William Morris

Arts and Crafts leader William Morris was one of many English architects, botanists, and fine artists who worked in textile design and manufacture in the mid-19th century. He excelled at rendering botanical subjects as complex repeating patterns, employing neglected techniques such as plant dyeing, hand dyeing, and block printing.

This pattern of dense vegetation undulating into ogival shapes illustrates Morris’s conviction that good design depicts perpetual motion. It also shows the lasting influence of exotic florals introduced into the design lexicon centuries prior and the more recent impact of Charles Darwin’s writings about evolution and the growth of plants.

In the 1870s, Morris studied and practiced the art of illuminated manuscript painting. His painted books illustrate a free-flowing and technically complex aesthetic. He desperately sought to render movement and successfully convey dynamic flow in his illuminated work, skills that translated seamlessly to the art of textile design. His reputation as a person who loved historicism and looked longingly to the Medieval and Renaissance periods is greatly exaggerated. Instead, his research into ancient crafts was done to salvage traditional techniques he feared would be lost in the wake of the Industrial Revolution.