Other Works by Walter Crane
_Crown 8vo, 6s. net each_
THE BASES OF DESIGN
WITH 200 ILLUSTRATIONS
LINE AND FORM
WITH 157 ILLUSTRATIONS
THE DECORATIVE ILLUSTRATION
OF BOOKS OLD AND NEW
WITH 165 ILLUSTRATIONS
_Medium 8vo. 10s. 6d. net_
IDEALS IN ART
PAPERS THEORETICAL, PRACTICAL,
CRITICAL
WITH TITLE-PAGE, END-PAPERS, AND COVER
DESIGNED BY THE AUTHOR, AND
NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
WILLIAM MORRIS
TO WHISTLER
[Illustration:
WILLIAM MORRIS
TO WHISTLER
PAPERS AND ADDRESSES ON
ART AND CRAFT AND THE
COMMONWEAL
BY WALTER CRANE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM DRAWINGS BY THE
AUTHOR & OTHER SOURCES
LONDON: G BELL & SONS LTD
YORK HOUSE PORTUGAL S^T W.C.
1911
]
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
PREFACE
Of the collected papers and addresses which form this book, the
opening one upon William Morris was composed of an address to the Art
Workers' Guild, an article which appeared in "The Progressive Review,"
at the instance of Mr. J. A. Hobson, and a longer illustrated article
written for "The Century Magazine," and now reprinted with the
illustrations by permission of Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, to
whom my thanks are due.
"The Socialist Ideal as a New Inspiration in Art" was written for "The
International Review," when it appeared under the editorship of Dr.
Rudolph Broda, as the English edition of "Documents du Progrès."
"The English Revival in Decorative Art" appeared in the "Fortnightly
Review," and I have to thank Mr. W. L. Courtney for allowing me to
reprint it. It has some additions.
"Notes on Early Italian Gesso Work," was written for Messrs. George
Newnes's Magazine of the Fine Arts with the illustrations, and I am
obliged to them for leave to use both again.
"Notes on Colour Embroidery and its Treatment" was written at Mrs.
Christie's request for "Embroidery," which she edited, and I have
Messrs. Pearsall's authority to include it here.
"The Apotheosis of 'The Butterfly'" was a review written for "The
Evening News," and I thank the editor for letting me print it again.
It appears now, however, with a different title, and considerable
additions.
"A Short Survey of the Art of the Century" appeared in a journal, the
name of which has escaped me, but it has been largely rewritten and
added to since.
For the rest, "Modern Aspects of Life and the Sense of Beauty" was
originally addressed as the opening of a debate at the Pioneer Club,
in which my late friend Lewis F. Day was my opponent, and my chief
supporter was Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald, M.P.
"Art and the Commonweal" was an address to the Students of Art at
Armstrong College, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and the paper "On Some of
the Arts allied to Architecture" was given before the Architectural
Association. That "On the Study and Practice of Art" was delivered in
Manchester before the Art School Committee and City authorities, and
the "Notes on Animals in Art" to the Art Workers' Guild in London.
WALTER CRANE.
KENSINGTON,
_September 1911_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
WILLIAM MORRIS AND HIS WORK 3
THE ENGLISH REVIVAL IN DECORATIVE ART 47
THE SOCIALIST IDEAL AS A NEW INSPIRATION IN ART 83
ON THE STUDY AND PRACTICE OF ART 105
ON SOME OF THE ARTS AND CRAFTS ALLIED TO ARCHITECTURE 125
NOTES ON COLOUR EMBROIDERY AND ITS TREATMENT 149
NOTES ON EARLY ITALIAN GESSO WORK 163
NOTES ON THE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS IN ART 185
MODERN ASPECTS OF LIFE AND THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 207
A SHORT SURVEY OF THE ART OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY,
CHIEFLY IN ENGLAND, WITH SOME NOTES ON RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 223
ART AND THE COMMONWEAL 241
THE APOTHEOSIS OF "THE BUTTERFLY" 259
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Portrait of William Morris. From a photograph by Emery Walker 2
Pen-Sketch of Morris Speaking from a Wagon in Hyde Park.
By Walter Crane 15
Design for Wall-paper. "The Daisy" 18
Design for Wall-paper. "Rose Trellis" 19
Woollen Hanging. "The Peacock" 22
Design for Silk Hanging 23
Cotton Print. "Evenlode" 25
Kelmscott House. Meeting Room of the Hammersmith
Socialist Society 27
Pages from Morris's MS. of Omar Khayyám 30, 31, 32, 33
Pen Design by Walter Crane 47, 83
Progressive blackboard practice in Bi-Manual Training
from "New Methods in Education" by Liberty Tadd 109
Patterns of Roman Mosaic Pavement, from the Baths of
Caracalla 129, 130, 131
Patterns in Plain Leading, from "The Glazier's Booke" 143
Russian Peasant Embroidery: Blouse in Cross Stitch 151
Cretan Embroidery 153
Embroidered Cover from Bokhara 155
Original Design for Embroidered Hanging, by Walter Crane 157
Examples of Early Italian Gesso Work
(Victoria and Albert Museum) 167-181
Egyptian Treatment of Birds. Eighteenth dynasty, Hieroglyphics.
