William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain and America, 1880– 1920

Peter Stransky is a stalwart of the British Studies Seminar here at U.T.

I looked up the last time that it was he was spoke to the seminar

and it was in nineteen ninety four to go out.

And today he’s going to tell us about William Morris and the arts and crafts movement

in Britain and America in the latter part of the 19th century and on

into the 20th. I’ll say just a word about Peter himself,

educational experience at Harvard as well as Yale and Cambridge

and at Stanford, where he has taught since nineteen sixty eight sixty

eight. So this is a long time

I was in Lebanon. His books include

already two books on William Morris, as well as studies of Bloomsbury,

George Orwell and British participants in the Spanish Civil War.

And not least, the arts in Britain during the Second World War.

And he is about to publish a book on Leonard wucf. So we’re very

pleased to hear that you’re going to speak with us this afternoon about

the arts and crafts movement.

Why stay here and use the podium? Yeah. Thank you very much, Roger. And

thank you, Roger, for inviting me. And thanks to Holly and Francis for

helping to facilitate the visit. And thank you all

for coming. Of course, once talk changes

shape since I wrote in the description and I won’t be saying very much

about the 20th century and I won’t be saying very much about

William Morris in America, but but

perhaps in the discussion will weigh

in questions and comments. We can we can deal deal

with that subject. You’ve got me in there,

I think, a seats on the side. I’m

very pleased to be here and have an opportunity to talk to you about William Morris

on the occasion of the splendid exhibition downstairs in this very building.

He is hardly an unknown figure and I wasn’t quite sure how I should approach him today.

I thought it might be useful and might and might to some extent illuminate the exhibition

to talk about him in a somewhat general way. But I my own apology,

as I may be telling you much that many of you know already.

And I’m not particularly putting forward a new interpretation of of of

William Morris. I also use another apology for not

having illustrations for my talk. It seems rather perverse

to give a talk about Morris without illustrations. On the

other hand, you have many of the objects easy to view right

here. So I feel I have some slight excuse not to show you representations

of what you have the pieces themselves. The real thing, not digitally.

There was some discussion earlier about digital humanities, which I think is great, but I don’t

think one should. Why is it that the real thing, the real manuscript

makes a difference? And and and digital humanities,

which I think is basically a good thing. I was distressed and I held my own quest to. But

I think Obama has made a terrible decision not to have real manuscripts

in his library in Chicago. The exhibition,

as you know, opened on the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of John Ruskin on

his birth on February 8. 1819 is old. And it’s also, of course, appropriate

that there’s a strong tradition of sherry at at at these events

because the Ruskin family. That’s how they made their money. They were sherry. They owned vineyards

and bought out or imported sherry to do it. And that made

them very rich and that Ruskin could have the life that he led. Because of Sherry,

Rusk was an artist himself, but not, I think it’s fair to say, a major wine.

Nor was it, nor was art as a practitioner. His primary commitment,

but rather it was much of his voluminous. It was in much of his voluminous

writings to deal with the condition of England. Question and much else besides

how the industrial revolution was creating such a world of ugliness, and

how such a world should be corrected eventually. And Ruskin should be given much

credit for this look of the world changed. Although the deeper changes

that he might have wished for either did not take place or to a far lesser degree

than he might have hoped. But I think it is also accurate to say

that in moving Ruskin’s ideas forward, and particularly in changing the look of

our world, which is the great theme of the exhibition Everyday Life, that the world

changed because of the look of the world change because of the arts and crafts movement.

William Morris was, I think, the single most important figure.

He was a person of so many varied, varied accomplishments.

He also fits into the category of figures who who have always intrigued me

in my study of English history. The upper middle class person brought

up and trained by a society that has provided the tools

with which the individual operates. And yet leading to efforts to radically change

that society. In fact, in Morris’s case, his wish was

actually to destroy that society and replace it with the socialist

world. He also shared that not uncommon trait about among English

radicals to extoll the past as a model for the future.

In his case, he was inspired by what he saw, whether historically correct or not,

as the comradeship and sense of equality in the medical bills created

a world ranging from smaller items to great cathedrals.

Who was he? He was born on March 24th, this very

month in 1834 in Walthamstow, then in separate

town in Essex, before becoming part of Greater London in the twentieth century.

