William Morris’s quintessential Victorian wallpaper patterns—lush, verdant, botanical—were printed using simple wood-block presses and a maximum of human craftsmanship. This was in accordance with the philosophy of the Arts and Crafts movement, which he founded, advocating workshops over and against factories.
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Why did William Morris make wallpapers?
He warned in his essay 'The Lesser Arts' (1877) against the likes of "sham-real boughs and flowers", and advised those designing wallpapers "to avoid falling into the trap of trying to make your paper look as if it were painted by hand".
What process did William Morris use?
In 1883 Morris used the complex indigo-discharge print method to produce a design that, although expensive, was still one of the company's most successful: 'Strawberry Thief'. This pattern was inspired by the fruit-stealing thrushes in the kitchen garden of his country home, Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire.
When was Morris wallpaper designed?
Morris designed his first wallpaper in 1862 when he was living at Red House and couldn't find one he liked. The design of the wattle trellis, intertwined with dog roses, was inspired by the garden. The birds were drawn by Philip Webb.
How did William Morris do block printing?
To create the blocks, Morris would create a clear line drawing with black ink from the original design to show one complete unit of the repeat. The design was then sent out to specialist block-cutters to translate into wood, usually using a pear or fruit wood which are soft to cut.
How did William Morris use Colour?
Morris disapproved of bright shades, created with chemicals. His fabrics and other products were coloured with natural materials imported from all over the world. These gorgeous tiles are some of the brightest colours that you can see in the gallery. Lovely designs, based on nature, but so bold and vibrant.
What media did William Morris use?
He designed wallpaper, textiles, furniture, interior architectural elements, and stained glass windows. To create these gorgeous patterns, Morris drew out a block design which would be repeated during production. Wood block printing was used for the wallpapers and for some textiles.
What influenced William Morris designs?
Morris was heavily influenced by the writings of the art critic John Ruskin, being particularly inspired by his chapter "On the Nature of Gothic Architecture" in the second volume of The Stones of Venice; he later described it as "one of the very few necessary and inevitable utterances of the century".
How many wallpapers did William Morris design?
He created fifty different block-printed wallpapers, all with intricate, stylised patterns based on nature, particularly upon the native flowers and plants of Britain.
Who designed wallpaper?
At first, flock was applied to canvas or linen, but in 1634 Jerome Lanier, a Huguenot refugee working in London, patented a method by which the coloured wools could be applied to painted paper, and by the end of the 17th century flock wallpapers, as we know them, had appeared.
How is wall paper made?
Making the paper 1 Ground wood sheets of paper are produced by using an entire tree, removing the bark, and pressing the tree against a revolving tread, which grinds the wood into slurry. The slurry is used to make a ground wood sheet—a relatively inexpensive wall-paper backing.
What is hand blocked wallpaper?
All Louise Altman hand printed wallpapers are printed by hand from hand carved printing blocks. These blocks create unique impressions and matching patterns as they are repeat printed across the paper.
What was William Morris famous for saying?
“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” – William Morris.
What type of work did William Morris produce?
In his own time William Morris was most widely known as the author of The Earthly Paradise and for his designs for wallpapers, textiles, and carpets. Since the mid-20th century Morris has been celebrated as a designer and craftsman.
What is William Morris well known for?
Literature and the printed word Morris was most recognised in his lifetime for his contribution to Victorian poetry and is the author of many poetical works, the most famous of which are The Earthly Paradise and The Defence of Guinevere. He also wrote novels, and made an ambitious translation of the Icelandic Sagas.
What did William Morris include in his art?
William Morris is best known for his pattern designs which look to nature for their inspiration. He was a leading member of the Arts and Crafts Movement. William Morris was a leading member of the Arts and Crafts Movement. He is best known for his pattern designs, particularly on fabrics and wallpapers.
How did William Morris influence the arts and Crafts movement?
Morris's lectures and essays on art and his rediscovery of traditional craft techniques helped spread the movement, as did the decorative designs and products from his company: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. As a diverse international movement, Arts and Crafts encompassed many characteristics.
