Death of Joan South, Long-time Morris Society Member

Marilyn Ibach, a member of the William Morris Society in the United States, writes—

Joan South, who was active for so many years as Trustee of the William Morris Society in the UK, and who remained a great mentor to me long after I left my job at the William Morris Centre in 1978, passed away peacefully at home with her three children Imogen, William, and Julia at her side, on February 6, 2011, aged 86, after some months in a nursing home in Kent.

Joan became a member of the William Morris Society in 1970, and by the time I was living at Kelmscott House in 1977, she was a Committee member.  She regularly dropped by Tuesdays on her way to market in Hammersmith to see how I was going on. Having moved to London from Australia in 1959, Joan was sympathetic to a new arrival, and  regularly invited me to her home, including for a wonderful Christmas dinner.

Her interest in William Morris was the main reason that we met, and of course we could talk about that for hours.  But it was her nurturing, bright nature that drew me, and I am sure, many others.  Florence Boos, when learning of her death, called Joan South a woman of great intelligence and broad culture.
In the late 1990s, Joan became the Honorary Secretary of the William Morris Society. She also was active in another cause, the Leasehold Enfranchisement Association, when her lease at Upper Phillimore Gardens was threatened with closure. She wrote the book Leasehold: the Case for Reform, in 1994.

I last saw Joan in September 2009, and she was as interested and involved in family, friends, and life as always.   I will miss her.

Caroline Arscott Lecture at UPenn on 14 February

From the UPenn / Penn Visual Studies School of Arts and Sciences webpage:

Caroline Arscott, Head of Research, Courtauld Institute of Art
With a brief response by Jeremy Melius, Dept. of Art and Archaeology,
Princeton University

"William Morris's Woodpecker Tapestry: Evolution and Utopia"

"This lecture draws on Herbert Spencer’s account of the emergence of psychological life (from physiological existence) in his account of evolution, and on Charles Darwin’s account of sexual selection in relation to evolution to investigate the temporality of the Woodpecker tapestry made by William Morris in 1885. The tapestry relates to the tale from Ovid in which Picus is transformed into a woodpecker. Arscott will focus on the theme of transformation and raise questions about the temporality implied by the motif and by the verses added to the tapestry by Morris. A particular relationship between the present and the future is posited. Arscott argues that this has a bearing on the way that Morris’s tapestry offers a meditation on its own making."

Caroline Arscott is the author of William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones: Interlacings (2008).

Monday, 14 February 2011
5 p.m.
Cohen Hall 402
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA

Free and open to the public. Reception to follow

A Cure for the Winter Doldrums... Books by and about William Morris

Is this interminable winter getting to you? Are you looking for a great new book to sink your teeth into? Check out the full list of titles that are currently available for sale from the William Morris Society in the United States through the following URL:

www.morrissociety.org/ahobooks.pdf

Life member Gary L. Aho, professor emeritus of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, generously gave us a portion of his library, with the wish that the books be sold to benefit the Society. The books are offered through the Kelmscott Bookshop, 34 West 25th Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, (410) 235-6810, info@kelmscottbookshop.com.

To order contact the bookshop directly and cite the author, title, and inventory number. You will be informed of availability and told the cost of ship- ping. Payment may then be made via check or credit card. Please do not send orders or payment to the William Morris Society.

Happy Birthday Ruskin!

On this day, February 8, in the year 1819, John Ruskin - art and architecture critic and social commentator - was born in London.

Collecting Kelmscott and William Morris on ABE

The online bookstore, Advanced Book Exchange, one of the largest seller of secondhand, antiquarian, and rare books, recently posted a short piece on "Collecting Kelmscott: William Morris & His Quest for Fine Books." Admittedly an enticement for people to buy books offered by ABE's booksellers, the article reads as follows:

More than 100 years after his death, William Morris – founder of the Kelmscott Press – remains an influential figure in design and art, and his Kelmscott fine press books are highly prized.

The textile designer, author and artist founded the Kelmscott Press in 1891. Morris (1834-1896) published his own work as well as translations and reprints of mediaeval writing he believed should be read. A traditionalist in every sense of the word, Morris wanted to preserve the relationship between art and books. He detested the mechanisation of art during a period when the western world was embracing mechanisation.

Morris was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, an organization that strived to produce art reminiscent of the romantic, medieval eras.  These ideals were instrumental in everything that Morris did from the initiation of the Arts and Crafts movement in late 19th century England, the design and decoration of his famous Red House,  his design and manufacture of textiles and, of course, the Kelmscott Press.