Thebes 186
Assyrian Lion 187
Persian Lion 188
Egyptian Lion 188
Graeco-Buddhist Lions from Sarnath 189
Animal Forms from Early Greek Pottery 191
English Heraldic Lions. Thirteenth Century 193
Birds and Animals in Sicilian Textiles. Thirteenth Century.
(From Fishbach) 195, 196, 197
Japanese Birds. From the "Hundred Birds" of Bari 199
Stone Carvings at Gwalior 200, 201, 202, 203
Lion by Alfred Stevens 204
Pen Designs by Walter Crane 207, 223, 241
Butterfly Device 259
Portrait of Whistler. After Charcoal Drawing by Himself 261
"The Thames in Ice" 267
Panels from the Peacock Room 269
ERRATA (TN: These corrections have been applied.)
Page 50, line 4 from foot, _for_ "Burgess" _read_ "Burges."
Page 92, line 2, _for_ "Le Thangue" _read_ "La Thangue."
Page 134, line 14, _for_ "give" _read_ "gives."
Page 190, line 7 from foot, _for_ "Fringe" _read_ "Frieze."
Page 198, line 2 from foot, _for_ "Central Provinces" _read_ "Central
India."
WILLIAM MORRIS AND HIS WORK
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM MORRIS. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH
BY EMERY WALKER.]
WILLIAM MORRIS AND HIS WORK
If it is agreed that art, after all, may be summed up as the
expression of character, it follows that the more we realize an
artist's personality the clearer understanding we shall get of his
work. So remarkable a personality as that of William Morris must have
left many distinct, and at the same time different, impressions upon
the minds of those who knew him, or enjoyed his friendship in life.
It is difficult to realize that fifteen years have passed away since
he left us; but from the dark and blurred background of changing
years his character and work define themselves, and his position and
influence take their true place, while his memory, like some masterly
portrait, remains clear and vivid in our minds--re-presented as it
were in the severe but refined draughtsmanship of time.
With so distinct and massive an individuality it was strange to hear
him say, as I once did, that of the six different personalities he
recognized within himself at different times he often wondered which
was the real William Morris! Those who knew him, however, were aware
of many different sides, and we know that the "idle dreamer of an
empty day" was also the enthusiastic artist and craftsman, and could
become the man of passionate action on occasion, or the shrewd man of
business, or the keen politician also, as well as the quiet observer
of nature and life. Even the somewhat Johnsonian absoluteness and
emphasis of expression which characterized him generally, would
occasionally give way to an open-to-conviction manner, when tackled by
a sincere and straightforward questioner.
But Morris was above and before all else a poet--a _practical_ poet,
if one may use such a term--and this explains the whole of his work.
Not that personally he at all answered to the popular conventional
idea of a poet, rather the reverse, and he was anything but a
sentimentalist. He hated both the introspective and the rhetorical
school, and he never posed. He loved romance and was steeped in
mediaeval lore, but it was a real living world to him, and the
glimpses he gives us are those of an actual spectator. It is not
archaeology, it is _life_, quite as vivid to him, perhaps more so than
that of the present day. He loved nature, he loved beautiful detail,
he loved pattern, he loved colour--"_red_ and _blue_" he used to say
in his full-blooded way. _His patterns are decorative poems_ in terms
of form and colour. _His poems and romances are decorative patterns_
in forms of speech and rhyme. His dream world and his ideal world
were like one of his own tapestries--a green field starred with
vivid flowers upon which moved the noble and beautiful figures of
his romantic imagination, as distinct in type and colour as heraldic
charges. Textile design interested him profoundly and occupied him
greatly, and one may trace its influence, I think, throughout his
work--even in his Kelmscott Press borders. One might almost say that
he had a textile imagination, his poems and romances seem to be woven
in the loom of his mind, and to enfold the reader like a magic web.
But though he cast his conceptions in the forms and dress of a past
age, he took his inspiration straight from nature and life. His poems
are full of English landscapes, and through the woods of his romances
one might come upon a reach of the silvery Thames at any moment. The
river he loved winds through the whole of his delightful Socialistic
Utopia in "News from Nowhere."
As a craftsman and an artist working with assistants and in the course
of his business he was brought face to face with the modern conditions
of labour and manufacture, and was forced to think about the political
economy of art. Accepting the economic teaching of John Ruskin, he
went much further and gave his allegiance to the banner of Socialism,
under which, however, he founded his own school and had his own
following, and conducted his own newspaper. From the dream world of
romance, and from the sequestered garden of design, he plunged into
the thick of the fight for human freedom, in which, he held, was
involved the very existence of art.
Ever and anon he returned to his sanctuary--his workshop--to fashion
some new thing of beauty, in verse or craftsmanship, in which we see
the results of his labour in so many directions.
