Upcoming Events at Kelmscott House Museum

The next upcoming events at Kelmscott House Museum, the home of the William Morris Society in the UK are:

Saturday, 16 January, 2.15 p. m.
Antiscrap: A Campaign for the William Morris Gallery
The artist Roger Huddle, who was an organiser of the campaign against the running down and threatened closure of the Gallery, will talk about the campaign’s achievements and the latest developments. A short film will be shown.

Sunday, 31 January, 7.00 p. m.
Recital by Zadok Baroque Trio

Unless otherwise stated events are at Kelmscott House starting at 2.15 p. m. Tickets: members and seniors £6; non-members £8; students and unemployed £4. All applications for tickets to William Morris Society office: Kelmscott House, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, London W6 9TA, marking the envelope "tickets" and enclosing a stamped addressed envelope. Please pay for visits with a separate check for each visit. For more information about any event please call the office on 020 8741 3735 or email william.morris@care4free.net.

The Coach House
Kelmscott House Museum
26 Upper Mall
Hammersmith
London W6 9TA UK
020 8741 3735
william.morris@care4free.net

Call for Papers: Morris and the ArtsWilliam Morris Society Session at the MLA Convention 2011

After many years of holding its conventions in late December, the Modern Language Association (MLA) has changed the time of its annual meeting to early January, and will meet next on 6–9 January 2011 in Los Angeles, CA. Changes in Allied Organization session procedures mean that the William Morris Society has only one confirmed 2011 session, on "Morris and the Arts: Books, Painting, Crafts, Architecture." Proposals for 15-minute papers for this session should be sent to Florence S. Boos by 20 March 2010. We also hope to co-sponsor a second session on "Pre-Raphaelite Audiences: Editors, Readers, Critics"; details for this will be announced on the Society's website after 1 February 2009.

Useful & Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts of William Morris and the Pre-RaphaelitesCall for papers—proposals due 15 March 2010

UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
WINTERTHUR MUSEUM & COUNTRY ESTATE
DELAWARE ART MUSEUM
7–9 October 2010

"Useful and Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites" will be the subject of a conference and related exhibitions to be held 7–9 October 2010 at the University of Delaware (Newark, DE) and at the Delaware Art Museum and the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate (Wilmington, DE). Organized with the assistance of the William Morris Society, "Useful and Beautiful" will highlight the strengths of the University of Delaware's rare books, art, and manuscripts collections; Winterthur's important holdings in American decorative arts; and the Delaware Art Museum's superlative Pre-Raphaelite collection (the largest outside Britain). All events will focus on the multitude of transatlantic exchanges that involved Morris, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic movements of the late nineteenth century.

We seek 250- to 500-word proposals for short papers (15 minutes reading time, maximum) that explore relationships and influences—whether personal, intellectual, political, or aesthetic—connecting William Morris, his friends, associates, and followers in Britain and Europe with their contemporaries and successors in the Americas. The "arts" will include not merely those at which Morris himself excelled—i.e., literature, design, and printing—but also painting, illustration, architecture, performance, and anything related to print culture in general. Papers that examine transatlantic politics, social movements, and environmental issues in light of Morrisian, Pre-Raphaelite, and Arts and Crafts perspectives are also welcome.

Possible topic areas include:

William Morris's Influence in and on the Americas • The American Ruskinians • Transatlantic Arts and Crafts Architecture • British Connections to the American Aesthetic Movement • Designers Traveling, East to West or West to East • Arts and Crafts Places, Real and/or Imaginary • British Aesthetic Ideals and American Domestic Interiors • The Kelmscott Press and Transatlantic Print Culture • Aesthetic Periodicals and/or Little Magazines Crossing the Atlantic • Publishing the Pre-Raphaelites in the Americas • American Book Illustrators and Pre-Raphaelite Influences • The Transatlantic Poster Craze • Exhibiting the Pre-Raphaelites in the Americas • Americans Collecting Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites • Selling Aesthetic and Arts and Crafts Goods Across the Atlantic • Pre-Raphaelite Imagery and American Advertising • The Morris Chair as a Transatlantic Object • Morris and American Needlework • American Dress Reform and Pre-Raphaelite Influence • The Pre-Raphaelites and the Literature of the Americas • Oscar Wilde Visits America • Whitman and the Pre-Raphaelites • Morris and American Socialism • Morris & Co. Stained Glass in the Americas • American Drama and Pre-Raphaelite Figures • Pre-Raphaelitism and American Art Education • Photography and the Circulation of Pre-Raphaelite Images • Pre-Raphaelitism and American Music

The deadline for 250- to 500-word proposals is 15 March 2010. Please forward electronic submissions to:Mark Samuels Lasner.

Limited funding may be available for speakers whose papers focus specifically on William Morris and who are in need of financial assistance. To be considered for support, explain your circumstances when submitting your paper proposal.

In addition to conference sessions, there will be a keynote lecture, demonstrations by leading practitioners who make and design Arts and Crafts objects, special exhibitions, and related film, theater, and musical performances. The following exhibitions are anticipated at the time of the conference: Delaware Art Museum (May Morris, also permanent display of the Samuel and Mary Bancroft Pre-Raphaelite collection); University of Delaware Library (American literature, 1870–1916 exhibition and William Morris); University Gallery, University of Delaware (Ethel Reed: Transatlantic Artist of the 1890s); Winterthur (Arts and Crafts archival resources); and Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (David Mabb: The Morris Kitsch Archive).

For more information go to www.morrissociety.org or contact Mark Samuels Lasner, (302) 831-3250.