As its name suggests, his family was originally Welsh and its story is a

typical 19th century success story. His father from modest, modest

circumstances was a very successful stockbroker or Bill Exchange,

I believe, but he was in the world of business and stocks and such. And he also

acquired a considerable holding of stocks in a copper mine, which was a central

part of the family’s fortune. Although William Morris, his father, died

young, he left his family very, very well-off. And William,

as the eldest son, might have been particularly favored when he turned 21.

He had an annual private income of nine hundred pounds, a considerable sum

at the time. He appreciated the freedom. The gold in Ireland is e.m

forced to call them the freedom that this income gave him and allowed in

to explore various career possibilities and not to actually earn any money himself

until he was 25. As he wrote in 1883,

if I had not been born rich or well-to-do, I should have found my position

unendurable, should have been a mere rebel against what would have seemed a

system of robbery and injustice. And Morris

himself, contrary to what some thought was himself a very good business man,

ran a profitable design firm and then towards the end of his life, a

small publishing house, in many ways he was a very practical man

and realized that it was necessary to earn money in the capitalist system

in order to provide the funds that would allow him to work towards totally

destroying and subverting the system that made his income possible. And it’s a great

way of a paradox of his life. But I think, in my view, a very attractive one.

He had a very happy childhood when he was six. The family moved to its

grandiose house, Woodford Hall, with 50 acres of pork and 100

acres of farmland. He was a young romantic, saturating himself

at a very young age in the novels of Walter Scott and writing about the nearby

Epping Forest, frequently dressed in a toy suit of armor.

In his early days, he was fairly religious, influenced by his mother and his favorite

sister. And until the end of his Oxford years, he thought he might be become an

Anglican priest after his father’s death. The family moved to a smaller but

still grand house Waterhouse in Walthamstow. Now the William Morris

Gallery, which began fairly recently renovated and is

after a fight with the local council. But eventually the local council came around and

is really quite wonderful. But I also want to mention and to me, it’s sort of

symbolic of how I think the interconnectedness of things in England.

I believe I have this right then that that very improbably, when the gallery opened in

the 1930s, it was opened. It was opened by the conservative

prime minister, Stanley Baldwin. And of course, the reason that Baldwin

opened it. The connection, as I mentioned later, is that he was burned, Jones’s

nephew. And so he had a family connection. And then when it was reopened

after the Second World War and Morris had very.

As I say, had very profound doubts about parliamentary politics. It was reopened

by then Prime Minister Clement Atlee. But I mean, I love it that it was Baldwin Atlee

who were the official openers of the museum. And two different point he had. He

had what was becoming the traditional education of his class. And at the age of 13,

he went to more borrow one of the up and coming new boarding schools founded to

serve the ambitions of the middle class, to educate their sons appropriately and train

them to become rules of the state and figures of empire and have

successful careers. Fortunately for Morris, the school was not yet

very well organized. There were schoolboy riots which he participated in,

and he was able to spend much time enriching his sense of nature, which will contribute so

much to his later designs, too. Through his freedom to wander

about in the new nearby as 7:08 forest, as well as other

rural sites in 1851, his later design history

was indicated by his adolescent refusal to go to the greatest exhibition

to enter it based on what he had heard about it. He was not yet politically radical,

but the exhibition will come to stand for the international triumph of Britain, but also

more significantly, despite the building itself being such a beautiful triumph of functionalism,

the Paxton glass design. Many of the British objects on display

were examples of overly elaborate design committed to ostentatious

display rather than practicality and simplicity that would become characteristic

of the arts and crafts movement. He entered Exeter College in

in October 1852. His experiences there were crucial

for his future less. In his formal studies. He was doing a pass degree. But

what is often as important, if not more so for the college is his multiple

interests would take shape, and he made the friends that he would have for the rest of his life,

most notably the artist Edward Burne Jones. Then Clain Edward Jones.

He also became a poet and helped pay for the journal that published his work

in his lifetime. And this is too easily forgotten. His greatest fame, in fact,

was a poet, IMO, most notably his multi-volume work,

The Earthly Paradise. And For. Time to time he was given the nickname

because of his political views, I think of the earthly paradox he

he might well become a poet laureate. In fact, at the time of Tennyson’s death, if

it if it hadn’t if it hadn’t been for his far left politics,

now his poetry, I think there might be English scholars here who would say I’m wrong,

but I think tends to be the least studied. We’d still studied. But the least studied

of his extraordinary range of accomplishments and his earlier, rather splendid

early poems are now of greatest interest. He and Bernd

Jones became dedicated to fight against what they called shaadi in the world.