He certainly seemed to have possessed a larger and fuller measure of
vitality and energy than most men--perhaps such extra vitality is
the distinction of genius--but the very strenuousness of his nature
probably shortened the duration of his life. There were never any
half-measures with him, but everything he took up, he went into
seriously, nay, passionately, with the whole force of his being. His
power of concentration (the secret of great workers) was enormous, and
was spent from time to time in a multitude of ways, but whether in the
eager search for decorative beauty, his care for the preservation of
ancient buildings, in the delight of ancient saga, story, or romance,
or in the battle for the welfare of mankind, like one of his own
chieftains and heroes, he always made his presence felt, and as the
practical pioneer and the master-craftsman in the revival of English
design and handicraft his memory will always be held in honour.
His death marked an epoch both in art and in social and economic
thought. The press notices and appreciations that have appeared from
time to time for the most part have dwelt upon his work as a poet
and an artist and craftsman, and have but lightly passed over his
connection with Socialism and advanced thought.
But, even apart from prejudice, a hundred will note the beauty and
splendour of the flower to one who will notice the leaf and the stem,
or the roots and the soil from which the tree springs.
Yet the greatness of a man must be measured by the number of spheres
in which he is distinguished--the width of his range and appeal to his
fellows.
In the different branches of his work William Morris commanded the
admiration, or, what is equally a tribute to his force, excited the
opposition--of as many different sections of specialists.
As a poet he appealed to poets by reason of many distinct qualities.
He united pre-Raphaelite vividness (as in "The Haystack in the
Floods"), with a dream-like, wistful sweetness and charm of flowing
narrative, woven in a kind of rich mediaeval tapestry of verse, and
steeped with the very essence of legendary romance as in "The Earthly
Paradise"; or with the heroic spirit of earlier time, as in "Sigurd
the Volsung," while all these qualities are combined in his later
prose romances.
His architectural and archaeological knowledge again was complete
enough for the architect and the antiquary.
His classical and historical lore won him the respect of scholars.
His equipment as a designer and craftsman, based upon his
architectural knowledge and training enabled him to exercise an
extraordinary influence over all the arts of design, and gave him his
place as leader of our latter-day English revival of handicraft--a
position perhaps in which he is widest known.
In all these capacities the strength and beauty of William Morris's
work has been freely acknowledged by his brother craftsmen, as well as
by a very large public.
There was, however, still another direction in which his vigour and
personal weight were thrown with all the ardour of an exceptionally
ardent nature, wherein the importance and significance of his work
is as yet but partially apprehended--I mean his work in the cause of
Socialism, in which he might severally be regarded as an economist, a
public lecturer, a propagandist, a controversialist.
No doubt many even of the most emphatic admirers of William Morris's
work as an artist, a poet, and a decorator have been unable to follow
him in this direction, while others have deplored, or even denounced,
his self-sacrificing enthusiasm. There seems to have been insuperable
difficulty to some minds in realizing that the man who wrote "The
Earthly Paradise" should have lent a hand to try to bring it about,
when once the new hope had dawned upon him.
There is no greater mistake than to think of William Morris as a
sentimentalist, who, having built himself a dream-house of art and
poetry, sighs over the turmoil of the world, and calls himself a
Socialist because factory chimneys obtrude themselves upon his view.
It seems to have escaped those who have inclined to such an opinion
that a man, in Emerson's phrase, "can only obey his own polarity." His
life must gravitate necessarily towards its centre. The accident that
he should have reached economics and politics through poetry and art,
so far from disqualifying a man to be heard, only establishes his
claim to bring a cultivated mind and imaginative force to bear upon
the hard facts of nature and science.
The practice of his art, his position as an employer of labour, his
intensely practical knowledge of certain handicrafts, all these things
brought him face to face with the great Labour question; and the fact
that he was an artist and a poet, a man of imagination and feeling as
well as intellect, gave him exceptional advantages in solving it--at
least theoretically. His practical nature and sincerity moved him to
join hands with men who offered a practical programme, or at least who
opened up possibilities of action towards bringing about a new social
system.
His own personal view of a society based upon an entire change of
economic system is most attractively and picturesquely described in
"News from Nowhere, some Chapters of a Utopian Romance." He called
it _Utopian_, but, in his view, and granting the conditions, it was a
perfectly practical Utopia. He even gave an account (through the mouth
of a survivor of the old order) of the probable course of events which
might lead up to such a change. The book was written as a sort of
counterblast to Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward," which on its
appearance was very widely read on both sides of the water, and
there seemed at the time some danger of the picture there given of a
socialized state being accepted as the only possible one. It may be
partly answerable for an impression in some quarters that a Socialist
system must necessarily be mechanical. But the society described in
"Looking Backward" is, after all, only a little more developed along
the present lines of American social life--a sublimation of the
universal supply of average citizen wants by mechanical means, with
the mainspring of the machine altered from individual profit to
collective interest. This book, most ingeniously thought out as it
was, did its work, no doubt, and appealed with remarkable force to
minds of a certain construction and bias, and it is only just to
Bellamy to say that he claimed no finality for it.
But "News from Nowhere" may be considered--apart from the underlying
principle, common to both, of the collective welfare as the
determining constructive factor of the social system--as its complete
antithesis.
