top of page

Wiiliam Morris

 Born in 1834, William Morris is the most influential and often called as the founder of the Arts and Crafts Movement who holds the longest historical background and came from a wealthy English family of the time. Morris had opportunities to enjoy natural environment where there are forests, flowers, gardens and birds which certainly affected his art and poetry career. Morris’s interests in medieval ideas such as communal life and chivalry made him decided to attend Exeter College at Oxford with hopes to becoming a clergy. During his university year, he earned about 30 thousand American dollars currently and left Oxford to become an artist. He started many organizations which blamed the Industrial Revolution which caused his concerns about poverty, unemployment, lost skills, and the growing gap between upper and lower classes. He strongly feared that industrialization would destroy the traditional skills and crafts and believed that machines had degraded the quality of goods being manufactured. Because his negative view on technology, he always abandoned the use of machines in his artworks and became known for his pattern designs, particularly on fabrics and wallpapers. 

Artwork 

 

 

His artworks are based on natural forms which many of them are flowers and his major artwork ‘trellis’ (Figure 1) is based on rose-trellis in the garden of his house, Red House in Kent. The pattern shows his affection towards nature and a medieval influence as it contains similar flower forms and ornamental decoration from tapestries and in early printed herbals. He stated that “the true root and basis of all Art lies in the handicrafts” which enabled craftsmen into artists[1]. William Morris showed his interest towards nature and medievalism through typography as well (Figure 2). Similarly, we can see that nature and unrestrained exuberance of features were considered when making the typography’s patterns and motifs. As seen from trellis wallpaper and typography, we can easily assume that he strongly had a negative view towards the use of technology on artworks. He also showed hatred towards inhumane conditions of labor which led to mass and cheap production, thereby degrading the quality and the values of products. Due to technology, mass production of degraded artworks was available to everyone and Morris strongly believed that cheap art cannot exist and the values of art should be highly considered with the artists’ thought and trouble as well. He deeply concerned that with the growth of industrial cheap production; the artistic skill could be lost and lose its essence of handicraft production. In other words, he tried to bring a revival of artistic draftsmanship, not of industrial.

 

 

Figure 1

Wiilam Morris, ‘trellis’ wallpaper 1864

http://poulwebb.blogspot.fi/2012/01/william-morris-wallpaper-textiles.html

(accessed September 19, 2014)

Figure 2

William Morris, typography 1896

http://graphic-design.com/typography/design/william-morris-art-nouveau-style

(accessed September 19, 2014)

[1] quoted in Literature: Pioneers of Modern Design, Nikolaus Pevsner, theories of art from Morris to Gropius, p. 16

  • Facebook Classic
  • Twitter Classic
  • Google Classic
  • RSS Classic

© 2023 by TOKYO DESIGN. Proudly created with Wix.com

bottom of page