The question was how best to do it? At first they thought they might do it by becoming

Anglican priests. Ironically, it was while taking a tour which overwhelmed

overwhelmed them with the beauty of the cathedrals, the cathedrals of northern France,

that they came to the conclusion that they would they would try to change the world through

art, not religion. His reading of Thomas Carlyle

and also accugen and the Puton book Contrasts is

in the exhibition and even more of John Ruskin while a student was

extremely important in shaping his ideas. Carlyle’s past and

present was published in 1855 and heavily influenced Morris,

shaping his admiration of medieval guilds and putting them into that

tradition of English radicalism, as I mentioned. Looking backwards

in order to go forward, Rustin, whose anniversary of his birth has triggered

I believe the present exhibition was even more significant in shaping Morrises

thought thoughts. In 1853, Ruskin had published The Stones

of Venice, in which the most important chapter was the nature of Gothic.

Years later, Morris would reprint the chapter as the fourth book issued by thatcomes

Hard Press. There is in his preface there. In his preface, he wrote that

that that chapter, a particular chapter in future days, it will be considered

as one of the very few necessary and inevitable utterances of this

century. And as the book is wonderfully on display in the exhibition

and it’s particularly a particularly nice and I love these connections that the exhibition

that the book is the copy that’s on show here

is the one that he gave to his to Georgina

Burne Jones, wife of the painter. He was his closest

male friend. And she his closest female friend.

In the English way in which every as I’ve said, in the English way, which everyone seems

connected, she she was one of the famous MacDonald’s sisters. I

think that their father was a Methodist preacher, I think. And one

of my sisters, as I married, I’ve gotten his first name. But but but

often I think Alfred Baldwin, Stanley Baldwin, father and

sister Barry, as you probably know, Rudyard Kipling and and and and

hence, of course, what Kipling. And there’s been renewed interest. There was a big exhibition,

which unfortunately I couldn’t see both of the BNA and then the board center in New York

of about about Loch Lockwood, Kipling, who is extremely

important in reviving the arts and crafts of India.

Ruskin advanced the idea, which became crucial to Morris’s thinking there was virtue

in the lack of perfection or roughness in the Gothic craftsman as

it reflected the humanity of the art and the pleasure that the mark the maker

took in the work. On the other hand, it is too easily assumed that Morris hated

machine work brusk and I think as as the docent pointed

out vividly yesterday that I took this refined tour of the exhibition.

But Morris thought machines should be used when appropriate to aid

and manufacture and to cope with its more tedious aspects.

But how was Morris to implement his way of attacking Shotty in the world about him?

As an architect, he went to work in the Office of Art in Oxford of the prominent

and progressive architect g.e.’s Street. That did not work

out. Although it was there that he met Philip Webb, who became the leading arts and crafts architect.

Architect and a very close friend. Street was important for instilling

in Morris the idea that a building was to be a total work of art, and one needed

to take into consideration everything that went into it. Outside

and in including its furnishings, it was also at this time that he became

part of. Gabrielle Rossetti Circle of pre-raphaelites. He took a flat

in Red Lion Square in London and finally knowwhere the furniture. He

designed his own. And there was a conference, I think I thought that I couldn’t go to it, but

it was a conference in which the top the theme of the conference was

at the at the back, at the University of the University. The Delaware

Art Museum in Wilmington is the State Museum, which

has the finest, as you probably know, Pre-Raphaelite collection in the United States.

And and but they’re there at a conference which the topic with the two was the

two chairs. And of course, some you may know, the great big bibliophile

and collector, Mark Sami’s Lacerda has has a great William Morris collection

at the University of Delaware. And it has much else, much else in it. And he ran

some years ago a terrific conference on William Morris in America.

As far as I know, the proceeds were ever published in 1857,

led by Rossetti, Morris and others embarked on the unsuccessful. If you ever tried

to see them, you’ll see why. Unsuccessful paintings of frescoes in the Oxford Union.

