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1940

‘Compton’ was previously thought to have been William Morris’s last design for a wallpaper (and adapted as a pattern for fabric). This was confirmed by May Morris in her ‘Collected Works of William Morris’. However, following Linda Parry’s research it is thought to have in fact been designed by Morris & Co.’s Chief Designer Henry Dearle. Morris and Co. redesigned the the residence of Laurence W. Hodson, Compton Hall near Wolverhampton in 1895-6, although Morris had a hand in some of the designs (this is confirmed in surviving letters), there is no evidence that he was sole designer for any of the house designs. Rather, he and Dearle worked together, sending designs back and forth and correcting each other’s work. The evidence to suggest this is in fact Dearle’s design, is further strengthened by its similarity to his other work, particularly ‘Leicester’ wallpaper.

Details

Date: 1863
Object Type: glass
Material: stained, painted, leaded glass
Catalogue number: C232
Designer: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915
Designer: Brown, Ford Madox, 1821, 1893
Manufacturer: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Neil Phillips, John Hardman Studios, 2000

This stained glass panel depicts a man cutting wood in the branches of a tree. An owl can be seen looking up at him from the bottom right and the top right of the image features a ram, possibly a reference to the zodiac symbol Aries. The window was designed by Ford Madox Brown and Philip Webb for Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., the precursor to Morris & Co.

The window may have been part of a glazing scheme for Silsden House, Keighley, Yorkshire from 1863 to 1864. Brown’s account book in 1864 includes an entry about a design for ‘cutting trees down’. The original design for the window is at Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford.

Details

Date: c. 1868-70
Dimensions: 89 x 33.5
Object Type: glass
Material: stained, painted, leaded glass
Catalogue number: C221ii
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Maker: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance from the V&A/MGC Purchase Grant Fund, Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 1997

This window is one of a pair (see C221i) made for The Grange, the home of Edward and Georgiana Burne-Jones built from November 1867.

The minstrel figures are from a set of twelve designed by William Morris in the mid-1860s. They were also used for painted tiles (e.g. for Novello & Co.’s shop in Berners Street, now in the V&A Museum) and, with the addition of wings, as Minstrel Angels in many church windows (e.g. at Furneaux Pelham Church, Hertfordshire). Since the figures in the Grange window are identical in size to those used for two tile panels, it seems likely that the cartoons were made directly from the tile drawings.

The ’round glass’ surrounding the figures is made of cast discs manufactured to simulate the appearance of spun glass roundels. This type of glazing, often seen in room interiors in 15th century Netherlandish paintings (e.g Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding), was a favourite motif in the Morris firm’s stained glass. Also notable is the use of ‘spolit ruby’ glass, with its swirling, ireegular, red colouring for the robe of the right-hand Minstrel.

A photograph (1887) by Frederick Hollyer and a watercolour (1898) by T.M. Rooke, both show the windows in situ in the Burne-Jones’s house. After Edward Burne-Jones’s death in 1898, the glass was re-installed at the family’s house in Rottingdean (1904/5), from where it was removed in the 1970s.

Details

Date: c.1868
Dimensions: 10.8 x 16
Object Type: book
Technique: wood engraving
Catalogue number: K726
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Maker: Burden, Elizabeth (13.12.1841 - 22.08.1924)
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1954

This is one of a series of illustrations to ‘The Story of Cupid and Psyche’ for the projected edition of ‘The Earthly Paradise’ begun in September 1865. The illustrations were engraved on wood by Morris and his friends and associates in the Firm. This particular illustration was engraved by Elizabeth Burden, it was the only one she did for the series. Burne-Jones did illustrations for some of the other tales in ‘The Earthly Paradise’, but the Cupid and Psyche wood engravings were the most completed part of the project which was abandoned in 1868 after trial pages, set in Basle and Caslon types at the Chiswick Press, did not prove satisfactory.

In 1881, a few copies of these sets of illustrations were made, apparently by Morris himself, by friction printing. A second series (numbering about 8 sets according to Sydney Cockerell) was pulled for Morris by Emery Walker at his premises at 16 Cliffords Inn during the Kelmscott Press years; all these were on Kelmscott Press paper. One of these sets, given to Cockerell by Jane Morris c.1898, is bound into a single volume (K775) owned by the William Morris Gallery. Other sets are in the Pierpont Morgan Library (Gift of John M. Crawford) and the Fitzwilliam Museum (J.R. Holliday Bequest 1927).

Drawings related to the Cupid and Psyche illustrations and other tales from ‘The Earthly Paradise’ are in the following collections: A volume of 86 preliminary drawings of various sizes executed in pencil, pen and ink or chalk, is now in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (648’27). A series of 47 finished designs in pencil on tracing paper was given by Burne-Jones to Ruskin, who presented them to Oxford University in 1875 (now in the Ashmolean). Another volume of 39 drawings formerly in the collection of F.S. Ellis is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; 36 of these are on tracing paper, the remaining 3 on drawing paper; 21 relate to the Cupid and Psyche story though some are variants of scenes which were never engraved on wood; others are for the Story of Pygmalion and The Hill of Venus.

For another early proof on proof paper see WMG: K726a.

Details

Date: 1885
Object Type: book
Material: paper
Catalogue number: K604a
Author: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Author: Bax, Ernest Belford (1854 - 1926)
Publisher: Socialist League Office
Credit notes: Transfer from Walthamstow Central Library, 1951

Details

Dimensions: 52 x 54.3
Object Type: design
Material: watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: A250
Artist: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915

Sailing ship with emblem of sun on main sail, on a rolling sea with seabird (aguillemot) in the foreground; part of border on left side. The drawing of the seabird is especially characteristic of Webb, who was renowned for his sympathetic depiction of animals and birds. The purpose of this embrodiery is unknown, it may have been designed as a fire screen or banner. Inscribed in pencil in Philip Webb’s hand writing with detailed instructions as to colours, silks and cloth appliqués.

