Latest news with #Morris&Co
The Guardian
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on William Morris: how the Strawberry Thief took over the world
The great 19th-century designer William Morris wasn't thinking of a £2 floral iPhone cover when he wrote 'Tomorrow, the civilised world shall have a new art, a glorious art, made by the people and for the people.' In his lifetime he failed in his dream of making art for all, while paying his workers fairly. Only the homes of the wealthy were decorated by Morris & Co. As he feared, he had simply been 'ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich'. But today his designs can be found everywhere, from John Lewis to Chinese online marketplace Temu. His Strawberry Thief print is the most popular item in the V&A museum shop, and the internet is awash with AI-generated posters for fake William Morris V&A exhibitions. A new show, Morris Mania, at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, explores how his botanical prints went viral, with a callout to the public to loan their own Morris ephemera. Morris would be thrilled and appalled at this democratisation of his work. His legacy, like his life, is one of contradictions: he was a radical socialist and hugely successful businessman, who made wallpaper for Queen Victoria; a passionate champion of craftsmanship and workers' rights, whose designs have become a template for mass-produced tat. An early environmentalist, he raged against the waste and pollution of the industrial age. His 1890 utopian sci-fi novel News from Nowhere imagined a future in which there is no money, private property or big cities. In the end, he thought only upending the whole capitalist shebang would do. But Morris's ideals survived into the next century, influencing political thinking about the arts. Labour's Clement Attlee, Aneurin Bevan and Tony Blair were all fans. The ethos behind the Design Council, which celebrates its 80th anniversary this month, was not just to help rebuild the economy after the second world war but to improve people's everyday lives. Shops like Habitat and designers such as Terence Conran took up Morris's challenge to bring good design to the high street. In the return to 'Victorian values' of the Conservative 1980s, Laura Ashley filled homes with Morris-inspired soft furnishings. Even British nuclear submarines were upholstered in his rose-print linen (Morris would not have approved). Now we are having another Morris moment. Perhaps the joyful expression of nature in his patterns is the key to their enduring appeal. His motto, 'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful', may have struck a chord in lockdown. Gen Z turned to crafting, and 'cottagecore' took off. For many, our homes are also our offices; we want them to be 'beautiful'. Morris has always been design's visionary and conscience. Today, we need him more than ever. As Morris mania proves, designers – however unwittingly – have played no small part in fuelling overconsumption. They have the power to shape our world and future. Eighty per cent of the environmental impact of any new product is determined at the design stage. Good design is no longer just about form and function. Designers are responding to the climate emergency with innovations that are aesthetic and sustainable. As globalisation itself is under scrutiny thanks to US tariffs, Morris reminds us to think about where goods come from and how they were made. Do you really need that cheap Strawberry Thief-patterned toothbrush holder?
The Guardian
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Curtains, wellies, nuclear subs and a tsar's palace: how William Morris mania swept the world
He has papered our walls and carpeted our floors, enlivened our curtains, coats and cups, and even infiltrated Britain's nuclear submarine fleet. Almost 130 years after his death, the Victorian arts and crafts designer William Morris has blanketed the world with his unmistakable brand of busy floral patterns, wrapping our lives with tasteful swathes of willow, blackthorn and pimpernel, peppered with cheeky strawberry-eating robins. There's no escape. 'I started seeing Morris everywhere,' says Hadrian Garrard, director of the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, east London, speaking with the air of someone trying to shake off a stalker. 