Unlikely as it sounds, if you go into the William Morris Gallery in the east London suburb of Walthamstow right now, you will see a photograph of the backside of my favourite denim jeans. It’s part of the gallery’s current exhibition, which runs until September 21st.
The show is titled Morris Mania: How Britain’s Greatest Designer Went Viral and includes an electronic display of photographs sent in by the public that illustrate how the great Victorian artist, writer and socialist’s fabric designs have become ubiquitous, not just in Britain, but in many parts of the world. Along with the usual wallpaper and curtains, there is a multitude of objects including mugs, Doc Martens, dog collars, a toilet seat and manicured nails, all decorated in Morris Company prints.
A long-time Morris fan, I felt compelled to send in the portrait of my jeans (photo no 84, in the unlikely event you want to check the gallery’s website, which is showing the public contributions online), which are patched with a piece of Sanderson’s heavy cotton curtain material in the popular Blackthorn print.
In 1975 the Sanderson company reproduced for the first time Morris’s original 19th century fabric and wallpaper designs. As a teenager, I persuaded my mother to buy me the Blackthorn wallpaper and curtains. I still have the curtains, stashed in a basket in the attic, along with the remnants left over from their making. A couple of years ago I used a piece of the remnants to mend my jeans, whose seat had been worn through from cycling.
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I didn’t know it back then but Blackthorn wasn’t designed by Morris, though he approved it, but by JH Dearle, who had begun his career as a shop assistant in the Morris store in Oxford Street in 1878 and eventually became the company’s art director. Dearle designed a wide range of wallpaper and textile designs, mainly in the years after Morris had become heavily involved in revolutionary politics.
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I loved Morris’s intricate, nature-inspired designs that combined organic forms with geometry in such a harmonious and beautiful way. I read biographies and learned about his philosophy and art, and writings. I read about his championing of John Ruskin’s Arts and Crafts movement, which, in response to mass industrialisation, emphasised handcrafted quality and had a huge influence on the visual aesthetic of the late 19th and early 20th century. I even read his poetry, though for a 16-year-old it was pretty hard work – his language was as flowery as his fabric designs.
Morris was closely connected with the Pre-Raphaelite painters (another love of my teens) and married the group’s most famous model, Jane Burden. Jane was a working-class woman who was spotted at the theatre by the Oxford-educated art-hoodlums and her thick, crinkle-cut hair and strong, sensual features became an archetype of their “brand”. She married Morris though she was really in love with the philandering Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who was already engaged to Elizabeth Siddal (the painters’ second most famous model).
Though celebrated for her unconventional beauty – the Victorian ideal of female beauty was small and blonde and porcelain pretty, while Jane was dark and strong-featured and, according to one sniffy description, “as tall as a man” – she was also a talented embroiderer. She taught herself ancient embroidery techniques and along with her sister Elizabeth and her daughters Jenny and May supervised designs and tapestries for Morris and Company. Almost inevitably, given the times, credit for the designs was given to William Morris “in the interests of commercial success”.
There’s an Irish connection too: Susan Yeats, known as Lily, sister of WB and Jack B, who started the Dun Emer Guild and later Cuala Craft Industries in Dundrum with her sister Elizabeth (known as Lolly), and Evelyn Gleeson, knew the Morrises well. She trained in embroidery with May Morris and later worked for Morris and Company for more than six years. Money was tight for the Yeatses and Lily was paid 10 shillings for her first week’s work with the firm. The relationship with her boss wasn’t all roses though – Lily reportedly referred to May in her scrapbook as “the Gorgon”.
As part of the exhibition at the Morris gallery, an installation on the ceiling of the cafe is composed of tea-towels printed with his designs. The dodgy quality of many of these reproductions underlines the irony of his work being mass produced by methods opposite to the Arts and Crafts philosophy of craftsmanship and authenticity. For good measure, the artist has used as the title for the piece Morris’s famous dictum: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”
In an odd twist, I texted my friend Fiona, who lives in London, to tell her about sending my photo to the gallery for the exhibition. We’ve known each other since we were five and so she knows I’m a Morris fan. She immediately texted back: “I’ve literally just come out of that exhibition. I’m outside the gallery. I saw your jeans photo. I got you a tea-towel.”
Despite being a visionary and a polymath, and pretty cool all round, Morris doesn’t seem to have been puffed up with self-importance. In 1855, when he was 21, he wrote to his mother: “I do not hope to be great at all in anything, but perhaps I might reasonably hope to be happy in my work, and sometimes when I am idle and doing nothing, pleasant visions go past me of the things that might be.”
My new tea-towel is in his Pimpernel design – swirls of green foliage studded with blue flowers. Who knows how long it will last but for now it’s beautiful and useful and an everyday reminder of a lifetime of friendship. I think Morris would be okay with it.
Morris Mania: How Britain’s greatest designer went viral is at the William Morris Gallery, London, until September 21st