"Useful and Beautiful" is supported by the Delaware Art Museum, Winterthur Museum and Country Estate, the William Morris Society in the United States, the William Morris Society (UK), and the following University of Delaware departments and programs: College of Arts and Sciences, the University of Delaware Library, Art, Art Conservation, Art History, English, History, and Material Culture Studies. Illustration by Helen O’Kane from William Morris, Pre-Raphaleite Ballads (New York, 1900), Special Collections Department, University of Delaware Library.

William Morris Society Activities at the MLA Annual Convention27–30 December in Philadelphia

This year the Modern Language Association's annual convention—a major happening in the wold of academic literary studies and college and university hiring—will take place 27–30 December in Philadelphia. As an official allied organization of the MLA, the William Morris Society has the privilege of sponsoring two sessions of scholarly papers at the convention. The topic of the first session is "Musical Pre-Raphaelitism: Defining the Area"; the second focuses on "William Morris's Later Friends and Associates." Attendance is restricted to those who register for the convention or who are members of the Society. Interested members of the public are, however, welcome to join us (space permitting) at two other activities, a special visit to the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, a research and lending library located in a nineteenth-century building, and the Society's annual meeting/dinner which follows. Members and non-members must rsvp by 24 December to Mark Samuels Lasner, (302) 831-3250.

For more information click here.

"Ernest Gimson and the Inspiration of William Morris" Lecutre in New York 10 December

"Ernest Gimson and the Inspiration of William Morris"
Mary Greensted

This talk will look at the links between William Morris and the Gimson family from the 1880s. The direct influence of Morris, father-figure of the Arts and Crafts movement and its impact on the ideas and work of Ernest Gimson, one of the most important British designers of the turn of the century, will be illustrated with examples of the latter's work in furniture, metalwork, embroideries, plasterwork and architecture.

Mary Greensted is a curator, lecturer, and writer, who was for many years responsible for Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum's nationally important Arts and Crafts movement collection. A trustee of the Court Barn Museum, Chipping Campden, and the chairperson of the Gloucestershire Guild of Craftsmen, she is the author of numerous books, including Craft and Design: Ernest Gimson and the Arts and Crafts Movement and The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Cotswolds, along with three catalogues on Cheltenham's Arts and Crafts collections (as joint author/editor). Her most recent publication was An Anthology of the Arts and Crafts Movement, published by Lund Humphries in 2005. She is currently a recipient of a Leventis studentship for researching links between Greece and the Arts and Crafts movement at Birmingham University.

Thursday, 10 December 2009
6 p. m., reception to follow
The Grolier Club
47 East 60th Street
New York, NY

Sponsored by the William Morris Society in the United States, the American Friends of Arts and Crafts in Chipping Campden, the Grolier Club, the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms, and the Victorian Society in America.

Tickets: $12 reduced rate for members of the Society and the other sponsoring organizations; $18 for others.

For more details and to purchase a ticket, click here.

Contact: Mark Samuels Lasner, (302) 831-3250.

Christmas Craft Fair, 12 and 13 December at Kelmscott House

Don’t miss the William Morris Society’s first Christmas Craft Fair in the newly refurbished Coach House at Kelmscott House Museum! Celebrate the festive season with a mince pie and glass of wine in the unique setting of the historic Coach House at William Morris's magical riverside home in Hammersmith as you browse for those extra special gifts designed and made by quality craftspeople. Come and see designer crafts people at work as well as a range of beautiful handcrafted gifts for sale including ceramics, jewellery, stone carving, fabric bags, scarves, Christmas tree angels, embroidered and woollen items, Christmas cards, small garden creations and soft furnishings at the home of the founder of the Arts and Crafts movement.

Christmas Craft Fair
Saturday, 12 and Sunday, 13 December 2009
11 a. m. to 5.30 p.m.
The Coach House
Kelmscott House Museum
26 Upper Mall
Hammersmith
London W6 9TA UK
020 8741 3735
william.morris@care4free.net

New Book The History of Kelmscott House by Helen Elletson published by the William Morris Society

The William Morris Society has just published The History of Kelmscott House by Helen Elletson. This new book by the cuator of the William Morris Society and Kelmscott House Museum, tells the story of the "most beautiful house in London" in Hammersmith which Morris bought in 1879. While living there he set up the Kelmscott Press, established the Hammersmith branch of the Socialist League (in the Coach House, where speakers included George Bernard Shaw and W. B. Yeats), and continued his innovations in design, printing and dyeing techniques. This is the first fully-illustrated book about this most magical of Morris’s homes. Helen Elletson’s carefully researched and absorbing text, complemented by beatiful images—photographs and original prints, most in color—faithfully conveys the atmosphere of Kelmscott House, which Morris and his family welcomed some of the most influential minds of the late-Victorian period. The book also examines the history and the occupants of the house before and after Morris.

An exceptional value at only £5, due to generous sponsorship and the wish of the William Morris Society to make it affordable, The History of Kelmscott House is a must-have book for anyone interested in Morris and his circle.

64 pp., 34 illus., most in color. November 2009

£5 per copy, plus £1 packing and postage (in the UK)
$15 per copy, plus $5 package and postage (in the US)
Enquire for shipping costs to rest of world

Order from:

William Morris Society
Kelmscott House
26 Upper Mall
Hammersmith
London W6 9TA UK
020 8741 3735
william.morris@care4free.net

Kelmscott Bookshop
32 West 25th St.
Baltimore, MD 21218
(410) 235-6810
info@kelmscottbookshop.com