'He's on phonecases, umbrellas, walking sticks – and about a third of the Victoria and Albert Museum gift shop. I thought it was time that we addressed how we got here – how did William Morris, Britain's greatest designer, go viral?' The question lies at the heart of the gallery's new exhibition, Morris Mania, which takes visitors on a chintzy romp through more than a century of floral fixtures, fittings, fashion and furnishings. It is a fascinating, if sometimes nausea-inducing, haul of pattern-smothered objects and stories, after which you, too, will probably notice Morris prints everywhere. Their popularity began in the designer's lifetime. A helpful timeline highlights the key moments that turned this avowed socialist into the unrivalled tastemaker to the middle and upper classes. With the opening of his first Morris & Co showroom on Oxford Street in 1877, and commissions to furnish St James's Palace and Balmoral Castle, his reputation soon spread among the ruling elite. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia caught wind of the fashionable Brit in 1895. He ordered 300 yards(275 metres) of Morris fabric and enough Garden Tulip wallpaper to line the apartments of his Winter Palace in St Petersburg. It didn't end well. A 1917 photograph shows one of the rooms ransacked, after the palace was stormed by the Bolsheviks. Everything is destroyed – except Morris's paper. His rustic vision of merrie olde England clings stubbornly to the walls. After the copyright of his work expired in 1966, the tsunami of mass-market Morris merch was unleashed. Laura Ashley opened its first branded shop in South Kensington, London, in 1968, swamping a generation of homes with floral curtains and cushions, while during the Thatcher years there was another Morris boom, with Tory calls to return to 'Victorian values'. With this came one of the most unlikely uses of Morris fabric in the exhibition: his rose-printed linen was used to upholster the seats of Royal Navy submarines – giving officers a nice reminder of cosy medieval Britain as they prepared to unleash nuclear war. Ironically, Morris had designed the pattern in 1883, just as he became increasingly critical of his country's imperialist ambitions and the futility of war. The exhibition design, by Sam Jacob, with graphics by Europa, is a gaudy treat, swallowing you into a dizzying Morris universe, with garish Morris carpet, loud Morris wallpaper and frilly Morris lightshades dangling from the ceiling, in a tasselled grannycore symphony. Vitrines showcase numerous Morris-patterned objects, from Past Times knick-knacks and museum shop scarves, to luxury Loewe handbags and collaborations with Nike and H&M. 'The patterns have escaped their original form by now,' says Jacob, whose work has long revelled in exploring the mimetic mutations of popular culture. 'It's a bit like in the film Alien – the patterns can land on anything and completely inhabit their host, whether that's a mug or a submarine.' One vitrine, focused on the commercial realm, shows how his designs have transcended the usual boundaries of high and low taste, being embraced by both exclusive couture and mass-produced tat. Morris might be synonymous with staid middle-class traditionalism, but even Habitat – founded by Terence Conran to bring sleek modernism to the masses – embraced Morris mania. Its 1971 catalogue flaunts Chesterfield sofas writhing with Honeysuckle fabric, their designs proudly described as being 'based on a Victorian original'. Morris's popularity in Asia also gets a look-in. There is a Japanese yukata, a type of kimono, made of the famous Strawberry Thief fabric. Look closely and you will see Hello Kitty faces peering from the foliage. There's a new Morris badminton kit from sports brand Yonex, its busy patterns likely to dazzle any opponent into missing the shuttlecock. There's also a ravishing pair of Morris patterned wedding jackets, made by local designer Zahra Amber for her wedding at the gallery, which she had embroidered in Kashmir. They stand alongside a dresser brimming with countless other trinkets donated by Morris fans, from a ceramic toast rack to a pack of cards. An entertaining film, made by Natalie Cubides-Brady, with help from US academic Sarah Mead Leonard of Twitter account Morris on Screen – features clips from more than 100 films and TV shows where patterns appear, from University Challenge to Call the Midwife, cementing Morris as a backdrop to countless lives. China is now one of the biggest Morris markets in the world, ever since the V&A's touring exhibition in 2023 smashed box office records. An iPad scrolls through the vast range of Morris-patterned merchandise available to buy from Chinese online marketplace Temu ('Shop like a billionaire!'), much of which is now AI-generated. 'We bought these for £2.99 each,' says Garrard, gesturing to a wall of Morris exhibition posters made in China – for shows that never happened. 