According to Bellamy, it is apparently the _city_ life that is the
only one likely to be worth anything, and it is to the organization
of production and distribution of things contributing to the supposed
necessities and comforts of inhabitants of cities that the reader's
thoughts are directed.
With Morris the country life is obviously the most important, the
ideal life. Groups of houses, not too large to be neighbourly, each
with a common guest-hall, with large proportions of gardens and
woodland, take the place of crowded towns. Thus London, as we know it,
disappears.
What is this but building upon the ascertained scientific facts of
our day, that the inhabitants of large cities tend to deteriorate in
physique, and would die out were it not for the constant infusion of
new blood from the country districts?
Work is still a hard necessity in "Looking Backward," a thing to
be got rid of as soon as possible, so citizens, after serving
the community as clerks, waiters, or what not, until the age of
forty-five, are exempt.
With Morris, work gives the zest to life, and all labour has its own
touch of art--even the dustman can indulge in it in the form of rich
embroidery upon his coat. The bogey of labour is thus routed by its
own pleasurable exercise, with ample leisure, and delight in external
beauty in both art and nature.
As regards the woman's question, it never, in his Utopia, appears to
be asked. He evidently himself thought that with the disappearance of
the commercial competitive struggle for existence and what he termed
"artificial famine" caused by monopoly of the means of existence, the
claim of women to compete with men in the scramble for a living would
not exist. There would be no necessity for either men or women to sell
themselves, since in a truly co-operative commonwealth each one would
find some congenial sphere of work.
In fact, as Morris once said, "settle the economic question and you
settle all other questions. It is the Aaron's rod which swallows up
the rest."
I gather that while he thought both men and women should be
economically free, and therefore socially and politically free, and
free to choose their occupation, he by no means wished to ignore or
obliterate sex distinctions, and all those subtle and fine feelings
which arise from it, which really form the warp and weft of the
courtesies and relationships of life.
Now, whatever criticisms might be offered, or whatever objections
might be raised, such a conception of a possible social order, such
a view of life upon a new economic basis as is painted in this
delightful book, is surely, before all things, remarkably wholesome,
human, and sane, and pleasurable. If wholesome, human, sane, and
pleasurable lives are not possible to the greater part of humanity
under existing institutions, so much the worse for those institutions.
Humanity has generally proved itself better than its institutions,
and man is chiefly distinguished above other animals by his power to
modify his conditions. Life, at least, means growth and change, and
human evolution shows us a gradual progression--a gradual triumph
of higher organization and intelligence over lower, checked by
the inexorable action of natural laws, which demand reparation
for breaches of moral and social law, and continually probe the
foundations of society. Man has become what he is through his capacity
for co-operative social action. The particular forms of social
organization are the crystallization of this capacity. They are but
shells to be cast away when they retard growth or progress, and it is
then that the living organism, collective or individual, seeks out or
slowly forms a new home.
As to the construction and colour of such a new house for reorganized
society and regenerated life, William Morris has left us in no doubt
as to his own ideas and ideals. It may seem strange that a man who
might be said to have been steeped in mediaeval lore,[1] and whose
delight seemed to be in a beautifully imagined world of romance
peopled with heroic figures, should yet be able to turn from that
dream world with a clear and penetrating gaze upon the movements of
his own time, and to have thrown himself with all the strength of
his nature into the seething social and industrial battle of modern
England. That the "idle singer of an empty day" should voice the
claims and hopes of Labour, stand up for the rights of free speech
in Trafalgar Square, and speak from a wagon in Hyde Park, may have
surprised those who only knew him upon one side, but to those who
fully apprehended the reality, ardour, and sincerity of his nature,
such action was but its logical outcome and complement, and assuredly
it redounds to the honour of the artist, the scholar, and the poet
whose loss we still feel, that he was also a man.
Few men seemed to drink so full a measure of life as William Morris,
and, indeed, he frankly admitted in his last days that he _had_
enjoyed his life. I have heard him say that he only knew what it was
to be alive. He could not conceive of death, and the thought of it did
not trouble him.
[Illustration: William Morris speaking from a wagon in Hyde Park,
May 1 1894]
I first met William Morris in 1870, at a dinner at the house of
the late Earl of Carlisle, a man of keen artistic sympathies and
considerable artistic ability, notably in water-colour landscapes. He
was an enthusiast for the work of Morris and Burne-Jones, and had just
built his house at Palace Green from the designs of Mr. Philip Webb,
and Morris and Company had decorated it. Morris, I remember, had just
returned from a visit to Iceland, and could hardly talk of anything
else. It seemed to have laid so strong a hold upon his imagination;
and no doubt its literary fruits were the translations of the
Icelandic sagas he produced with Professor Magnússon, and also the
heroic poem of "Sigurd the Volsung." He never, indeed, seemed to lose
the impressions of that Icelandic visit, and was ever ready to talk of
his experiences there--the primitive life of the people, the long pony
rides, the strange, stony deserts, the remote mountains, the
geysers and the suggestions of volcanic force everywhere, and the
romance-haunted coasts.