What are some of the names of the wallpapers?
The individual wallpaper names speak to these naturalistic designs: Pink & Rose; Marigold; Rose; Wild Tulip; Daisy; Fruit; Michaelmas Daisy; and others. Other designs were named after nearby rivers: the Wandle; Medway, Evenlode and Cray – all with meandering, diagonal designs.
What type of machine did Morris use to print his wallpaper?
Though Morris primarily had his wallpapers hand-printed using pear-wood blocks, he occasionally used a surface print machine. Today, almost all Morris-designed wallpapers are printed using these machines, which came into popularity c1884, and are not widely used today. Surface print machines give an unparalleled texture and finish to historic wallpapers.
When did William Morris start designing wallpaper?
William Morris started designing wallpapers in the early 1860’s, at a period when most wallpapers were generally formal in design, in a repeating pattern.
Who printed Morris wallpaper?
Morris primarily had his wallpapers printed by hand, using carved pear-wood blocks. Jeffrey & Co. was the printer for many of Morris & Co.’s wallpapers, and they continued printing Morris papers until 1940, when Morris’ firm went into liquidation.
What was Morris' first wallpaper?
The first wallpaper pattern he designed for his company was the Trellis wallpaper in 1864. It was inspired by the roses he grew on the trellis at his residence, the Red House. However, two years passed between the time he designed the paper and the time he was able to print it to his satisfaction. His primary objective was to make the wallpaper by hand, with transparent oil colours on zinc plates. However, when he could not make this work to his satisfaction, he gave the task to an established wallpaper firm, Jeffrey and company, which printed it with wood blocks and distemper colours. Since Morris was a perfectionist, this also was a long process. He was dissatisfied by the early versions, and at one point threw away the entire set of printing blocks. The final versions were printed in different colours. For the bedroom of his own residence Kelmscott House, which he decorated in 1879, he used the trellis design with a blue background.
What was the name of the flower that was printed in 1864?
Finished Trellis wallpaper printed in 1864. Daisy Design (1864) Fruit or pomegranate (1866) (Metropolitan Museum) In the following years, he made two more floral designs, Daisies (1864), and Fruit and Pomegranate (1866). All three were created in a variety of different colours. The multitude of colours used and the careful work involved made these ...
How long did it take to make Morris wallpaper?
The Morris wallpapers were expensive to produce. A typical Morris wallpaper in the 1870s required as much as four weeks to manufacture, using thirty different printing blocks and fifteen separate colours.
How wide was Morris' wallpaper?
The chapter on wallpaper was written by Walter Crane. He describes how the wallpapers of Morris were made using pieces of paper thirty-feet long and twenty-one in ches wide. (French wallpaper was eighteen inches wide). The design therefore could not exceed twenty-one inches square, unless a double block was used. This was the greatest width for which the craftsman could comfortably handle and print the paper with a block.
What did Morris want to depict?
Morris sought to depict nature, particularly the plants and flowers of England, without excessive naturalism. He placed his flowers and plants in series which were carefully created to be rhythmic and balanced, giving a sense of order and harmony. He did not want his wallpapers to be the center of attention in a room.
How many colors were used in the Morris design?
One block was used for each colour. The typical Morris design used as many as twenty different colours, but some were more complex. The Saint James design (1881) required sixty-eight different blocks. The printer painted a pad with the first colour, then pressed the block down onto the pad to put the paint onto its surfaces. Then he moved the block to the paper and used a hand press to print the color onto the paper. The location of the block was marked precisely with pins, so all the colours would align. This process was repeated time after time for the length of the first paper. When the colour on the first sheet was dry, he took another block and printed the next colour over the first and so on, colour after colour, until the design was complete.
What color was the Kelmscott House trellis?
For the bedroom of his own residence Kelmscott House, which he decorated in 1879, he used the trellis design with a blue background.
What was Morris' father's mining company?
Morris was not ignorant of the health hazard. He was a shareholder and sometime director of his father's mining company, Devon Great Consols (DGC), the largest arsenic producer of the age. DGC workers were plagued by arsenic-related illnesses, and many died from lung disease.