'There are tons for sale online, all generated by AI. We could have covered the whole of Walthamstow with them.' This computer-generated, factory-made garbage might be anathema to the 'authentic' Morris products that are still being produced by skilled artisans, their laborious manual processes (celebrated in a soothing film) adorning everything from Brompton bikes to Tinker & Tallulah's lampshades. But in a way, the automated AI future aligns with Morris's own dreams. For his entire career, he was torn between a desire to make his designs accessible to everyone, while also wanting his workers to be well paid and live joyous, fulfilling lives. He concluded that it simply wasn't possible without a radical socialist revolution. In a wry nod to this, Garrard has included a copy of Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Aaron Bastani's provocative 2018 book, which pokes out of a mannequin's pockets. It imagines a time when 'society based on waged work becomes as much a relic as the feudal peasant', a vision not unlike that of Morris's novel News from Nowhere. We're almost there – if you can ignore the accusations of intellectual property theft and forced labour that plague sites such as Temu, as an AI-generated caption helpfully points out. At William Morris Gallery, London, from 5 April to 21 September
Telegraph
28-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
How to bring timeless British interior design trends into your home
The joy of British decorating is that it cannot be summed up in just one style. The various types of British home run the gamut from dinky stone cottage to rambling country pile; modern city penthouse to classic Victorian terrace via 1930s semi; and the styles in which they might be decorated are equally as eclectic. As Phaidon publishes a new interior design bible, we look at the British rooms featured within its pages, and the decorating styles they espouse. Modern botanical Ben Pentreath, the King's designer of choice, is known for creating timeless, layered rooms that are full of interest and detail, but never overwhelm. Floral prints are a recurring theme in his work: 'Floral patterns have enduring appeal because they so beautifully relate a room to the nature that abounds just beyond the windows or doors,' he says. Here, at a cottage on the Cornish coast that he decorated for a family, he has brought in a blend of patterns and colours that feel both classical and fresh. In the guest bedroom, a Chesterfield sofa covered in a Robert Kime suzani print has been teamed with a willow-motif wallpaper and floral curtains by Morris & Co, whose designs he favours because 'the balance of scale, leaf, form, and repeat is essentially serene'. A dark wood antique side table completes the look. Idea to steal: Counterbalance a floral or botanical scheme with a monochrome artwork: here, a set of William Kentridge engravings has been hung against the Morris wallpaper, striking a note of modern contrast. Floral maximalism It takes a certain confidence to mix several different floral prints successfully, as the textile designer Nathalie Farman-Farma has done at her family home, a Georgian townhouse in London. In the main bedroom, several different patterns have been used on the walls and the bed, yet the overall effect is calming, thanks to the designer's clever choices, and the symmetry of the pictures hung above the bed. Idea to steal: When mixing prints, choose one to use as the starting point: here, colours from the floral fabric on the headboard have been picked out in the burgundy-and-white wallpaper, and the blue-and-white bedspread. Matchy-matchy In the dining room of the same house, Farman-Farma lined the walls and the windows in the same, punchy print – a toile by the French brand Braquenié – so that when the curtains are drawn in the evening, the room is enveloped in the pattern. She has hung mirrors and framed fabric samples on top of the wallpaper – again, symmetry comes into play with their arrangement – and antique bobbin chairs add a playful touch. The round dining table encourages conviviality and conversation, and makes the best use of space in the square-shaped room. Idea to steal: Farman-Farma chose a rich, rusty red paint for the fire surrounding and the panelling on the lower part of the wall, which matches the colour of the largest flowers in the print on the wallpaper and curtains. Picking out one shade from a patterned wallpaper in this way, to use on skirting boards and window frames, helps to tie the decor of a room together. Monochrome Decorating in a monochrome palette needn't result in a bland, boring room, as long as you pay attention to texture. This living room in a London house was previously painted white, which made it feel 'cold, dark and slightly unloved', according to designer Clare Gaskin, who coated it in a deep navy blue. The fireplace, the panelling on the lower part of the wall and the cornice are painted in Dock Blue by Little Greene, and a matching seagrass wallcovering by Thibaut has been applied above the dado rail. 