I well remember, too, the impression produced by the first volume of
"The Earthly Paradise," which had appeared, I think, shortly before
the time of which I speak: the rich and fluent verse, with its simple,
direct, Old World diction; the distinct vision, the romantic charm,
the sense of external beauty everywhere, with a touch of wistfulness.
The voice was the voice of a poet, but the eye was the eye of an
artist and a craftsman.
It was not so long before that the fame began to spread of the little
brotherhood of artists who gathered together at the Red House, Bexley
Heath, built by Mr. Philip Webb, it was said, in an orchard without
cutting down a single tree. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the centre of
the group, the leading spirit, and he had absorbed the spirit of the
pre-Raphaelite movement and centralized it both in painting and verse.
But others co-operated at first, such as his master, Ford Madox Brown,
and Mr. Arthur Hughes, until the committee of artists narrowed down,
and became a firm, establishing workshops in one of the old-fashioned
houses on the east side of Queen Square, Bloomsbury, a retired place,
closed by a garden to through traffic at the northern end. Here
Messrs. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. (which included a very
notable man, Mr. Philip Webb, the architect) began their practical
protest against prevailing modes and methods of domestic decoration
and furniture, which had fallen since the great exhibition of 1851
chiefly under the influence of the Second Empire taste in upholstery,
which was the antithesis of the new English movement. This latter
represented in the main a revival of the mediaeval spirit (not the
letter) in design; a return to simplicity, to sincerity; to good
materials and sound workmanship; to rich and suggestive surface
decoration, and simple constructive forms.
[Illustration: DESIGN FOR WALL-PAPER. "THE DAISY."]
The simple, black-framed, old English Buckinghamshire elbow-chair,
with its rush-bottomed seat, was substituted for the wavy-backed and
curly-legged stuffed chair of the period, with its French polish and
concealed, and often very unreliable, construction. Bordered Eastern
rugs, and fringed Axminster carpets, on plain or stained boards, or
India matting, took the place of the stuffy planned carpet; rich,
or simple, flat patterns acknowledged the wall, and expressed the
proportions of the room, instead of trying to hide both under bunches
of sketchy roses and vertical stripes; while, instead of the big
plate-glass mirror, with ormolu frame, which had long reigned over the
cold white marble mantel-piece, small bevelled glasses were inserted
in the panelling of the high wood mantel-shelf, or hung over it in
convex circular form. Slender black wood or light brass curtain rods,
and curtains to match the coverings, or carry out the colour of the
room, displaced the heavy mahogany and ormolu battering-rams,
with their fringed and festooned upholstery, which had hitherto
overshadowed the window of the so-called comfortable classes. Plain
white or green paint for interior wood-work drove graining and
marbling to the public-house; blue and white Nankin, Delft, or Grès
de Flandres routed Dresden and Sèvres from the cabinet; plain
oaken boards and trestles were preferred before the heavy mahogany
telescopic British dining-table of the mid-nineteenth century; and
the deep, high-backed, canopied settle with loose cushions ousted the
castored and padded couch from the fireside.
[Illustration: DESIGN FOR WALL-PAPER. "ROSE TRELLIS."]
Such were the principal ways, as to outward form, in which the new
artistic movement made itself felt in domestic decoration. Beginning
with the houses of a comparatively limited circle, mostly artists,
the taste rapidly spread, and in a few years Morrisian patterns and
furniture became the vogue. Cheap imitation on all sides set in, and
commercial and fantastic persons, perceiving the set of the current,
floated themselves upon it, tricked themselves out like jackdaws with
peacocks' feathers, and called it "the aesthetic movement." The usual
excesses were indulged in by excitable persons, and the inner meaning
of the movement was temporarily lost sight of under a cloud of
travesty and ridicule, until, like a shuttlecock, the idea had been
sufficiently played with and tossed about by society and the big
public, it was thrown aside, like a child's toy, for some new
catch-word. These things were, however, but the ripples or falling
leaves upon the surface of the stream, and had but little to do with
its sources or its depth, though they might serve as indications of
the strength of the current.
The art of Morris and those associated with him was really but the
outward and visible sign of a great movement of protest and reaction
against the commercial and conventional conceptions and standards of
life and art which had obtained so strong a hold in the industrial
nineteenth century.
Essentially Gothic and romantic and free in spirit as opposed to the
authoritative and classical, its leader was emphatically and even
passionately Gothic in his conception of art and ideals of life.
The inspiration of his poetry was no less mediaeval than the spirit
of his designs, and it was united with a strong love of nature and an
ardent love of beauty.
[Illustration: WOOLLEN HANGING. "THE PEACOCK."]