More significantly, in terms of Morrises life, a Rossetti spotted

what he called a stunner in the act in the Oxford Music Rooms,

the beautiful Jane Burdon, the daughter of a groom. Maj. Morris

has one major painting, was a full length portrait of her. Although he not satisfied with

the result. Commenting that he loved her but could not painter.

They married in 1859. It was not a happy marriage, although they

stayed together, had two daughters. The epileptic said the epileptic Jenny

and the powerful may wear this wonderful letter that she wrote to shore in,

in, in in the exhibition in which she said I am a great person, or

she accepts a compliment. What’s not mentioned in the caption, however, is that that

there was a strong possibility it never mounted anything, but did not, but

that they were sure. And years before Sean May Morris

were somewhat romantically involved. It would be an extraordinary marriage.

And of course, Mae became very much the custodian. She lived in Coming Up Manor until her

death. She gave it to Oxford. Oxford really didn’t want it. And now belongs is

open to the public. It belongs to the Society of Antiquities

and May or May edited the multi-volume collected works and then the two important

supplementary volumes. One suspects that Morris loved Jane more than she loved

him, and he turned away from painting

unsuccessful painter. He turned away from painting to poetry, and in 1858

he published his first book of poems, The Defense of gwenna v._a. In many ways, now

regarded as his best. Although poorly reviewed at the time, the poems

are marked by their interest in medieval scenes, the sense of decorative this

there facing the grimness of middle medieval life rather than endlessly romanticizing

it. They also surge with erotic energy. But it wouldn’t be

for some years later that he wrote The Multi-volume Their Earthly Paradise, a collection of

tales for which he was best known to the Victorian public. They were the sort

of TV series of the time, and people would read them out loud one another

after dinner. And as I say, that was probably his greatest claim to fame in his lifetime.

In a sense, his marriage was responsible for precipitating what would be the next step

in his career. It was a very important event in terms of his relation to the arts

and crafts. He had moved to a larger flat in London, but even so was too

small when he was married, so he could afford to have a house built, which

he often thought which never happened. Could be a sort of commune with the Byrne Joneses

Red House now open to the public via the National Trust in Bexley.

Heath outside London was designed by Philip Webb in 1860.

Some have seen it, perhaps with some exaggeration, as the beginning of modern architecture

because of its comparative plainness, almost its sense of austerity.

It is a beautiful house not illustrated in the exhibition, but the docent.

Yesterday she had a photograph of it which which she showed to the group. It

looks, in my view, both medieval and modern. It is a two storey building,

L-shaped with a faint feeling of a monastery. Although Morris himself believed

in jolly dinners with lots of wine. Morris lived there only until 1865.

As for his business, he needed to live in London. It’s the only house he built for himself.

Eventually he would. Rent comes God. Manner of beautiful old house, incoming scarred

village comparatively near Oxford, and the handsome Georgian, which he renamed

Kelmscott House on the Thames in Hammersmith, now owned by the William Morris

Society. Although its actual headquarters is in the coach house on the grounds

he will come to see buildings and books as exemplary total works

of art, Morris and his friends felt they needed to design themselves,

that they needed to design themselves. What would go into the into the house in terms

of furniture and what was on the walls that were frequently painted with patterns

designed by Morris as well as he and others creating murals and hangings

for the house. The aim, unlike so many Victorian objects,

was not to impress others, but rather to provide comfort and beauty for those

who live there. An ordinary person could not build such a house,

but it just in the direction that domestic architecture might take.

Morris and his closest friends now thought that they might be able to transform the look

of everything about them. So in 1861, the firm of Morris

Marshall Faulkner and Company was established. Morris was always the

major figure, and that was recognized in 1875 when the firm was reorganized

as Morrisson company. Though not in its original name.

Rose Eddy and Bernard Jones were very much involved. Which is clear from the exhibition.

As Morris wrote about the firm in 1883, all the minor arts

were in a state of complete degradation, especially in England and

accordingly in 1861, with the conceded courage of a young

man. I set myself to reforming all that and started a sort

of firm for producing decorative objects. He was incredibly,

incredibly prolific. In the 1870s, he created more

creative more than 600 designs, mostly for

textiles and wallpapers. The exhibition includes his very first textile design,

Daisy of 1862 and his last Compton in the year.

