From  Fairclough and Leary, Textiles by William Morris and Morris & Co. 1861-1940.

I. Morris & Company

 

During its eighty-year existence,1 Morris & Company2 made (or marketed) not only textiles, but stained glass, wallpapers, furniture, tiles and other pottery and metal­work, as well as linoleum. jewellery and stamped leather. William Morris had so much ebullience and energy that pattern designing was only one activity among many. Nevertheless textiles were, with stained glass, the most important part of Morris & Co.'s business, and were peculiarly Morris's own. though a small minority of fabric patterns were by others. It is also in his textiles that Morris as a pattern-maker, a design theorist. and an entre­preneur, can best be studied. as these provide striking examples of his susceptibility to historical influence and of his manufacturing methods.

Morris arrived at Oxford in 1853 already in love with the Middle Ages. and he was to become a considerable medieval scholar, whose opinions were sought by the Bodleian Library and the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum); this scholarship increas­ingly inspired the structure of his patterns. It was also his medievalism that led him, in 1856, to become a pupil of the architect G. E. Street. in whose office he first met Philip Webb. When Street moved from Oxford to London a few months later, Morris shared lodgings at 17 Red Lion Square. Bloomsbury. with Edward Burne-Jones, his closest Oxford friend. Here they came under the influence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. who persuaded Morris to become a painter. He had already tried his hand at carving, illu­minating and embroidery, and when his part in Rossetti's scheme for frescoes in the Oxford Union convinced him that he would never be a great artist. it was to the decorative arts that he returned.

 

In 1859 he married Jane Burden, and with an income of about £900 a year, he was able to realize his ideal of a

_ perfect artistic house. Although Red House, which Philip Webb built for them in an orchard at Upton. near Bexley Heath. was not particularly novel in style. the interior was to be elaborately furnished as a medieval palace in miniature, with painted decoration and stained glass designed by Burne-Jones, heavy gothic furniture by Webb, and embroideries by Morris.

Two older members of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown. were also involved in the decoration of Red House. It was apparently Madox Brown who first suggested. perhaps frivolously. that they should combine to form a decorating business, and Morris. Superior figures: see References p. 73. 

 

Marshall, Faulkner & Co. was set up in April 1861. The partners, Morris, Burne-Jones, Webb, Rossetti, Madox Brown, Charles Faulkner (an Oxford mathematician) and Marshall (a surveyor friend of Madox Brown) put in a nominal £1 each. The firm was to be a co-operative of artists producing their own designs for limited hand ­production. Morris was manager, and the working capital was a £100 loan from his mother. They survived prin­cipally on commissions from a few sympathetic High Church architects; much of the firm's best stained glass was made in the 1860s, and this was the most important part of the business. Though exciting, these years were not quite the revolutionary crusade against the bad design of the age that Morris's first biographers claimed. Morris and his friends owed much to the teachings of Ruskin and the example of Pugin, and one is reminded elf the group of artists associated with Sir Henry Cole's 'Felix Summerly' venture.

 

At first Morris continued to live at Upton, and though it became increasingly important to him, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. remained a somewhat amateurish under­taking to which all the partners contributed. In 1865 this began to change, as Morris could no longer cover the firm's deficit from his dwindling private income. He reluctantly moved back to London, finding the firm larger premises at 26 Queen Square, where he lived in part of the house, and became increasingly the dominant partner. The move coincided with the appointment of Warrington Taylor as business manager; he forced Morris to stop producing work below cost and to control his erratic output. When Taylor died of consumption in 187°, the Company was profitable, though several of the original partners had dropped out, leaving Morris, Burne-Jones and Webb as active members. This period saw a growth in secular decorating work, which caused a demand for patterned furnishing textiles, and made it possible to finance new lines. In the early 18 70S Morris began to design carpets for outside production, made his first design for printed

cotton, and returned to wallpapers. Meanwhile more orders for stained glass were coming in, and this increase in business caused a crisis within the firm, as Morris, for long the major participant, wanted to reconstruct it under his sole proprietorship. All the partners had a legal claim on the profits and assets, and three of them, Madox Brown, Rossetti and Marshall, had to be bought out after six months of embittered arguments. The firm was then re­registered as Morris & Co. on 25 March, 1875.