One knows but little of William Morris's progenitors. His name
suggests Welsh origin, though his birthplace was Walthamstow. Born
24th March 1834, one of a well-to-do family, it was a fortunate
circumstance that he was never cramped by poverty in the development
of his aims. Escaping the ecclesiastical influence of Oxford and
a Church career, his prophets being rather John Ruskin and Thomas
Carlyle, he approached the study and practice of art from the
architectural side under one of our principal English Gothic
revivalists, George Edmund Street, although he at one time entertained
the idea of becoming a painter, and the very interesting picture of
"Guinevere" which was shown at one of the Arts and Crafts Exhibitions
makes one regret he did not do more in this way. Few men had a better
understanding of the nature of Gothic architecture, and a wider
knowledge of the historic buildings of his own country, than William
Morris, and there can be no doubt that this grasp of the true root
and stem of the art was of enormous advantage when he came to turn his
attention to the various subsidiary arts and handicrafts comprehended
under decorative design. The thoroughness of his methods of work and
workmanlike practicality were no less remarkable than his amazing
energy and capacity for work.
[Illustration: DESIGN FOR SILK HANGING.]
In one of his earlier papers he said that it appeared to be the object
with most people to get rid of, or out of, the necessity of work,
but for his part he only wanted to find time for more work, or (as it
might be put) to live in order to work, rather than to work in order
to live.
While as a decorative designer he was, of course, interested in _all_
methods, materials, and artistic expression, he concentrated himself
generally upon one particular kind at a time, as in the course of
his study and practice he mastered the difficulties and technical
conditions of each.
At one time it was dyeing, upon which he held strong views as to the
superiority, permanency, and beauty of vegetable dyes over the mineral
and aniline dyes, so much used in ordinary commerce, and his practice
in this craft, and the charm of his tints, did much to check the taste
for the vivid but fugitive colours of coal-tar.
His way was to tackle the thing with his own hands, and so he worked
at the vat, like the practical man that he was in these matters. An
old friend tells the story of his calling at the works one day and, on
inquiring for the master, hearing a strong, cheery voice call out
from some inner den, "I'm dyeing, I'm dyeing, I'm dyeing!" and the
well-known robust figure of the craftsman presently appeared in his
blue shirt-sleeves, his hands stained blue from the vat where he had
been at work.
[Illustration: COTTON PRINT. "EVENLODE."]
At another time it was weaving that absorbed him, and the study
of dyeing naturally led him to textiles, and, indeed, was probably
undertaken with the view of reviving their manufacture in new forms,
and from rugs and carpets he conceived the idea of reviving Arras
tapestry. I remember the man who claimed to have taught Morris to
work on the high-warp loom. His name was Wentworth Buller. He was an
enthusiast for Persian art, and he had travelled in that country
and found out the secret of the weaving of the fine Persian carpets,
discovering, I believe, that they were made of goats' hair. He made
some attempt to revive this method in England, but from one cause or
another was not successful. William Morris, when he had learned the
craft of tapestry weaving himself, set about teaching others, and
trained two youths, one of whom (Mr. Dearle) is now chief at the
Merton Abbey Works, who became exceedingly skilful at the work,
executing the large and elaborate design of Sir Edward Burne-Jones
(_The Adoration of the Magi_), which was first worked for the chapel
of his own and Morris's college (Exeter College) at Oxford.
In this tapestry, as was his wont, Morris enriched the design with
a foreground of flowers, through which the Magi approach with their
gifts the group of the Virgin and Child, with St. Joseph.
In fact, the designs of William Morris are so associated with and
so often form part of the work of others or only appear in some
conditioned material form, that little or no idea of his individual
work, or of his wide influence, could be gathered from any existing
autograph work of his. That he was a facile designer of floral
ornament his numerous beautiful wall-papers and textile hangings
prove, but he always considered that the finished and final form of a
particular design, complete in the material for which it was intended,
was the only one to be looked at, and always objected to showing
preliminary sketches and working drawings. He was a keen judge and
examiner of work, and fastidious, and as he did not mind taking
trouble himself he expected it from those who worked for him. His
artistic influence was really due to the way he supervised work under
his control, carried out by many different craftsmen under his eye,
and not so much by his own actual handiwork.
In any estimate of William Morris's power and influence as an artist,
this should always be borne in mind. He always described himself as
an artist working with assistants, which is distinct from the
manufacturer who simply directs a business from the business point
of view. Nothing went out of the works at Queen Square, or, later, at
Merton Abbey, without his sanction from the artistic point of view.
[Illustration: KELMSCOTT HOUSE. MEETING ROOM OF THE HAMMERSMITH
SOCIALIST SOCIETY.]
The wave of taste which he had done so much to create certainly
brought prosperity to the firm, and larger premises had to be taken;
so Morris and Company emerged from the seclusion of Queen Square and
opened a large shop in Oxford Street, and set up extensive works at
Merton Abbey--a most charming and picturesque group of workshops,
surrounded by trees and kitchen gardens, on the banks of the river
Wandle in Surrey, not far from Wimbledon. The tapestry and carpet
looms which were first set up at Kelmscott House, on the Upper Mall
at Hammersmith,[2] were moved to Merton, where also the dyeing and
painted glass-work were carried on.
This latter art had long been an important part of the work of the
firm. In early days designs were supplied by Ford Madox Brown and D.
