(1834-1896)
nglish writer, painter, designer, craftsman, and social reformer. As a student at Oxford University
he formed a lifelong friendship with Burn-Jones and began to write poetry and to study medieval
architecture, reading Ruskin and Pudgin.
In 1856 he was apprenticed to the architect G.E.Street
(1824-1881), but soon left to paint under the Rossetti guidance - his only completed oil painting
"Queen Guenevere" (Tate, London, 1858), a strongly Pre-Raphaelite. Morris married Jane
Burden, who appears in numerous painting of Rossetti as the archetypal femme fatale, in 1859,
and for him and his bride the famous Red House, Bexley Heath, was built by his friend Philip
Webb. With Webb, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown, P.P.Marshall (a surveyor), and
Charles Faulkner (an accountant), Morris founded the manufacturing and decorating firm of
Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in 1861.
After a shaky start, the firm prospered, producing
furniture, tapestry, stained glass, furnishing fabrics, carpets and much more. Morris's wallpaper
design are particularly well known (they are still produced commercially today) and Burne-Jones
did some superb work for the firm, particularly in stained glass and tapestry design. Morris
repudiated the concept of fine art and his company was based on the ideal of a medieval guild, in
which the craftsman both designed and executed the work. He defined art as "man's expression of
his joy in labour", and saw it as an essential part of human-being. As a socialist he wished to
produce art for the masses, but there was in inherent flaw in his ambition, for only rich could afford
his expensive hand-made products. His ideal of universal craftsmanship and his glorification of
manual skill thus proved unrealistic in so far as it ran countaer to or failed in terms with modern
machine production. But his work bore lasting fruit, in England (Arts and Craft Movement) and
abroad (Wiener Werkstatten, Deutsche Werkstatten, and Deutsche Werkbund), in the emphasis
which it laid upon the social importance of good design and fine workmanship in every walk of life.
He also had an important part in the development of the private printing-press, through the
founding of the "Kelmscott Press". Morris's homes at Walthamstow in London and Kelmscott
Manor in Oxfordshire contain good examples of work designed by him and his associates.
