At Home with Jane & William Morris

William Morris wrote:
'The secret of true happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life'.

My new book, 'At Home with Jane & William Morris' (Quercus, 2021) looks at the houses and works of art that Jane and William made together throughout their lives. 
From the Red House to Kelmscott Manor and Hammersmith, it explores the pioneering life they embraced with their artist friends. 
My research draws on newly-revealed letters from Jane to a wide range of correspondents - poets, radical thinkers, makers - as well as the intimate hand-made books she crafted. These fresh sources will be woven together with analysis of the diaries, furniture, wall-hangings and buildings that have been left to us.

I hope, through this joint biography of an extraordinary couple, to draw out the deeper story of the things and places that mattered to both Jane and William. They shaped our understanding of home as a creative space, inspiring many in the Arts and Crafts movement.
And their ideas still resonate, through their hopes for holistic living, bringing the house, garden and local environment into closer balance.

Here is a small taste of the book - as Edward and Georgie Burne-Jones, Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal visit the Morris's new home at the Red House for the first time:


 

 

1860: The Red House

William Morris & Philip Webb, 'Rose Trellis'
design for wallpaper, William Morris Gallery

The friends arrived at the country station: ‘a thin fresh air full of sweet smells met us as we walked down the platform’. Then ‘a swinging drive of three miles of winding road’ until they reached the garden gate. A path through the orchard, and there, beyond the trellis of climbing roses, they could ‘see the tall figure of a girl standing alone in the porch to receive us.’



William Morris, 'Flamma Troiae'
design for embroidery, 1860

 

 

 

 

 

Jane Morris welcomed the young couples to her home.  She was only twenty years old herself, and mistress of a fine newly-built house. Every detail of construction, from the well and the wagonette that fetched their guests from the station, to the door-handles and dog-kennel, were designed for William and Jane by their friend Philip Webb.  

The Red House, Bexley Heath,
designed by Philip Webb, 1859-60
 

The Red House was both a ‘Palace of Art’ and a convivial home, built for long weekends of talking and painting, stitching and writing. Here Jane and William could experiment with new ways of living. The sun seemed to shine on them. They played bowls on the lawn, or gathered apples, or shared plans for their next decorating project. The Morrises filled their spare rooms with artists and poets, who relished these visits as an escape from their own grey sooty London apartments. Georgie Burne-Jones remembered ‘the joys of those Saturdays to Mondays at Red House!...No protestations – only certainty of contentment in each other’s society. We laughed because we were happy.’

William Morris, 'Si Je Puis', stained glass design

For a few brief years, their home was the hub of a new movement in art and collaborative labour. Many of the later works created by the Morrises and their friends can be traced back to these days. They had time and space to think through their ideals, reimagining textiles, stained glass, painted furniture, wall-coverings, story-telling and hospitality.



William Morris, 'La Belle iseult',
1858,Tate

Many of these projects drew on the colour and strangeness of the Gothic world, as Webb had done in his plans for the Red  House. But the house was no mock-medieval construction. Webb was not interested in embellishing his building with unnecessary details like lancet windows or archaic carving. Instead, it seemed to grow from the ground up. The Red House felt organic, fit for its setting among the apple trees. It was loved by Jane and William. Their two girls were born here. And when they had to sell up, moving back to central London in 1865, they left many of their works of art here – painted on the walls and built-in cupboards. They abandoned the massive chairs, too big for a London townhouse, and the stained glass panels in the passageway. Jane and William never went back. As Georgie wrote, years later: ‘When we turned to look around us something was gone, something had been left behind – and it was our first youth’.

---