'The layering of textures played well with the natural and artificial light in the room,' she says. The colour has also been used on furniture and furnishings, including the footstool and cushions, to enhance the cosy feel of the room. Idea to steal: Metallic accents, as in the drinks trolley, floor lamp and side table here, help to lift a dark and moody monochrome scheme. Deep-coloured walls are also an excellent foil for fresh greenery, which pops against the navy blue in this room. Timeless with a twist A smattering of antiques is essential to the work of designer Henriette von Stockhausen. 'Antiques tell a story, providing a lived-in look that many country houses achieve naturally as they're handed from one generation to the next,' she says. 'Here they help the room feel settled and lived-in, despite the fact that it's been newly created.' The room in question is a bedroom in a Georgian country house in Wiltshire, and its decorative jumping-off point was the antique suzani covering the headboard of the bespoke four-poster bed. 'I pulled all the other colours, accents and general feeling for the room from there,' says von Stockhausen. Other key pieces include a Gustavian-style chest of drawers painted blue, a chinoiserie writing desk and an Italian-style armoire: the mix of antiques from different periods prevents the room from looking stuffy or overly traditional. Idea to steal: While not every bedroom can accommodate a four-poster of this size, the cosseting effect of the deep blue interior of the canopy here could be recreated on a smaller scale with a simple mini canopy above the bed – see interior designer Beata Heuman's bedroom for inspiration. Rustic farmhouse When model and writer Saffron Aldridge found this early twentieth century Hebridean farmhouse, her aim was to revive it from its formerly ruinous state, without losing its original character. She teamed up with designer Scarlett Supple (the pair have since formed the design practice Aldridge & Supple) to work on the renovation, which involved rebuilding the fireplace wall in the sitting room. The sandstone used for the wall was left raw, giving it an aged look, heightened by the limewash walls and wooden floors. 'To soften these materials, we used a mixture of textiles, layering heavy weaves, wool and textured linens to create a cosy and warm feeling,' says Supple. Key to the comfortable look is the mix of rough and smooth surfaces – for example, the contrast between the well-worn coffee table and the sleek, wool-covered sofa and leather armchair. Idea to steal: In a high-ceilinged room, an oversized accessory works wonders: the table lamp on the side table acts as a stylish punctuation mark. Tailored Men's suiting was partly the inspiration for this home by interior designer Natalia Miyar – a very chic version of a modern bachelor pad. Her client's art collection also provided visual cues, for example in the palette, which is mainly cream, warmed by accents of soft brown and blue. The mix of textures adds richness: from the bouclé sofas, leather chairs and fumed-wood coffee table to the rugged vases and cosy wool throw. 'A space should appeal to all the senses,' she says. 'When each item has its own texture, it creates something tactile and one-of-a-kind when combined. Even the scent of natural materials can be evocative.' Idea to steal: Most rooms can take a black accent or two, particularly one with off-white walls, as here. The black side tables, picture frames and candlesticks contrast with the softer colours and bring a little energy and edge. Organic modern One might think the modernist look is all straight lines and sharp corners, but not so in the library of this London apartment by architect Sally Mackereth. While the envelope of the room – its 1960s aluminium-framed windows and double-height bookshelves – introduces a clean-lined verticality, the organic forms of the furniture act as a pleasing counterpoint. The curved sofa is Verner Panton's Cloverleaf design from 1969, while the yellow sofa is the Relax model by Florence Knoll, from the 1950s; the animal-print cushions add a dash of playful pattern. Idea to steal: The bookshelves here are a lesson in effective arrangement: books are displayed in different ways – some standing, some stacked – and interspersed with the odd lamp, picture or sculpture for visual interest. Moody An 'in the gloaming' vibe was the mood designer Faye Toogood wanted to create in this London bedroom. The polished-plaster walls and oak parquet floors are drenched in a palette of dusky hues that changes with the light, creating an atmosphere dedicated to promoting sleep. The bespoke tapestry above the bed, by craftsman Philip Sanderson, completes the textural palette.