He died 1896, as well as three others, as well as many examples

of his wallpaper. They were virtually all inspired

by the natural world. At first they were hand produced by the firm, but

many of them were done, as it says in the exhibition by machine, by Jeffrey and Company.

And now many of them are still available from Sanderson and Company. It could be

said that he was the greatest patent designer of the 19th century. As he wrote,

almost all the designs were used for surface decoration, wallpapers, textiles and the

like. I designed myself. I’ve had to learn the theory and to

extend the practice of weaving, dyeing and textile printing, all

of which, I must admit, has given me and still gives me a great deal of enjoyment.

Ironically, as Boris was pretty much without religion, the firm was very involved and

profited greatly from the manufacturer of stain stained stained glass

windows, mostly mostly designed by reserve informatics Brown and Bernd

Jones, or Morris himself designed 150 himself. They were done

mostly for the many churches being built in the 19th century.

And of course, he also did windows for churches that already existed. But eventually he decided

that he would not do windows for existing churches, just for new churches.

Six hundred churches in Britain have windows designed by Mother Morris

firm, as well as churches abroad. And perhaps the best known example

in in America is, I think the main churches, Trinity Church in

Copley Square in Boston. It’s a story no historian of

Morrises stained-glass Charles Suta regards it as the great that Morrises Glass

and of course, Morrison Associates as the greatest stained glass since

since the 16th century. Morris also revived the making of

tapestries he would weave himself while composing poetry.

There is a continual and difficult way paradox

in Morris’s career as a business man. He was not particularly radical. I

dont think when he began his business, but he became increasingly so

in subsequent years. Ultimately, coming to believe that capitalism

should be replaced by Marx’s socialism by revolution if necessary,

but to finance his political beliefs as well as his life, he needed to make money,

particularly as his private income was in decline. He paid his hundred

or more workers well, and there was some profit sharing, but they were by necessity

part of the commercial system that he abhorred. But he reasoned, I think, perfectly

logically that if he ran his own business on socialist principles,

what that would mean that he wouldn’t make the money in which to destroy the system. So it was a

short term, so to speak. But of course, it’s become long term

and I think logical thinking. But he was attacked or teased.

You’re you’re a successful businessmen who sell to the rich. How can you be such a socialist?

What he called a profit guiding society made it impossible to function as he might

possibly have been able to do in the medieval past that he hoped others would

do. In the socialist world of the future, as envisioned in what I regard as his

greatest novel news from nowhere in the 1860s.

He also returned to poetry with book-length poems such as Life and Death.

Jason in 1867. In 1868, he started to

publish the full. The earthly paradise it consists of alternate tales,

He also became very interested in the Icelandic sagas and translated quite a few of them

with the help of a distinguished native speaker. He traveled to Iceland in 1871

and 1873, partially to be out of the country in order to avoid

the pain. Although he believed people should go where their emotions took them off

his wife’s affair with Rossetti, he vastly enjoyed what he regarded

as the more primitive world of Iceland, and even Brat brought back a pony mouse

to England. At this time, he also took up calligraphy, creating approximately

fifteen hundred pages. The range, quality and quantity

of his talents were breathtaking. In the mid 1870s, tension

turned to politics and he began his pilgrimage. Leftwards, he

first became an ardent vandstone and liberal, swept along by

Gladstone’s dramatic denunciation of the Turkish massacre of Bulgarians

in his famous pamphlet, The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East.

He referred in a letter in the press in 1876 as far as the Turks

as, quote, thieves and murderers. As a wealthy activist,

he became the treasurer of the Eastern Question Association, as well as sometime

later, treasurer of the National Liberal League. But as they as 1870’s

progressed, he became increasingly disillusioned with traditional politics.

Once the Liberals were back in office in 1880, he was disturbed by their coercion

of Ireland and the bombing of Alexandria. This multifaceted

man made one of his greatest contributions in 1877

as the major founder of the probably the first group of its kind. The Society

for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, which had the nickname Anti Scrape,

it is still an active and important organization and one of them

may have been the very first of these societies, such Georgian society, Victorian society

and so forth. And still it’s still somewhat controversial. He was increasingly

horrified by the tearing down of older buildings of merit, but he

approached the problem somewhat unusually in that he hated restoration.