G. Rossetti, but later they were entirely from the hands of Morris's
closest friend, Edward Burne-Jones; that is to say, the figure-work.
Floral and subsidiary design were frequently added by William
Morris, as was also the leading of the cartoons. The results of their
co-operation in this way have been the many fine windows scattered
over the land, chiefly at Oxford and Cambridge, where the Christ
Church window and those at Jesus College may be named, while the
churches of Birmingham have been enriched by many splendid examples,
more particularly at St. Philip's. Their glass has also found place in
the United States, in Richardson's famous church at Boston, and at the
late Miss Catherine Wolfe's house, Vinland, Newport.
An exquisite autograph work of William Morris's is the copy of "The
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám," which he wrote out and illuminated with
his own hand, though even to this work Burne-Jones contributed a
miniature, and Mr. Fairfax Murray worked out other designs in some of
the borders. This beautiful work was exhibited at the first Arts
and Crafts Exhibition in 1888. It is in the possession of Lady
Burne-Jones, and by her special permission I am enabled to give some
reproductions of four of the pages here.
It is so beautiful that one wonders the artist was not induced to do
more work of the kind; but there is only known to be one or two
other manuscripts partially completed by him. Certainly his love for
mediaeval illuminated MSS. was intense and his knowledge great, and
his collection of choice and rare works of this kind probably unique.
The same might be said of his collection of early printed books, which
was wonderfully rich with wood-cuts of the best time and from the most
notable presses of Germany, Flanders, Italy, and France.
[Illustration:
8 OMAR KHAYYAM
Alike for those who for today prepare
And those that after a tomorrow stare
A muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries
Fools, your reward is neither here nor there
25
Why, all the saints and sages who discussed
Of the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust
Like foolish prophets forth, their words to scorn
Are scattered, and their mouths are stopt with dust
26
O come with old Khayyam, and leave the wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the rest is lies
The flower that once has blown for ever dies
27
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and saint, and heard great argument
FROM MORRIS'S MS. OF OMAR KHAYYÁM.]
[Illustration:
About it and about, and evermore
Came out by the same door as in I went.
28
With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand laboured it to grow:
And this was all the harvest that I reaped--
I came like water, and like wind I go.
29
Into this Universe, and why not knowing
Nor whence, like water willy-nilly flowing
And out of it as wind along the waste
I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing
30
What without asking hither hurried whence
And without asking whither hurried hence
Another, and another cup to drown
The memory of this impertinence!
FROM MORRIS'S MS. OF OMAR KHAYYÁM.]
[Illustration:
My thread-bare penitence apieces tore.
71
And much as wine has played the infidel,
And robbed me of my robe of honour--well,
I often wonder what the vintners buy
One half so precious as the goods they sell.
72
Alas, that Spring should vanish with the rose,
That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close
The Nightingale that in the branches sang,
Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows!
73
Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits, and then
Remould it nearer to the heart's desire?
FROM MORRIS'S MS. OF OMAR KHAYYÁM.]
[Illustration:
Ah Moon of my delight who knowest no wane,
The Moon of Heaven is rising once again;
How oft hereafter rising shall she look
Through this same garden after me--in vain.
75
And when Thyself with shining foot shall pass
Among the guests star-scattered on the grass,
And in thy joyous errand reach the spot
Where I made one--turn down an empty glass!
TAMAM SHUD
FROM MORRIS'S MS. OF OMAR KHAYYÁM.]
This brings us to William Morris's next and, as it proved, last
development in art--the revival of the craft of the printer, and its
pursuit as an art.
I recall the time when the project was first discussed. It was in
the autumn of 1889. It was the year of an Art Congress at Edinburgh,
following the initial one at Liverpool the preceding year, held under
the auspices of the National Association for the Advancement of Art.
Some of us afterwards went over to Glasgow to lecture; and a small
group, of which Morris was one, found themselves at the Central
Station Hotel together. It was here that William Morris spoke of his
new scheme, his mind being evidently centred upon it. Mr. Emery
Walker (who has supplied me with the photographs which illustrate this
article) was there, and he became his constant and faithful helper in
all the technicalities of the printer's craft; Mr. Cobden-Sanderson
also was of the party; he may be said to have introduced a new epoch
in book-binding, and his name was often associated with Morris as
binder of some of his books.
Morris took up the craft of printing with characteristic thoroughness.
He began at the beginning and went into the paper question, informing
himself as to the best materials and methods, and learning to make a
sheet of paper himself. The Kelmscott Press paper is made by hand, of
fine white linen rags only, and is not touched with chemicals. It has
the toughness and something of the quality of fine Whatman or O.W.
drawing-paper.
When he set to work to design his types he obtained enlarged
photographs of some of the finest specimens of both Gothic and Roman
type from the books of the early printers, chiefly of Bale and Venice.
He studied and compared these, and as the result of his analysis
designed two or three different kinds of type for his press, beginning
with the "Golden" type, which might be described as Roman type under
Gothic influence, and developing the more frankly Gothic forms known
as the "Troy" and the "Chaucer" types. He also used Roman capitals
founded upon the best forms of the early Italian printers.
