Celebrating all things design and fantastic, we wish to bring your attention to the work of 19th century designer William Morris whose work and ideas have had an enormous influence on the course of modern design and decorative arts, inspiring directly for instance the Art Nouveau movement in France and Belgium. William Morris remains in fact one of the most influential English designers. He was also an artist, a writer, a poet and a translator. In 1861, he founded his own design company which produced innovative and alternative works, some of which can still be purchased today.
Along with some of his artist friends of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he was one of the principal founders of the British Arts and Crafts movement, a pioneer of the socialist movement in Britain, and a writer of poetry and fiction who inspired the creation of the fantasy genre. While he worked for some time as an architect, his most famous creations are his wallpaper and patterned fabrics designs.
Inspired by the writings of the art critic John Ruskin who preached a return to the inspiration found in nature and the medieval ethos of authenticity and craftsmanship, the Pre-Raphaelites refused the hierarchy of artistic mediums, embracing in one movement painting and the decorative arts. Morris can also be considered one of the founding figures of book art, a genre which he helped revive through the legacy of the legendary Kelmscott Press which he founded in 1891.
Finally, the work of Morris also presents an interesting tension between his aesthetic aspirations and political convictions. On the one hand, Morris and his daughter May were amongst Britain’s first socialists, working directly with Eleanor Marx and Engels to begin the socialist movement. Morris, like all his pre-raphaelite friends, also had a violent dislike of the prevalent bourgeois tastes in Victorian England. Yet, on the other hand, even Morris who believed that art should be affordable and hand-made cannot have ignored that, ultimately, his creations were luxurious objects that only could be purchased by the most affluent members of the Victorian upper classes.
Socialism vs the social reality of luxury design part 1…