His enemy was the great Victorian architect Gilbert Scott and his rebuilding

of ancient buildings. So they would, in effect, be reproductions

and not genuine articles. Untrue. In Morris’s view, both to the time

where they were built and their present age. Morris believed that in order to keep

true to the original building, the minimal should be done to keep it in good or good

repair. And if that weren’t possible, the building should be allowed to have

a decent death. The society made him more of a public figure and

helped lead him to become more more political, to give more, more public talks.

He talked about art and politics as he remarked in 1883.

I have only one subject on which to lecture the relation of art to labor.

The need for revolutionary change became more and more his preoccupation.

He wanted a society which consisted of semi-independent units,

not centrally controlled. He increasingly believed that the destruction of

private ownership was essential. He placed less and less faith

in traditional politics. His disdain for it is demonstrated

in that news from nowhere. The disused houses of parliament have become storehouses

for manure.

There was a growing there was the growing political unrest of the 1880s in England.

He was more or more involved in political organizations which he helped finance

the various precursors of the Labor Party. Ironically,

he was I think he was too individualistic to be a good party man.

He first joined the Social Democratic Federation, whose membership card he designed.

I think it’s in the exhibition under the leadership of H.M. Hindman. It had a Marxist orientation,

which Morris stopped supporting, but in his view was too committed to parliamentary politics.

He read Das Kapital in French in a cheap edition, although

he claimed he never quite understood its economics. Yet, like Marx,

he became a profound critic of the Aryan Nation of the laborer from work.

The volume that he read was bound by Morris, by the great Bookbinder who figures in the

exhibition, The Great Bookbinder and later printer T.J. Cobden. Sanderson

Htut aspect that I’m fond of is that when in Sand Cobden

Sanderson exhibition, I think it was of his bindings and even the great. Perhaps the greatest

under Morris’s influence, perhaps the greatest bookbinder of the 19th and early 20th century.

This copy of Das Kapital is spayd,

but what I love in the caption it says This book is not

worthy of its binding by. But what they mean? It’s not

a political comment. They’re coming. They’re commenting that it was a cheap edition

that didn’t deserve that because of its lack of quality as a work of printing

that didn’t deserve this. This magnificent binding

in 1889, he declared himself a communist. He felt that art could not flourish

under capitalism. He announced his conversion to say he had announced his conversion to socialism

earlier in 1883. Rather incongruously in a lecture at Oxford,

chaired by John Ruskin. Although Roskam is a suitable chair. But the university

authorities were rather upset that his very radical talk had been given under the egis

of the university. As he said, so long as the system of competition in the

production of an exchange of the means of life goes on, the degradation of the arts

will go on. He became fed up with the traditional politics of the federation

and moved into a more Annika’s direction. And he formed a new group,

the Socialist League. He was his leader, its leader until 1890.

Its membership card, designed by Walter Crane, depicted Morris as a blacksmith at

an anvil. He hoped that they would actually be revolutionary change in Britain.

But soon his hopes ended on Bloody Sunday, November 13, thinking 87,

when one hundred and twenty seven one hundred and twenty thousand socialists, radicals

and Irish were dispersed and beaten by police in Trafalgar Square.

Morris wrote a death song for Alf of the Now. One of the two men killed at the demonstration

to be sold for the benefit of his children. The more parliamentary inclined members of

the Socialist League, led by his daughter ELEANOR, withdrew from the Socialist League

when they were outvoted. Morris founded the now more dominant anarchist

wing of the league, uncongenial and withdrew to form a small local group

that met in his coach house, the Hammersmith Socialist Society. Rather paradoxically,

Morris passionately believed in group action. Yet he was also a deeply,

I think, Victorian individualists and a natural leader who couldn’t continue in groups,

even if he had had a leadership role. When he found that those groups were going in directions

which he found uncongenial, his continual aim was that there might be

in England where classes and private property were abolished, where workers would

enjoy their work and the fruits of their labor, and where exploitation would no longer

take place. But he also knew that it was a continual process, and permanently

achieving it was almost impossible. Amazingly, at the same time,

he was also extremely active in his firm, which continued to do well.

Although his increasingly influential through younger disciples among others aged

McMurdo and Herbert Horne founded the Century Guild in 1882. The art

workers, the Art Workers Guild was established in 1884

and S.R. Ashry formed the Guild of Handicrafts in 1888 and all of the most

cited in the exhibition. But I just must say

that it captured for Ashry. It quite accurately says

that his mother was a highly cultivated woman.