 

Marshall, Faulkner & Co. was set up in April 1861. The partners, Morris, Burne-Jones, Webb, Rossetti, Madox Brown, Charles Faulkner (an Oxford mathematician) and Marshall (a surveyor friend of Madox Brown) put in a nominal £1 each. The firm was to be a co-operative of artists producing their own designs for limited hand ­production. Morris was manager, and the working capital was a £100 loan from his mother. They survived prin­cipally on commissions from a few sympathetic High Church architects; much of the firm's best stained glass was made in the 1860s, and this was the most important part of the business. Though exciting, these years were not quite the revolutionary crusade against the bad design of the age that Morris's first biographers claimed. Morris and his friends owed much to the teachings of Ruskin and the example of Pugin, and one is reminded elf the group of artists associated with Sir Henry Cole's 'Felix Summerly' venture.

At first Morris continued to live at Upton, and though it became increasingly important to him, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. remained a somewhat amateurish under­taking to which all the partners contributed. In 1865 this began to change, as Morris could no longer cover the firm's deficit from his dwindling private income. He reluctantly moved back to London, finding the firm larger premises at 26 Queen Square, where he lived in part of the house, and became increasingly the dominant partner. The move coincided with the appointment of Warrington Taylor as business manager; he forced Morris to stop producing work below cost and to control his erratic output. When Taylor died of consumption in 187°, the Company was profitable, though several of the original partners had dropped out, leaving Morris, Burne-Jones and Webb as active members. This period saw a growth in secular decorating work, which caused a demand for patterned furnishing textiles, and made it possible to finance new lines. In the early 1870s Morris began to design carpets for outside production, made his first design for printed cotton, and returned to wallpapers. Meanwhile more orders for stained glass were coming in, and this increase in business caused a crisis within the firm, as Morris, for long the major participant, wanted to reconstruct it under his sole proprietorship. All the partners had a legal claim on the profits and assets, and three of them, Madox Brown, Rossetti and Marshall, had to be bought out after six months of embittered arguments. The firm was then re­registered as Morris & Co. on 25 March, 1875.

 

The six years that followed, 1875 to 1881, were perhaps the most important of Morris & Co.'s long history. William Morris designed most of his chintzes and machine-made carpets; he experimented with ancient dyes, and set up his own small dye house; the firm began weaving his silks and making hand-knotted carpets and traditional high-warp tapestries. In 1877 the volume of stained-glass work declined when Morris set up the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and declared that he would accept no more commissions for glass in old churches except under special circumstances. This change in direction was courageous as the firm had made a loss of £1,023 on printed textiles in 1875-76, but by 1880 Morris's chintzes and woven fabrics were making a handsome profit, and subsidizing the much more expensive hand-made tapes­tries and carpets. The woven textiles were still woven outside on big power-looms. The chintzes were hand ­blocked, but, until 1883, by Wardle & Co. and not by Morris's own employees. Morris hated the ability of the machine to dehumanize labour and to debase design, but had he not been producing only small quantities of textiles for a limited market, and had he been able to afford it, he would have bought a power-loom, for, as he said in 1884, the historic methods of weaving 'are still in use today with no more variation of method than what comes from the application of machinery. . . . These variations. . . are of little or no importance from the artistic point of view, and are only used to get more profit out of the production of the goods; they are incidental changes, and not essential.' 3

 

Though the production of embroideries, tapestries and knotted carpets could not be mechanized (and this gave him much satisfaction), there was a marked inconsistency between theory and practice, as these textiles were laboriously made in small quantities for the homes of the very rich by people who were allowed no real creative freedom to interpret Morris's designs.

 

The designer's feeling for materials and for the structure of a pattern has given Morris's textiles a timeless quality, but they owed their initial commercial success not only to their inherent charm and to Morris's 'constant artistic supervision',4 but also to the sound business sense with which he negotiated contracts with suppliers. He was also getting a surprisingly wide use out of his rapidly growing stock of patterns, using the same design for a woven hanging and a Kidderminster carpet, or for a chintz and a wallpaper, returning to a small number of themes, and offering patterns in several colour-combinations or weights.

 

The growing textile business was more than the Queen Square premises could hold. He toyed with the idea of moving the firm to Bloxham in the Cotswolds, before deciding on an 18th-century mill on the river Wandie at Merton Abbey, near Wimbledon. This group of weather-boarded build­ings was ideal for a firm which consisted of largely self-­contained workshops. and the lease was signed in June I881. It took a couple of years to establish the Merton Abbey works. but from 1883 Morris was printing chintzes there. and had the space to start making large tapestries and carpets. though some of the woven textiles continued to be made elsewhere.

