Beauty, which is what is meant by art, using the word in its widest sense, is, I contend, no mere accident to human life, which people can take or leave as they choose, but a positive necessity of life.
- William Morris, The Beauty of Life, 1880

William Morris (1834-1896) was among the most creative artists Britain has ever produced. His accomplishments are extraordinary in their range and depth. He was a revolutionary interior designer and book printer, a staunch socialist, a famous and prolific poet, a weaver, embroiderer, dyer, calligrapher, translator, businessman, and architectural preservationist. He established the internationally successful firm Morris & Company, for which he mastered the design and production of stained glass, wallpaper, printed and woven textiles, carpet, and tapestry. The astonishing range and depth of his achievements make him a unique figure in the history of art and design. He expanded our definition of art by changing the way we look at and live with the everyday objects that surround us. Morris fashioned new forms and styles by delving deep into the art and culture of the past, building a modern art on medieval foundations. His artistic practices further led him to political activism and an idealistic vision of the future. Morris's art, his ideals, and his lifework paved the way for generations of artists who followed him in his pursuit of what he called "the beauty of life."

MORRIS & COMPANY

Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company, known to its members as "the Firm," was founded in 1861 in London by Morris and a coterie of likeminded artists and friends from Morris's time as a student at Oxford. The group included founding co-partners Peter Paul Marshall and Charles Faulkner (1834-1892), the architect Philip Webb (1831-1915), and the artists Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898), Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893), and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), who were leading figures in the Pre-Raphaelite movement. When Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company began operation in 1861, they announced themselves as "Fine Art Workmen," ready to "undertake any species of decoration," which was a realization of Morris's ideal of a collective of artists and craftsmen working towards the common goal of achieving an "earthly paradise." It was an unusual endeavor at the time for a group of artists to turn their attention to designing objects to decorate the home, and, in doing so, they helped elevate the decorative arts to the level of fine art. The Firm began modestly, offering decorative furnishings to churches and homes. One of its earliest commissions was the tile-panel illustrating the story of Cinderella, designed by Burne-Jones and probably painted by Lucy Faulkner (1839-1910), Charles Faulkner's sister. The Firm continued to expand as it found commercial success with the innovative patterns for wallpaper and textiles for which Morris is now famous. In 1875, the original partnership dissolved, and the Firm was reorganized as Morris & Company under Morris's sole direction. In the next decades, Morris & Company prospered both artistically and commercially, as its remarkable range of domestic and ecclesiastical furnishings and renowned craftsmanship made it a household name.

THE DECORATION OF CHURCHES

Morris & Company made an important contribution to the development of church decoration in the nineteenth century. The Firm joined a number of companies competing to meet the demand for stained glass created by the mid-nineteenth-century boom in church-building inspired by the Gothic Revival and the Anglican High Church movement. The Firm's earliest stained glass, such as the window of St. Mary Magdalene designed by Morris, was directly influenced by medieval examples and found favor with Gothic Revival architects. Over time, however, Morris rejected what he thought was the slavish imitation of the forms of medieval art by some Gothic Revivalists. This distaste perhaps manifested itself in the development of the Firm's windows, which took place between the 1860s and the 1870s. The Firm's windows shifted to a new aesthetic developed in the close collaboration between Burne-Jones and Morris. Their designs moved toward a more dynamic style which combined Burne-Jones's pictorialism and Morris's intricate pattern designs. Their unique windows brought about a revolution in the use of color and design in stained glass.

THE DECORATION OF HOUSES

For Morris, the idea of the beautiful house was at the center of both his art and philosophy. The passion he held for architecture and domestic spaces can be traced throughout his life, in his letters and writings and his work as a designer, as well as in his love for his own houses, Red House in Kent, the sixteenth-century Kelmscott Manor, and his London home, Kelmscott House. The wallpapers, textiles, carpets, tapestries, and furniture designed by the Firm were intended to create an integrated artistic interior and, in so doing, to transform domestic life into a deeply aesthetic experience. Morris wished "to revive a sense of beauty in home life, to restore the dignity of art to the ordinary household decoration." The intricate layering and intertwining of organic forms in Morris's patterns for wallpapers, such as Jasmine, and textiles, such as his design for the printed textile Iris, are still instantly recognizable today. These revolutionary pattern designs were based on his study of native plants and of historic textiles, again demonstrating his abiding interest in making use of the past as inspiration for the present. In keeping with his idealization of the medieval period, he advocated simple, uncluttered interiors in contrast to the elaborate decoration them typical of most Victorian homes.

THE ART OF THE BOOK

Morris became renowned throughout his life as a writer and poet. He published several books of poetry, prose romances and translations of Norse and classical texts, and lectured widely on design and socialism. In the last decade of his life Morris added the profession of book printer to his already remarkable range of accomplishments. He founded the Kelmscott Press, named after his beloved home, to print books "with the hope of producing some which would have a definite claim to beauty." For Morris, the book was an art object to be appreciated in the same way as a beautiful home or a painting. Established in premises a few doors away from Kelmscott House in London, the Press would issue forty-two books before Morris's death. All aspects of the books were conceived by Morris, from the typography and ornamented initials and borders, such as his design for the title-page of The Story of the Glittering Plain, to the page layout, format, and bindings, and were printed on handmade paper on a hand-press. Morris's book designs were a revolutionary departure from the standard issue of Victorian publishers.