Hamburg German-Jewish fambly. But it’s always sort of amused me and is not

mentioned in the caption. His father was HMS

Ashby and his great claim to fame is the

most significant. He published the three volume work, which is a

bibliography of pornography and and and also, according

to Stephen Marcus, he may have been the author of My Other Life or whatever the famous

reporter and number was pornographic or Autobiography of the Nineteenth Century.

And what I always love is his son, S.I.S. Which was in Poland of

how the book Beautiful and H.S. H.S. NHP was the proponent of the book

Dirty.

Also in 1888 or 1887, it says in the exhibition,

I’m not sure which is the date the arts and crafts society

came into existence for two days. Cobden Sanderson,

in fact, was the coiner of now become the canonical phrase arts and crafts,

suggesting that the so-called lesser arts, while on the same level as the high

arts, the society had an annual exhibition that promulgated

the style. As this exhibition makes evidence, the movement, so shaped by

Morris, became increasingly active in the United States. It was influential

on the continent as well. Morris gave these organisations is somewhat grudging

blessing as he regarded them as palliatives, not getting to the

heart of economics and politics.

At the same time, he was so politically active, he was also continually

riding my two favorite books of his were written in this period A Dream

of John Ball, published in 1888 and News from Nowhere, i.e.

Utopia in 1891. The former had a splendid front frontispiece

by Burne Jones, who didn’t share Morris’s political opinions, although

they remained close friends with the motto under the drawing of Adam monny,

its drawing of Adam and Eve work in the fields.

When ad Adam delved in Eve’s band, who was then

the gentle man there, he recounted it through John Ball. The Rebel

Priest. The failed peasant uprising led by what? Taylor in thirteen eighty

one. In it he wrote. Wrote How men fight the fight

and lost the battle. And the thing they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat.

And when it comes, turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have

to fight for what they meant. Under another name. And so of encapsulates

so much sort of socialist history. Sadly, perhaps there are two copies of the book

in the exhibition. Oh, two copies

of Not the Dream John Bore, but two copies of News Nowhere in the Exhibition

of Pirated American Version and the beautiful Kelmscott Prestidigitation of 1892

with s.m Gear’s Fine Frontispiece depicting comes about Mannah,

the destination of the book of the trip up the Thames in the novel. News begins

with the MORRICE figure returning disillusion from a political meeting where six

were present and six divergent views were argued that the next day

he wakes up in the future. A two year violent revolution having taken place,

ending in 1952 for a victory for socialism. Now

in England, law courts and prisons have been abolished and the central government

has been replaced by direct, participatory democracy. A series

of self-governing communes in communication with one another small

is beautiful in terms of government and of the economy. It is a world

in which it would appear that Morris and CO at designed everything, and its inhabitants

have learned his lesson that pleasure and work results in more beautiful objects.

There is nothing in people’s houses, as as Morris wrote, that are not either beautiful

or useful. He didn’t claim that objects had to be beautiful and useful, which is

frequently represented as ideally they should be beautiful and useful. But to

him it was sufficient that they would be useful or beautiful. So he wasn’t. So

I think that’s an important distinction. There is little emphasis in news from nowhere

on material progress. There was a turn from useless toil to useful

work as old Hammond, who lived through the revolution, explains to

the narrator guest the production of what used to be called art, which has

no name among us now because it but which has no name among us now,

because it has become a necessary part of the labor of every man who produces.

Morris also in these years published six mostly so-called prose romances, several

of them about splendid romantic German tribes that renewed popular clarity

in the 1960s as they were seen as as symbols Tolkien

and then to further ones were published after his death. Morris claims somewhat disingenuously

that that and I think and accurately that these books were apolitical,

but they were less political than others. But the but there he said they were just meant as tales,

as he said, pure and simple. The last eight years of Morris’s life,

he died in 1896, were dominated by books, even as he kept

up with the firm and his political activities. He was also in declining

health. He became an avid book collector, particularly of early printed books and illuminated

manuscripts. But most important, in 1892, which is wonderfully documented

in the exhibition, he founded the Comes scart Press.

Much of what he produced as a publisher and designer was only available to the well-off.

He felt that the situation wouldn’t fundamentally change until there was a revolution.

