Introducing 'Beauty of the Earth' - insights from the Research Curator

 The Art of May, Jane & William Morris 

William Morris (1834-1896) 

Poet, designer, translator & activist

William’s firm, Morris & Co. influenced taste in Britain and internationally. Many of his patterns are still popular in fashion and interiors today.

 

Jane Morris, née Burden (1839-1914) 

Model, maker & manager.

Jane was born into poverty in Oxford. She modelled for Morris and his friends when she was 17 years old. Her marriage empowered her to travel, to learn new languages, make music, art and beautiful homes.

 

Jenny Morris (1861-1935) 

Jenny developed epilepsy as a teenager. She had to give up her hopes of becoming a writer and university student. She needed full time care for the rest of her life, at home or with paid companions.

 

May Morris (1862-1938) 

Designer, maker, lecturer and activist

May was best known as a textile designer and embroiderer. She was a leading figure in the Arts and Crafts movement, founding the Women’s Guild of Arts in 1907.

 

William Morris made his name in the 1860s as a poet and designer. He longed to have a home with ‘green trees and flowering meadows and living waters outside’. In his patterns, his poems and his radical household, he explored ‘the promise of the harvest and the joy of life’. 

 William’s love of gardens and green spaces was shared by his wife Jane and daughters Jenny and May Morris. Honeysuckle, strawberries, apples, willow boughs and roses: these are recurring themes in their designs. Riverbanks and tangled woodlands were also woven into William Morris’s landscapes of the imagination. 

 The Morris homes in Kent, London and at Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire, were gathering places for women and men, activists and poets, embroiderers and travellers. Their gardens became creative and pleasurable spaces. As May Morris wrote, her parents Jane and 

William built their first home, Red House, in 1860, ‘among the blossoming orchards.' 

'They welcomed their artistic friends and soon ‘laughter sounded from the fragrant little garden; …laughter over the apple-gathering, but amid the delight in mere existence and in the beauty of the earth, these young lives were ripening and developing in all seriousness.’ 

 

William Morris and his family responded to the ‘the blindness and hurry’ of modern mechanised society by studying green and growing things. Through their art, their politics and their friendships they transformed Victorian Britain. 

And their ‘deep love of the earth and the life on it’ can still encourage and challenge us now.