MEDIEVALISM AND MODERNITY

Many of Morris's artistic activities involved reviving medieval crafts, such as manuscript illumination, dyeing, and tapestry weaving. He was steeped in classical and medieval legends and was deeply inspired by the history and mythology of Iceland, which would serve as a creative spark for his later translations of Icelandic texts and his own prose romances. His dismay at the contemporary defacement and destruction of medieval buildings made him a pioneering champion for historical preservation, and, in 1877, he launched the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. In his ambitions to preserve the past, he pointed towards an optimistic vision of the future. Morris's idealization of a medieval model of life that integrated creativity and labor, art and work, spurred his forward-looking politics. The past was always a place of inspiration for Morris, whether he looked at the traditional techniques of dyeing fabric, documented in the book of dye recipes used at the Firm's workshops, or at the structure of society. He became a committed socialist, joining the Democratic Federation and later founding the Socialist League and working tirelessly as a political activist. His embrace of socialism was a response to the new conditions of labor resulting from the industrialization of Britain. Yet Morris was not afraid of modern technology if it did not compromise his project of creating a beautiful life. In fact, a number of Morris & Company furnishings, such as carpets, were machine produced.

MORRIS'S LEGACY

Morris's ideas lived on even after his death, not only in the work of his protégé John Henry Dearle (1860-1932), who took over as artistic director of the Firm and guided it almost until its end, but in that of countless other artists and designers who, for a century and a half, have looked to Morris for inspiration. His influence extended from the Arts and Crafts Movement of the late nineteenth century to the organic modernism of Frank Lloyd Wright in America and the stark functionalism of the Bauhaus in Europe. Morris once confessed his fear that the work of Morris & Company was "going to be of no influence on the future." His fears, clearly, were misplaced. Although the Firm closed its doors at the beginning of the Second World War, Morris's various endeavors in stained glass, pattern-designing, and book printing, and his philosophies of art have endured in the visionary transformation of interior design to an art. In changing the way we look at our homes, Morris changed the way we look at the world.

THE HUNTINGTON WILLIAM MORRIS COLLECTION

The exhibition is based upon The Huntington's William Morris Collection, one of the outstanding repositories of Morris materials. In the early part of the twentieth century, Henry E. Huntington assembled a significant collection of manuscripts for Morris's published writings and material related to the Kelmscott Press. In 1999, a major acquisition of material added the archive of designs in the possession of the Firm at its liquidation. The collection includes over one thousand designs and full-scale cartoons for stained glass, seminal archival documentation of the Firm's business, hundreds of designs for wallpaper, printed and woven textiles, carpets, tapestry, and embroidery as well as over 100 of Morris's figure drawings, by far the largest extant collection in the world. In addition to these materials are designs for and books published by the Kelmscott Press, several manuscripts of Morris's writings, multiple editions of Morris's published literary and socialist works, and letters. The Huntington is now one of the major centers for Morris study in the world.

This exhibition is made possible through the generous support of Anne and Jim Rothenberg & Frank and Toshie Mosher with additional funding from The Elsie de Wolfe Foundation.

In the Bookstore
The accompanying publication, 'The Beauty of Life': William Morris and the Art of Design contains essays on William Morris, Morris & Company, and Morris's influence on British and American designers in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Edited by Diane Waggoner, curator of the exhibition, and published by Thames and Hudson, the book is beautifully illustrated with color images drawn from The Huntington's William Morris Collection. The essays are contributed by Waggoner; Pat Kirkham, Professor of Design History at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, New York; Gillian Naylor, former Professor of the History of Design at the Royal College of Art, London; and Edward R. Bosley, Director of The Gamble House in Pasadena.

Docent Tours
Docent-led tours of the exhibition will be available for groups of ten or more by special arrangement during non-public hours. Please contact Group Tours at 626-405-2240 for scheduling.

Lecture and Conference
Thursday, December 4, 2003, 7:30 p.m.
William Morris: From Red House to Pasadena
Richard Guy Wilson, Commonwealth Professor of Architectural History at the University of Virginia and commentator on the A&E series America's Castles, presents the Robert R. Wark lecture.
Free. Friends' Hall.

Friday and Saturday, December 5-6, 2003, 8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
William Morris and His Legacy: Art, Design, and Politics
The Huntington hosts a two-day conference that brings together an international group of art, design, and architectural historians and curators to provide a forum for new scholarship on the work of William Morris and his continuing significance in the history of design in Britain and America.
To receive a brochure with full schedule and a registration form, please contact Carolyn Powell at 626- 405-2194 or cpowell@huntington.org.
Registration is $25 (graduate students free) with optional lunches available at an additional cost.

Adult Embroidery Workshop
March 13, 2004, 9:00am-5:00pm
Learn from expert Ann Chaves the art of embroidery and produce your own sample of a William Morris design in The Huntington's collection.
Members fee: $110 (including supplies). Nonmembers fee: $120 (including supplies). Advance reservations required.
Please call the Education Department at 626-405-2128.

Film Screening: Ruskin

March 19 (Friday) 7:30 p.m.

Victorian art critic and theorist John Ruskin's seminal work The Stones of Venice was a touchstone for William Morris in his admiration for the art and society of the medieval period. The work helped to shape his own Arts and Crafts philosophy. In Ruskin , filmmaker Robert Beavers follows in the footsteps of Ruskin and Morris in a sensitive documentary noted for its stunning cinematography of Venetian architecture.

Free. Limited seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Friends' Hall.

William Morris Family Festival
Saturday, March 20, 2004, 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Explore the world of William Morris through music, hands-on activities, live demonstrations of dyeing, embroidery, printing, and stained glass. Learn from local artisans how Morris and his partners created the works of art in 'The Beauty of Life': William Morris and the Art of Design.
Free with admission. Brown Garden.

Lecture
William Morris: Yesterday and Today
Sunday, March 21, 2004, 2:30 p.m.

Noted William Morris scholar Peter Stansky, Professor of History at Stanford University, will present an overview of the life and achievements of the father of the Arts and Crafts movement. He will consider Morris both in the context of his own time and also his relevance to twenty-first-century design, politics, and lifestyle.

Free with admission. Friends’ Hall.

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