The move to Merton inspired in Morris another burst of pattern designing which lasted until about 1885. but it also marked the end of his most active participation in the firm. partly because he now had further to travel and partly because of his growing interest in politics. In 1884 he was instrumental in founding the Socialist League, and, after its collapse, the independent Hammersmith Socialist Society in 1890. In 1885 his daughter, May Morris, took over the embroidery section, and the day-to-day manage­ment of the tapestry and stained-glass workshops fell, increasingly on his assistant, John Henry Dearle (1860-1932). George Wardle, who had been business manager of the firm since 1870, remained until 1890, drawing about £1,200 a year to Morris's £1,800 in 1884. He was succeeded by F. and R. Smith, who became partners in the firm and joint managers. This change coincided with Morris's establishment of the Kelmscott Press, which absorbed much of his remaining energy during the early 1890s, at a time when his health was gradually failing.

 

Morris died at Hammersmith on 3 October, 1896, aged sixty-two. For the previous couple of years, the Merton Abbey works had been largely run by J. H. Dearle, who had joined the firm as an assistant in the Oxford Street showroom, and had been an apprentice in the glass­ painting room, before becoming Morris's first tapestry weaver; after Morris's death he was appointed partner and art director. Dearle had been designing for tapestry and stained glass for several years, and after 1896 he added patterns for damasks, chintzes, carpets and wallpapers. He remained Morris's disciple for the rest of his life, but his work was rarely more than a pastiche of his master's. 5

 

Morris & Co. changed little between the early 1890S and 1914, and began to live off its artistic heritage, offering old designs in new colour schemes, as well as a few new ones very much in Morris's style. The main innovation during this period was the sale of reproduction 18th-century furniture, but even this began before Morris's death. Morris & Co. also began to repair and sell antique tapestries in the 1890s. For some years the scope of general decorating business had been considerable, ranging from contracting for building work, widening doorways or stairs, or fitting fireplaces or panelling, to cleaning curtains or re-upholstering furniture in material supplied by the customer.6 But according to a contemporary commen­tator what made Morris & Co. profitable was 'a consider­able and more or less constant demand for certain wallpapers and cretonnes, and machine-made carpets and other repeat orders where their prices don't differ much from ordinary commerce'. 7

 

In 1905 F. and R. Smith retired as managers, though they became directors of Morris & Company 'Decorators Ltd, registered as a private company. The managing director was H. C. Marillier, and the board included, among others, Dearle and W. A. S. Benson. A number of changes followed. A good deal more reproduction 18th­century furniture was made, and the firm also sold direct copies of antique damasks and conventional floral chint­zes.8 The accession of King George V brought prestigious commissions for thrones for the 191 I coronation and for the investiture of the Prince of Wales; for these Morris & Co. received a Royal Warrant as furnishers to the King.

 

The First World War caused some disruption, though in October 1917 Morris & Co. moved into larger showrooms, until a new building was taken at Chalk Farm in 1927. The firm changed its name, again, to Morris & Company Art Workers Ltd in 1925, and its comfortable 'Queen Anne revival' style was still quite popular, for 'all Morris fabrics, papers, carpets, etc. go well and harmoniously together and make a perfect scheme of decoration also with old furniture and antique rugs'. 9 An upholsteress was to remember that 'the work was ex­tremely high class', and that 'all the fashionable people', 10 among them George Bernard Shaw and the Duke of Marlborough, went to the George Street showroom, which now sold antiques and contemporary studio-pottery in addition to the firm's textiles and furniture. There were a few new designs for tapestry, and though some of these are not unattractive, they had absolutely no effect on the gradual decline of the business, and prove how far the firm had gone down a creative blind alley, By the end of the decade even the printed and woven furnishing fabrics were becoming increasingly uncompetitive. J. H. Dearie was rigorous in maintaining standards of quality, but in 1930 he was writing to May Morris, whose participation in the business had ceased in about 1922, of how he longed for some relief 'from constant compulsory attend­ance', and of how 'we find that vegetable dyes are less and less possible which is of course very regrettable. . . so simple a palette is about all your father used . . .',11 There was a staff of about fifteen at Merton Abbey, 'creeping about in the gloom, waiting for instructions from head office, who were transmitting orders from a dwindling band of clients as the taste of the time changed' .12 It all reeks of nostalgia and tradition, and the few art school trained recruits were not encouraged to stay. There was little new machinery and no new ideas.

 

J. H. Dearle died in harness in 1932, and was succeeded by his son Duncan Dearle (1893-1954), but he, according to one of the weavers, 'was not particularly interested in the work, and spent more time playing his clarinet'. 13

From 1936 Morris & Co. was faced with mounting deficit, and on the outbreak of war in 1939 the board, still headed by H. C. Marillier, decided that the firm could not continue. It went into voluntary liquidation on 21 May, 1940, having survived virtually all the Arts and Crafts guilds it had inspired. Within a decade the firm's printed patterns were being reproduced, and today, though mostly roller­printed in modern pigments, they are more widely known than ever.