Exhibition
A new exhibition of the work of May Morris invites a reassessment of her reputation, overshadowed for too long by that of her better-known father, William, says Matthew Dennison
IN a letter to George Bernard Shaw, written at the end of her life, May Morris announced: ‘I’m a remarkable woman—always was.’ Her tongue was firmly in her cheek. Fifty years earlier, Shaw had wanted to marry May, but ran scared, claiming impecuniousness as grounds for ending what he labelled their ‘mystic betrothal’. However, as a new exhibition reveals, May’s self-assessment was bang on.
Mary Morris, known as May, was born into an artistic and thoughtful household. In 1861, a year before her birth, her father, William, had founded Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co, the company—afterwards renamed Morris & Co—that revolutionised Victorian interior decoration and attitudes to the decorative arts. Morris would write poetry and novels; he became a committed Socialist activist, but nothing sidelined his passionate medievalism.
His wife Jane was also his muse. Her distinctive features— hooded eyes, long nose, strong, square jaw—survive in drawings and paintings by Morris, as well as in those of his friends Rossetti and Burne-jones.
Born at Red House, the Artsand-crafts house in Kent built for her father by the architect Philip Webb, May would spend her childhood in a consciously ‘designed’ environment. Even her mother’s appearance existed both at first hand and in a number of striking artworks, filtered through the prism of Pre-raphaelite experimentalism.
May was evidently undaunted by her surroundings. Nothing about her childish self was precious or effete. At the age of eight, she described herself as ‘a great tomboy… I am very untidy and always very dirty and sometimes I am ashamed to say very naughty. I have got light curly hair cut on my forehead. My eyes are blue. I am neither fat nor very thin’.
‘May and her sister Jenny spent much of their time outdoors
Until the family moved to London in 1871, and again folllowing their move to Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire in 1878, May and her sister Jenny spent much of their time outdoors. The passion for English meadow plants and cottage-garden flowers that survived throughout her life was one May conceived in her childhood.
Previous accounts of May’s career have stressed the strength of her father’s influence. The current show, with more than 80 exhibits, many from private collections, also indicates points of divergence.
Jane Morris was among her husband’s needleworkers, along with her sister Bessie Burden. May’s absorption in decorative needlework (COUNTRY LIFE, May 10,
2017 ) was learned at Jane’s knee. William’s needlework designs, executed by his wife and sisterin-law and a handful of family friends, including Georgiana Burne-jones, consciously rejected the mid-victorian craze for Berlin woolwork, in which a simple armoury of stitches, usually cross stitch or tent stitch, was used to create three-dimensional effects through shading, employing artificially dyed wools of startling garishness. May shared her father’s distaste for Berlin woolwork. Instead, English medieval embroideries provided her chief inspiration; her designs drew on a repertoire of mostly unexotic native wildflowers, including poppies, harebells and daisies, and orchard trees laden with apples and plums. The hangings May designed for a bed at Kelmscott in 1893 and similar hangings designed for Melsetter House in the Orkneys balance the exoticism of a handful of brightly coloured birds with a humbler robin and even, nibbling coloured daisies, a rabbit.
In the same way, May’s bestknown design—for wallpaper for Morris & Co—is an all-over pattern of flowering honeysuckle.
May was 23 when she took on the running of the Morris & Co embroidery department. Previously, she had specialised in embroidery at the National Art Training School (today’s Royal College of Art). With her father, she shared a conviction, central to Arts-and-crafts Movement thinking, that the same person ought both to devise and execute any craft design. In this way, the design was shaped by practical know-how and design inspiration also informed the making.
Items in the current exhibition demonstrate the bravura quality achieved by this synthesis of conception and manufacture, including the pair of embroidered silk-damask panels inspired by the four seasons that May designed and worked herself over a five-year period. At £150, they formed one of the costliest textile commissions Morris & Co undertook.
Later, May also designed and made jewellery. As in her needlework, the sources of her designs were invariably historical. She suggested, for example, that the inspiration for a pair of sleeve ornaments, made from silver, garnets, agate and chrysoprase, were costume details in portraits by Holbein the Younger.
Although May will never eclipse her better-known father, the current exhibition offers striking proof that she was, indeed, a remarkable woman. ‘May Morris: Art & Life’ is at the William Morris Gallery, Forest Road, London E17, until January 28, 2018 (020–8496 4390; www. wmgallery.org.uk) and ‘May Morris; Arts & Crafts Designer’ is published by Thames & Hudson Next week Cézanne portraits