The design was in the collection of May Morris.

Details

Date: unknown date
Dimensions: 76.2 x 62.3
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil, sepia and watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: D237
Attributed artist: Ruskin, John, 1819, 1900
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1961

This work has been attributed to the artist, critic and thinker John Ruskin, although it is unsigned. Ruskin first saw Rouen in 1835 and wrote of the west porch of the cathedral in his book The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) as ‘the most exquisite piece of pure flamboyant work existing‘. Morris was also impressed by this building, writing ‘no words can tell you how its mingled beauty, history and romance took hold of me’.

Details

Date: 1870
Dimensions: 94 x 61
Object Type: watercolour
Material: watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: W142
Artist: Brown, Ford Madox, 1821, 1893
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1958

This watercolour is based on a scene from Byron’s play ‘Two Foscari’ (1847-55). Set in fifteenth-century Venice, Foscari, the Doge’s son, has been imprisoned for murder, and is saying farewell to his wife Marina. The layers of pigment have been built up to give the effect of an oil painting. Ford Madox Brown originally designed this as an engraved illustration to Moxon’s edition of ‘The Poetical Works of Lord Byron’ (1870). During his career he painted a dozen scenes from Byron’s work, often changing the scale or medium.

Details

Date: 1862
Dimensions: 12.7 x 12.7 each tile
Object Type: ceramic
Material: hand-painted overglaze earthenware
Catalogue number: C216
Manufacturer: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Designer: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Designer: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882
Designer: Brown, Ford Madox, 1821, 1893
Designer: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915
Painter: Orrinsmith (née Faulkner), Lucy (1839 - 1910)
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance from the V&A/MGC Purchase Grant Fund, National Heritage Memorial Fund, Friends of the William Morris Gallery and Walthamstow Historical Society, 1995

The figures in these tiles each symbolise a month of the year and depict a relevant seasonal activity or pastime. The ‘Labours of the months’ was an artistic theme that featured in medieval and early-Renaissance art. The rural activities were, as they are here, also sometimes paired with the signs of the zodiac.

This panel was created in the very early days of Morris’s company. A similar series was commissioned for the firm by G.F. Bodley in 1862 for the over mantel in the Dining Hall of Queens’ College, Cambridge. Although substantially the same, there are several differences: at Queens’ the figure symbolising June is a man with a scythe (by Morris or Madox Brown) rather than Madox Brown’s Sheep-Shearer; the Queens’ tiles lack the small inset pictures of zodiac symbols designed by Webb; and at Queens’ 6-inch rather than these 5-inch tiles are used.

These tiles were all painted by Lucy Orrinsmith nee Faulkner (the February tile is signed with her LJF monogram in the lower right yellow border) and designed by Morris and friends. Some of the artists are known, yet there is uncertainty as to the precise attribution of all the figure panels:

January- Possibly Morris/Burne-Jones or Webb
February- Burne-Jones
March- Madox Brown
April- Morris
May- Madox Brown
June- Madox Brown
July- possibly Morris
August- Rossetti
September- possibly Rossetti
October- Burne-Jones
November- Madox Brown
December- Rossetti

Like a number of other tiles from the 1860s, this series of The Labours of the Month seems to have been acquired for display in Morris & Co.’s shop in the early twentieth century, when the subjects April (Flower-bearer) and May (Falconry) were set in the incorrect sequence. Their earlier history is unknown.

Details

Date: c.1857
Dimensions: 13.8 x 12.1
Object Type: drawing
Material: pen, pencil on paper
Catalogue number: D222
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1954

Edward Burne-Jones had no formal art training and the rather awkward perspective and drawing of the figure in this work suggests it was drawn at an early date. The cross-hatching for the modelling figure, shadows and shading suggests the drawing was made for an illustration, possibly Cupid’s daughter by his forge from Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem The Parlement of Fowles:

Under a tree, besyde a welle, I say

Cupyde our lord his arwes forge and fyle;

And at his fete his bowe al redy lay,

And wel his doghter tempred al this whyle

The hedes in the welle, and with hir wyle

She couched hem after as they shulde serve,

Some for to slee, and some to wounde and kerve

This drawing was possibly reused in Burne-Jones watercolour ‘Cupid’s Forge’ (1861) now in a Private Collection.

Previous attempts to identify the drawing by Waters & Harrison suggested that the subject shown is ‘an Arthurian incident, possibly the Lady of Shalott’. However, there is no loom, no mirror, no river and the figure of the man beyond the open window, though singing, hardly resembles ‘the bold Sir Lancelot’ of Tennyson’s poem ‘The Lady of Shalott’. A later alternative suggested it was from ‘King Grisly-Beard’ in Grimm’s ‘Fairy Tales’, a source of inspiration for other works by Morris and Burne-Jones at this early date. This story tells of a king’s daughter who spurns so many suitors that her father makes her marry the first beggar who comes to the palace. He turns out to be a strolling musician (King Grisly-Beard, one of the rejected suitors in disguise) who takes her to live in a cottage in a forest where she is made to cook and do other menial tasks.

Details

Date: c.1861
Dimensions: 61.6 x 60.3
Object Type: design
Catalogue number: A267
Designer: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: WMG purchase with a Victoria & Albert Museum grant, 1956

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