Kelmscott Press was founded in a cottage where Morris set up three printing presses that he used to print books by traditional methods.  To maintain the traditional feel, Morris designed two typefaces based on 15th century fonts.  He also made his own paper to complete his handmade books.  Despite the painstaking effort put into each publication and the fact that Kelmscott was only in operation for seven years, the small press managed to produce more than 18,000 copies of more than 50 different works. 

In true fine press tradition, the Kelmscott print runs were short and the books were not cheap, but they were beautiful and exemplified the Arts and Crafts movement.  Kelmscott's finest achievement is probably its edition of Works of Geoffrey Chaucer.  The books were designed by Morris himself and illustrated by fellow Pre-Raphaelite Edward Burne-Jones. It was the finest and most beautiful book of its day, containing 87 woodcut illustrations to accompany Chaucer’s masterful tales.

It doesn't take an expert to point out the errors here (Morris was more than a "textile designer, author, and artist"; he was not a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; Burne-Jones did not illustrate al the Kelmscott books)—the point is that Morris and Kelmscott continue to interest people and are, if not actively collected, then actively offered by the booktrade. Case in point: the Kelmscott Works of Geoffrey Chaucer pictured here is priced at just over $95,000. More modest Kelmscott titles are considerably less expensive, in the $500 to $7,500 range; first editions of Morris's writings are listed for as little as $100. If one had the money it would seem possible to amass if not a complete, well then a very extnesive, Morris collection in a matter of a few clicks of the mouse.

Announcing—The Victorian Poetry Network

Alison Chapman and Meagan Timney are delighted to announce the birth of the Victorian Poetry Network (www.victorianpoetry.net), which will provide a hub for Victorian poetry scholars, teachers and students on the web. It already has an exciting line-up of distinguished advisory board members who will write blog posts (including Isobel Armstrong, Linda Hughes, Jerome McGann, Marjorie Stone and Chip Tucker).

The organizers are looking for interested colleagues and students to contribute to the website (writing blogs posts, commenting on the poem of the month, joining us as researchers for the periodical poetry database, and contributing teaching resources and star student essays to the virtual classroom). Please contact Alison Chapman or Meagan Timney for more information. Membership details can be found in the "Join VPN" page.

Illustration: Oscar Wilde, The Sphinx. London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane, 1894 (Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library).

Special William Morris Society Tour of The Pre-Raphaelite Lens Exhibition at the National Gallery

SPECIAL WILLIAM MORRIS SOCIETY EXHIBITION TOUR

The Pre-Raphaelite Lens:
British Photography and Painting, 1848–1875
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Saturday, 15 January 2011

Members and friends are invited to a special tour with the exhibition’s curator, Diane Waggoner. Join us for lunch after.

The Pre-Raphaelite Lens is the first survey of British art photography focusing on the 1850s and 1860s. With 100 photographs and 20 paintings and watercolors the exhibition examines the roles photography and Pre-Raphaelite art played in changing concepts of vision and truth in representation. Photography’s ability to quickly translate the material world into an image challenged painters to find alternate versions of realism. Photographers, in turn, looked to Pre-Raphaelite subject matter and visual strategies in order to legitimize photography’s status as a fine art. Lewis Carroll, Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton, Oscar Gustave Rejlander, and many lesser known photographers had much in common with such painters as John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John William Inchbold, who all wrestled with the question of how to observe and represent the natural world and the human face and figure. This rich dialogue is examined in thematic sections on landscape, portraiture, literary and historical narratives, and modern-life subjects.

Diane Waggoner is associate curator in the department of photographs at the National Gallery of Art. She received a PhD in art history from Yale University. Prior to joining the department, she held positions at the Yale University Art Gallery and at the Huntington Library, where she was the curator of The Beauty of Life: William Morris and the Art of Design (2003). Since joining the NGA, she has co-curated many exhibitions. Her co-authored catalogue for The Art of the American Snapshot was the 2008 winner of the College Art Association’s Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award for distinguished museum publication. A specialist in the nineteenth century, she has also published on the photographs of Lewis Carroll.

Saturday, 15 January 2011
11.30 a.m. (meet at entrance to the East Building)
National Gallery of Art
Fourth St. NW
Washington, DC
www.nga.gov
RSVP to Mark Samuels Lasner
marksl@udel.edu
(302) 831-3250