Morris was wont to say that he considered the glory of the Roman
alphabet was in its capitals, but the glory of the Gothic alphabet was
in its lower-case letters.
He was asked why he did not use types after the style of the lettering
in some of his title-pages, but he said this would not be reasonable,
as the lettering of the titles was specially designed to fit into the
given spaces, and could not be used as movable type.
The initial letters are Gothic in feeling, and form agreeably bold
quantities in black and white in relation to the close and rich matter
of the type, which is still further relieved occasionally by floral
sprays in bold open line upon the inner margins, while when woodcut
pictures are used they were led up to by rich borderings.
The margins of the title and opening chapter which faced it are
occupied by richly designed broad borders of floral arabesques upon
black grounds, the lettering of the title forming an essential part of
the ornamental effect, and often placed upon a mat or net of lighter,
more open arabesque, in contrast to the heavy quantities of the solid
border.
The Kelmscott Chaucer is the monumental work of Morris's Press,
and the border designs, made specially for this volume, surpass
in richness and sumptuousness all his others, and fitly frame the
woodcuts after the designs of Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
The arabesque borders and initial letters of the Kelmscott books were
all drawn by Morris himself, the engraving on wood was mostly done
by Mr. W. H. Hooper--almost the only first-rate facsimile engraver
on wood left--and a good artist and craftsman besides. Mr. Arthur
Leverett engraved the designs to the "The Glittering Plain," which
were my contribution to the Kelmscott Press, but I believe Mr. Hooper
did all the other work, while Mr. Fairfax Murray and Mr. Catteson
Smith drafted the Burne-Jones designs upon the wood.
It was not, perhaps, generally known, at least before the appearance
of Miss May Morris's fine edition of her father's works, published
by Messrs. Longman, that many years before the Kelmscott Press was
thought of an illustrated edition of "The Earthly Paradise" was in
contemplation, and not only were many designs made by Burne-Jones, but
a set of them was actually engraved by Morris himself upon wood for
the "Cupid and Psyche," though they were never issued to the public.
I have spoken of the movement in art represented by William Morris
and his colleagues as really part of a great movement of protest--a
crusade against the purely commercial, industrial, and material
tendencies of the day.
This protest culminated with William Morris when he espoused the cause
of Socialism.
Now some have tried to minimize the Socialism of William Morris, but
it was, in the circumstances of his time, the logical and natural
outcome of his ideas and opinions, and is in direct relation with his
artistic theories and practice.
For a thorough understanding of the conditions of modern manufacture
and industrial production, of the ordinary influences which govern the
producers of marketable commodities, of wares offered in the name of
art, of the condition of worker, and the pressure of competition, he
was in a particularly advantageous position.
So far from being a sentimentalist who was content melodiously and
pensively to regret that things were not otherwise, he was driven by
contact with the life around him to his economic conclusions. As he
said himself, it was art led him to Socialism, not economics, though
he confirmed his convictions by economic study.
As an artist, no doubt at first he saw the uglification of the world
going on, and the vast industrial and commercial machine grinding the
joy and the leisure out of human life as regarded the great mass of
humanity. But as an employer he was brought into direct relation with
the worker as well as the market and the public, and he became fully
convinced that the modern system of production for profit and the
world-market, however inevitable as a stage in economic and social
evolution, was not only most detrimental to a healthy and spontaneous
development of art and to conditions of labour, but that it would be
bound, ultimately, by the natural working of economic laws, to devour
itself.
Never cramped by poverty in his experiments and in his endeavours
to realize his ideals, singularly favoured by fortune in all his
undertakings, he could have had no personal reasons on these scores
for protesting against the economic and social tendencies and
characteristics of his own time. He hated what is called modern
civilization and all its works from the first, with a whole heart, and
made no secret of it. For all that, he was a shrewd and keen man in
his dealings with the world. If he set its fashions and habits at
defiance, and persisted in producing his work to please himself, it
was not his fault that his countrymen eagerly sought them and paid
lavishly for their possession. A common reproach hurled at Morris has
been that he produced costly works for the rich while he professed
Socialism. This kind of thing, however, it may be remarked, is not
said by those friendly to Socialism, or anxious for the consistency of
its advocates--quite the contrary. Such objectors appear to ignore,
or to be ignorant of, the fact that according to the quality of the
production must be its cost; and that the cheapness of the cheapest
things of modern manufacture is generally at the cost of the
cheapening of human labour and life, which is a costly kind of
cheapness after all.
If anyone cares for good work, a good price must be paid. Under
existing conditions possession of such work is only possible to those
who can pay the price, but this seems to work out rather as part of an
indictment against the present system of production, which Socialists
wish to alter.
If a wealthy man were to divest himself of his property and distribute
it, he would not bring Socialism any nearer, and his self-sacrifice
would hardly benefit the poor at large (except, perhaps, a few
individuals), but under the working of the present system his wealth
would ultimately enrich the rich--would gravitate to those who _had_,
and not to those who _had not_. The object of Socialism is to win
justice, not charity.