Why was Napoleon's wallpaper green?
And fungi growing in damp conditions could turn the arsenic into a volatile chemical form. According to legend, Napoleon was poisoned by such a green-painted wallpaper during his exile on the island of St Helena.
Why did Morris reject synthetic dyes?
In producing his richly patterned printed textiles, which draw inspiration from the natural world, Morris rejected the new synthetic dyes, available since the 1850s, claiming to "have used only the dyes which are natural and simple" (based on plant and animal extracts) "because they produce beauty almost without the intervention of art ."
What is the green in trellis paper?
The green in his Trellis pattern paper - the first range produced commercially, starting in 1864 - is a synthetic compound of copper and arsenic. This identifies it either as Scheele's green, a substance discovered in 1775 by the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, or emerald green, made by a German paint manufacturer in 1814.
What did Morris say about arsenic?
If there was really a problem, Morris asserted, "we should be sure to hear of it.".
What did Morris do in the Middle Ages?
He called for a return to the hand-crafting of artefacts that had characterized the Middle Ages, and set up a company to produce wallpapers, printed and woven textiles, carpets, embroideries, tapestries and books using traditional methods, materials and themes. Morris drew inspiration from the natural world.
What greens did traditionalists use?
Arts and Crafts traditionalist manufactured and used arsenic-based greens.
Overview
The British literary figure and designer William Morris (1834-1896), a founder of the British Arts and Crafts Movement, was especially known for his wallpaper designs. These were created for the firm he founded with his partners in 1861, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, and later for Morris and Company. He created fifty different block-printed wallpapers, all with intricate, stylised patter…
The 1860s - experiments and early designs
His partners in the company were members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of painters who rejected the art and design of the Victorian era, and sought to revive earlier themes and techniques of art and craftsmanship. The first wallpaper pattern he designed for his company was the Trellis wallpaper in 1864. It was inspired by the roses he grew on the trellis at his residence, the Re…
The early 1870s - mastery of technique
In the 1870s, through practice and continual refinement, he achieved a mastery of the technique and a more sophisticated and subtle style, with a finer balance between color, variety, and structure. He wrote later in his 1881 lecture, Some hints on pattern designing, of the necessity "to mask the construction of our pattern enough to prevent people from counting the repeats of our pattern, whi…
Late 1870s to the 1890s - Royal attention and final wallpapers
The period between 1876 and 1882 was the most productive for Morris; he created sixteen different wallpaper designs. In his wallpapers of this period, he reverted to more naturalistic themes, somewhat less three-dimensional than his earlier work, but with an exceptional harmony and rhythm, as in his designs Poppy (1885) and Acorn.
Technique
Between 1864 and 1867, for his early wallpapers such as the Trellis, Fruit and Pacquerette, he experimented with printing them with blocks of zinc but decided that this was too complex and took too long. He turned to a commercial company, Barrett of Bethnal Green, which made the first blocks for him in the traditional way from pearwood. For the printing, he turned to the firm of M.M. Jeffrey & Company of Islington, which eventually produced all of his papers.
The Morris Style
In the 1850s, during the Victorian era prior to Morris, most English wallpaper was inspired by the geometric and historical designs of Augustus Welby Pugin, who had created the neo-Gothic interiors of Westminster Palace, and Owen Jones, notable for his abstract geometric patterns. Wallpaper design was also strongly influenced by imitations of the colorful and highly ornate French wallpaper of the Napoleon III style.
Associated artists
In later years the Morris style influenced and was adapted by the other designers who worked for Morris and Company. The most prominent were John Henry Dearle, who collaborated closely with Morris on many of his projects, and issued them under the name of Morris. He replaced Morris as chief designer of the company after the death of Morris. The sisters and designers Kate Faulkner
Bibliography
• Fiell, Charlotte; Fiell, Peter M. (1999). William Morris (in French). Taschen. ISBN 978-3-8365-6162-4.
• Beecroft, Helen (2019). William Morris. Flame Tree Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78755-307-1.