The
Cleveland Museum of Art’s new exhibition “William Morris: Designing an Earthly
Paradise” opened last month and is scheduled to run through November 11, 2018.
The exhibition includes textiles, wallpaper, and carpets; a selection of
Kelmscott Press publications; and a May Morris embroidery on loan from the Cranbrook Art Museum.
Morris was
a famously prolific designer. In the spring of 1876 he wrote to his friend
Aglaia Coronio, “I am drawing patterns so fast that last night I dreamed I had
to draw a sausage; somehow I had to eat it first, which made me anxious about
my digestion: however I have just done quite a pretty pattern for printed
work.” Morris was in the midst of one of his most productive periods of textile
design, and while we do not know which work this anecdote refers to, it was the
year he designed Honeysuckle, an archetypal pattern that shows his love
of large mirror motifs.
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| Honeysuckle |
Textiles—including
embroidery, printed cotton, woven fabrics, tapestries, and carpets—were among
the most profitable of Morris & Co.’s merchandise. Morris was a born
pattern maker and looked to both nature and history as a model. Unlike German
and Japanese textile designers, or his English competitors, he was inspired not
by exotic greenhouse flowers but by the simple blooms of an English garden. The
humble marigold, honeysuckle, tulip, and sunflower often joined tangled ivy or
sprigs of willow in patterns of great clarity and charm.
During an
age when rooms were stuffed with mass-produced objects and teeming with
ornament, Morris challenged people to “have nothing in your houses that you do
not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” Throughout his career,
however, there was a tension between Morris’s desire to make high-quality goods
widely available and the expense of producing handcrafted items from fine
materials, which meant primarily the wealthy could afford them. One of his
costly innovations was to return to the natural dyes that had been replaced
during his lifetime by garish and fugitive chemical dyes. Evidence of the rich
and subtle hues of natural dye is apparent in textiles such as Violet and
Columbine, woven from wool and mohair.
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| Violet and Columbine |
The
installation of the exhibition William Morris: Designing an Earthly Paradise
reflects the character of many Victorian rooms that incorporated products
designed by Morris & Co. Richly varied patterns on fabric, wallpaper, and
carpets produced a vividly
lush effect. The gallery walls are papered with a
modern reproduction of Fruit, one of Morris’s earliest wallpaper designs,
dating from 1862 and in production for over 150 years. Created with generous
assistance from the Victoria and Albert Museum
in London, the
rug is a full-scale reproduction on vinyl of Bullerswood, the largest
hand-knotted Hammersmith (so called for the district where they were originally
produced) carpet ever produced by Morris & Co.
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| Fruit |
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| Bullerswood |
From
Morris’s university days at Oxford
through the end of his life, he relied on the camaraderie of friends and family
to foster the creative environment in which he delighted and thrived. This was
especially true of his final labor of love: Kelmscott Press. Founded in 1890,
the press produced beautiful books with ornaments and typefaces designed by
Morris. The volumes had much in common with books printed in the earliest years
of the printing press. Bound in either vellum or quarter-cloth and paper and
printed on high-quality linen paper, they allowed one to enjoy the tactile
experience of reading. Several books were illustrated by Morris’s friend Edward
Burne-Jones, a successful painter who also designed stained glass and tapestry
for Morris & Co. Burne-Jones’s illustration for the frontispiece of The
Order of Chivalry shows how seamlessly his gothic style complemented the
page’s Morris-designed borders and typeface. The Ingalls Library at the
Cleveland Museum of Art is fortunate to have each of the 53 titles printed by
the Kelmscott Press.
Morris’s
literary masterpiece, The Earthly Paradise, was printed by the press in
1896, the year he died. The epic poem invites the reader to leave behind the
grime and noise of modern-day England
and become immersed in the author’s dream world, inspired by medieval and
classical tales. Morris’s designs and working philosophy combined a vast
knowledge of the past with a vision for the future, always inspired by the
world around him.
--Cory Korkow, Associate Curator of European Art
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