Nevertheless, through changing taste and setting new standards of beauty and craftsmanship,

the design work might have good. Facts even afford society. As he wrote

to enjoy good houses and good books in self-respect and decent comfort.

Seems to me to be the pleasurable end which all societies of human beings

ought to struggle. Inspired by a lecture by Emory Walker on type

at the first arts and Crafts Exhibition 1988, he himself had lectured at that

exhibition on tapestry and carpet weaving. Morris decided to launch the press.

He regarded the book as the total artistic, as a total artistic

entity, not only in its current in the contents, but the design of the page.

They were printed in one of the three typeface that he designed. He worked out the needed

relationship between, as he wrote the paper, the form of the type,

the relative spacing of the letters, the words and the lines, and lastly,

the position of the printed matter on the page. As usual, his

work was inspirational and was the major impetus for the spate of private presses that

were to follow in his wake, such as Dov’s Veil, Ashanti

and Essex House. The press ultimately published 53 books, three after

Morris’s death, many of them reprints of poetry, including his own. Its masterpiece

on display here was the Comcar Chaucer, finished in June 1896.

Burne Jones, who did eighty seven woodcut illustrations for it, called it and

I think is saved in the exhibition, the term he called it a pocket cathedral.

So it unified both morison’s sense of buildings and books.

Morris designed the decorative aspects of the book, such as the initial words and Vaughters.

The most copy of the most moving copy of it that I’ve seen is not

perhaps sadly here, but it it’s up the road

at SMU and and it’s in Sky. I

see. I see a sign of distress in it. I

saw it when that great book collector, which Robert is a book dealer

whom probably some, you know, still going strong I think in the 90s.

Colin Franklin owned it and I saw it.

When when you had the most beautiful place to books I’ve ever been is

it did Carcoar in its ways near Oxford. And he now says book deal

is likely to do a market to sell it, but he sold it as Ammu. And the

thing that, of course, you know, that Morris is dying. So perhaps and it’s inscribed

it’s Burne Jones is copy and it’s inscribed to Burton Jones

in this visibly shaky handwriting. And there’s something, you know, not surprisingly,

it’s extremely StreetLink moving to see. He had been in bad

health since catching a cold. Speaking in December 1895 in the open air at the

funeral research a step Anak, the Russian anarchist, he died on October

that he had had a simple funeral. And

his funeral court is is there is a photograph of it in the exhibition was

buried in the churchyard at Kelmscott Village under a raised Viking like

Tombstone designed by Philip Webb. Morris’s ideas

and activities were so wide that it would it would be possible to see his life

as extremely diffused. But I think there is a strong, consistent line

in his thought. His life was much more unified than might at first appear.

After his death, interestedin tended both to decline somewhat, which happens, of course,

when he was no longer a vivid present and presence and to be divided among

his various activities. Perhaps after his death in

some years or maybe up to the Second World War, perhaps the most attention being paid

to him as a Victorian poet. There were those who were then

interested in him as a poet and designer, were inclined to be rather

put off by his politics. But all that changed after the Second

World War were gradually a conception. Correctly, I believe, of

the integrated Morris became much more dominant. This was Mark, among other

indications by the formation of the William Morris Society in 1955

and the publication of E! Epee, Thompson’s great William Morris Romantic

to revolutionary. That same year, interest in his political ideas greatly

increased as a result of many on the left becoming disillusioned with

the failures of the Soviet Union and the tragedies of the Soviet Union and of the failures

of state socialism. I mean, in a way that the spirit of the 60s,

the counterculture of the 60s, supported

the growth of Morris’s reputation. As I say, became something of a hero

of the counterculture, both stylistic, stylistically and politically in the 1960s

and beyond. His extraordinary work in so many areas was now seen

as much more integrated than one might have thought. And this splendid exhibition,

which is arguing the theme of the essays and so forth, is that his design

had a political purpose is somewhat it’s totally legitimate. And I think it’s

been in the thought of the time, but it’s been more explicitly articulated

by this exhibition than than it has in the past. And this splendid exhibition

next door around the corner downstairs makes clear how important and

influential his design work was improving. It was in improving our world

and possibly, possibly, perhaps at some point in the future, making

a better world, as he wrote as the last line of news from nowhere.

If others can see it as I have seen it, then it may be called a vision

rather than a dream. Thank you.