Mighty Morris. The arts and crafts power of designer William Morris

William Morris was a polymath designer, writer, artist, and socialist activist, associated with England’s Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as well as Arts and Crafts movement. His prolific design work included tiles, embroidery, tapestries, wallpaper, and carpets and championed handcraftsmanship, natural dyes, “art for all”, and beautiful patterns of subtly stylized natural forms.

William Morris (1834–1896) was one of the greatest creative figures of the 19th century. As a visionary designer, as well as a manufacturer, writer, artist, and socialist activist, he pioneered the Arts and Crafts movement of the Victorian era, and left an extraordinary influence on architecture, textile, and interior design.

This richly illustrated book offers a suitably beautiful introduction to Morris’s colourful life and all aspects of his design work, including interiors, tiles, embroidery, tapestries, carpets, and calligraphy. Though best known in his lifetime as a poet and author, it is these exquisite designs that secured Morris’s posthumous reputation. As page after page dazzles with their beautiful patterns and forms, we explore the pioneering craftsmanship and natural motifs that inspired them, as well as Morris’s remarkable cultural legacy, through British textiles, Bauhaus, and even modern environmentalism.

The authors:

Charlotte & Peter Fiell have written numerous TASCHEN books, including 1000 Chairs, Design of the 20th Century, Industrial Design A–Z, Scandinavian Design, Designing the 21st Century, Graphic Design for the 21st Century, 1000 Lights, and Contemporary Graphic Design. They have also edited TASCHEN’s Decorative Art series and the 12-volume Domus 1928–1999.

About the series:

Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Architecture series features:

- an introduction to the life and work of the architect 
- the major works in chronological order
- information about the clients, architectural preconditions as well as construction problems and resolutions
- a list of all the selected works and a map indicating the locations of the best and most famous buildings
- approximately 120 illustrations (photographs, sketches, drafts, and plans)

Другие книги о творческом наследии Уильяма Морриса

This attractive series reveals the V&A's spectacular and extensive pattern collections. Each title in the series includes a free CD of high-resolution images.

William Morris showcases the work of William Morris and Morris & Co. These popular repeating patterns possess a timeless quality and have a modern appeal surprising in work created over 120 years ago.

Morris created highly distinctive designs for wallpapers and textiles, many of which are still enjoying enormous popularity today. Through his company Morris & Co., he contributed to the transformation of interior design at the end of the 19th-century and gave expression to the ideas of the Arts and Crafts Movement. This highly accessible text looks at pattern and colour, as well as sources of inspiration such as nature, literature and legend. It also offers a fascinating insight into his working practices which were so different from those of many of his Victorian contemporaries. His desire to make beautiful things was at the core of his enterprise and his subtle colour schemes and evocative designs, many of which are still in production, have a timeless appeal. Specially commissioned photography captures many of his designs in situ, as well as in close-up detail, and this new introduction to the work of William Morris should provide a wealth of ideas and inspiration for contemporary homeowners.

Considered one of the most prominent actors of the Victorian era, William Morris (1843-1896) was a poet, artist, designer, and editor, and did not hesitate to express his socialist political views, which at the time were frowned upon by the establishment.
His encounters with Rossetti and Burne-Jones, as well as his religious studies, made him a man of manifold talents. From this mixture of genres, William Morris would go on to construct a remarkable career, applying his ideas through various enterprises he established under the name of the “William Morris Companies", revolutionizing both interior decorating and architecture. He quickly understood the advantage of industrial production techniques, which he used to design his creations. Together with John Ruskin, he also became a co-founder of the “Arts and Crafts" movement. Despite his admiration for Ruskin, he did not hesitate to publish his own poems in 1858 in his publishing house, Kelmscott Press.

His fascination with the pre-Raphaelite painters lead him to push aside the canons of English art, and, under the influence of Ruskin, to launch the rediscovery of the medieval style of decoration.

While drawing tapestries, carpets, glasswork, and other fine elements of interior decor, he became a fervent defender of socialism and participated actively in the Socialist Democratic Federation, which later became known as the Socialist League.

William Morris transformed his dreams and ideals into the deeds that still inspire our admiration today.

Through a series of illustrations, this work examines the scope of Morris’s talent, which continues to have a major influence on our daily lives today.

Through his eclecticism, William Morris (1834-1896) was one of the most emblematic personalities of the nineteenth century. He was a painter, architect, poet and engineer.

Internationally acclaimed for his compelling work in glass, William Morris approaches the demands of glassblowing and glass sculpting with an experimental eye and an innovative hand. Morris, who lives and works near Seattle, has collaborated with master glass blowers as well as renowned painters and sculptors in making art that is widely admired by artists, sought by collectors, and praised by critics. For him, glass is an endlessly intriguing material-fragile yet timeless, preserving the spontaneity of the creative moment unlike any other medium. In this strikingly handsome volume of recent work, Morris explores themes related to archaeology, animals, and the hunt. His Crows, Ravens, and Rhytons embody his intellectual interest in myth and ancient history, as well as his keenly intuitive understanding of the natural world.

In the history of the decorative arts, there has never been another designer who has achieved such lasting impact. While lamenting the excesses of mass-production, he set up the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company. Soon it was producing a range of goods, from hand-woven tapestries, carpets and printed textiles to stained glass, metalwork and furniture. What the company offered was quite simply a way of life. 

In 'William Morris and the Arts & Crafts Home', Pamela Todd celebrates Morris’s genius for decoration and design and shows how he envisaged and implemented schemes for interiors in his own homes and those of others, passionately believing that beautiful surroundings promoted creativity and happiness. 

To demonstrate how the style can be applied to our living spaces today a series of ‘Case Studies’ explores six contemporary homes – from a modern London townhouse to a traditional Arts and Crafts house in Massachusetts – that have followed and adapted Morris’s guiding principles.

__________

Посмотреть издание книги William Morris and the Arts & Crafts Home в мягкой обложке.

Другие книги о творческом наследии Уильяма Морриса