One of the reasons so many of us
love William Morris is the ability of his ideas and styles to transcend time
and place. Last year I wrote about the
wonderful Arts & Crafts Press located in Tacoma, Washington.
This local Tacoma Press embodies the principles of the Arts & Crafts movement,
a movement that is well documented in the book by Lawrence Kreisman and Glenn
Mason, The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Pacific Northwest (Timber
Press, 2007).
The book provides a comprehensive
review of the movement in Washington and Oregon. In the
introductory chapter, the authors provide a clue to the origins of the movement
in this region: the visit of one leader of the second generation of Arts &
Crafts advocates from England,
Charles Robert (C.R.) Ashbee, who was inspired and influenced by Morris. Ashbee visited the Northwest and gave
several lectures in 1909 and greatly influenced the evolution of design in this
area.
Charles Robert Ashbee was born in 1863 in London,
the son of a comfortable London
merchant. He attended King’s College
Cambridge from 1883-1886, where he was first exposed to socialism, art, and the
writing of John Ruskin. He worked as an
architect (as did Morris) and lived in Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel, a residence
set up to encourage students from Oxford and Cambridge Universities
to undertake social work in the deprived areas of the East
End. It was during this time that Ashbee ran a Ruskin reading
class and begin to develop an idea to create a craft school. There is no doubt
that Ashbee’s view of craft was a result of his connection with the work of
Morris and the Arts & Crafts movement. In March of 1898 Ashbee’s prospering
workshops took over the staff and presses of the Kelmscott Press to form the
Essex House Press. Ashbee bought the Kelmscott Press’s Albion
printing presses after William Morris's death, and employed one of the
Kelmscott compositors, Thomas Binning. In 1902 Ashbee moved his workshop to the
picturesque Cotswold village
of Chipping Camden. After the move to the country, the workshop
did not prosper despite Ashbee’s dedication to the principles of fair labor and
fine craft, and in the autumn of 1907 his workshop closed. Ashbee turned to lectures
and spend a great deal of time in the United States.
In January 1909 Ashbee visited Seattle
and write in his journal that Seattle
was "the only American city I have so far seen in which I would care to
live. All the gold of Ophir would not tempt me to live in one of those smug
Eastern cities. . . . Here is a city with a new light in her eyes." It is
interesting to ponder how much influence Ashbee might have had on architects,
designers and craftsman of the Pacific Northwest. He joined a host of other prominent members
of the Arts & Crafts community in bringing the aesthetics and design of the
movement to all parts of the Northwest.
For example, Jud Yoho, a local architect, published The Bungalow
Magazine from 1912 – 1918, which no doubt inspired a generation of
architects. The Book Club of Washington
reprinted a special edition of one of Yoho’s pattern books in 2007. The pattern
book contains photographs, floorplans and brief descriptions of these
"dream houses," as well as estimated construction costs.
Bungalows are prevalent throughout the Northwest and here in
Tacoma, there are an abundance of bungalows in
the North End of the city where the University
of Puget Sound is
located. The City of Tacoma Historic Preservation Department provides an
excellent overview of architecture in Tacoma
with reference to the “bungalow” or Arts & Crafts style, in a style guide available on the city’s Historic Preservation website.
Not only was Yoho’s magazine a local influence, but so was
the work of Greene & Greene from California
and Gustav Stickley. Both of these
prominent architects of the period were once again influenced by the enduring
legacy of William Morris.
I taught a class a few years ago titled William Morris
and His World. One section in the
class dealt with Morris and architecture and students were given the assignment
to find their “favorite” North End bungalow.
As one said, once they started looking, they saw Morris’s influence
everywhere! Here are two favorites of mine:
A final point to make about the enduring legacy of William
Morris is a story related to the University
of Puget Sound. The University’s President from 1942 to 1973
was R. Franklin Thompson. Thompson wrote
about his experience as President and many of his papers are available on the
Collins Library’s Institutional Repository, SoundIdeas.
During
his Presidency at Puget Sound, he spearheaded
the construction of 37 buildings. In his
history Thompson makes several references to his time as a student at Oxford University. Almost every building constructed during
Thompson’s presidency had some characteristics of Oxford architecture as a
part of its design. In fact, reading
through his accounts of his Presidency I was struck by the following statement
he made when referring to the design principles of the buildings: “Make them
beautiful. Let's get them so they are not only utilitarian but add beauty to
the campus.”
I couldn’t help but think of the famous quote from
Morris: “Have nothing in your houses
that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” I don’t think it is too far of a stretch to
say that Thompson, as a young man studying in Oxford in the 1920’s, might have been
influenced by Morris. Indeed, there are
additional accounts of his riding his bicycle around the town, where he no
doubt passed by St
Michael's Church, Ship Street
,where Morris married Jane Burden. He also writes fondly of his walks along the
Isis River.
It is highly likely that he would have visited the Oxford Union and seen
the wonderful murals painted by Morris and Rossetti. And in another passage from his memoirs, he
writes specifically about the design of the Collins Library:
“One night I was thinking about
it and
I went to sleep and in the middle of the
night I suddenly wakened and remembered that as a student at Oxford University
I had ridden my bicycle through Magdalen
College on many
occasions. The interior tower had a very beautiful design and I thought that
this would be the kind of design we could use on the tower. I got up and got my
book of Oxford,
took it to
the architect, and he said it would fit
perfectly. So the Tower of the Collins Library is a modified copy of the
interior tower at Magdalen
College.”
When I read this I thought
immediately of William Guest, the narrator from News from Nowhere who
also wakens from a dream with meaningful revelations about his life. And so to bring this full circle, I went in
search of the Collins Library’s copy of News from Nowhere and to my
delight found it was the personal copy of William Perry, Collins Librarian from
1940-1964 and a friend and colleague of Thompson during his years as Puget
Sound. Our copy is a bit worn – but
being worn must mean it had been read! And
the medieval inspired bookplate is perfect for this classic text of William
Morris.
Now I realize it is a stretch of
the imagination to say that Thompson and Perry might have engaged in discussions
about Morris and the Arts & Crafts movement, but when I walk around campus
I can’t help but think this could have happened. And so to conclude this blog on the enduring
legacy of William Morris, I share a final image of the façade of Collins
Library. I see a resemblance to the
unique fonts Golden and Troy
designed by Morris in the inscription above the door – another example of the
Arts & Crafts Movement and the enduring legacy of William Morris. Indeed, once you start looking, the influence
of Morris is everywhere!
--Jane Carlin, Librarian, Collins Memorial Library, University of Puget Sound
