William Morris at the Art Gallery of South Australia
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William Morris at the Art Gallery of South Australia
A lesser-known Adelaide highlight is the Morris & Co. collection at the Art Gallery of South Australia, the world’s second biggest collection of Morris decorative arts after the Victoria and Albert Gallery in London.
About William Morris and Morris & Co.
Textile , interior decorator, novelist, and was one by the mid one of the most influential figures of the Victorian Era in Great . His designs generated the Arts and Crafts movement, which revolutionised English taste in , and furniture in the late .
was born to a well-to-do family in Essex. He studied at Marlborough College, and then Exeter College, colleges at , where he became lifelong friends with Edward Jones (later the painter Burne-Jones). Jones and came under the influence of the Oxford movement within the Church of England, which sought a renewal of Roman Catholic thought within the Anglican church, and aimed to become a clergyman, but he abandoned this ambition when he was influenced by the thought of the critic John Ruskin , who argued for the social and moral basis of architecture.
developed a passion for medieval and architecture, and fell in with the of painters influenced by medieval and mythology. At this time, he married the ‘s model Jane Burden, but the marriage would prove to be unhappy for both partners.
After his marriage, commissioned his friend, the to the Red House at Bexleyheath. While working on the project, had the idea of decorating the house with works of fine craftsmanship. Inspired by the experience, and his friends founded the decorative arts firm of , Marshall, & Company.
By the mid , ‘s decorative arts quickly took off. At the International of 1862 the firm exhibited , furniture, and embroideries, and the company was soon hired to create a series of decorative panels, designed by Burne-Jones, for Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge. also achieved success as a , with the romantic poetry The and Death of Jason (1867) and The (1868-70). He visited Iceland in 1871 and 1873, his would prove a continual source of inspiration.
Today, is his , a collection which drew on native English flora and experimented with vegetable dyes.
Morris became involved in the nascent socialist movement, joining Henry Mayers Hyndman’s Democratic Federation before quarrelling and forming his own Socialist League, and touring industrial areas to spread socialist ideas. On ‘Bloody Sunday’ in 1887, he led a banned demonstration through the streets of London, walking side-by-side with playwright George Bernard Shaw. His romances, published in The Commonweal, now envisioned a socialist rural utopia.
Morris died in 1896, worn out from a journey to Norway. He is today regarded as a pioneering figure in a number of fields. His emphasis on quality individual craftsmanship is regarded as influencing the ethos of the Bauhaus movement, while his desire to protect the natural world from the ravages of industrialisation has led some to regard him as an early influence on the environmental movement. Textile designs by Morris for Morris & Co remain in production today, while his works are displayed in museums across the world.
For more on Morris, take a look at our article on important personalities of Queen Victoria’s Britain, as well as our article on Morris’ Kelmscott Manor.
Morris & Co. in Adelaide:
Perhaps ironically, given ‘s socialism, the designs of & Co. became the fashionable choice of late-‘s middle and upper classes, what biographer Fiona MacCarthy calls “the safe choice of the intellectual classes, an exercise in political correctitude.” This was particularly apparent in the growing colony of South Australia, where upper and middle class families decorated their homes in the latest fashions from & Co in order to project their cosmopolitanism. There choice was unusual for a such as .
‘s biggest patrons were an Adelaide couple, Robert and Joanna Barr-Smiths, who furnished their seven houses almost exclusively with & Co wallpapers, and had for them as well, the furniture was the shipped all the way from England. The Barr-Smiths influenced the wealthy circles of Adelaide, who decorated in & Co and built their houses in the emerging Arts and Crafts style.
As early as 1899, the curator of the of South Australia sought to buy some of the Barr-Smiths’ objects, but the first purchase of a , The Adoration of the Magi was made in 1917 from George Brookman. In 1982, the descendants of the Barr-Smiths donated their first & Co. objects, and the Gallery has since developed an extensive collection from local objects and others bought from .
May , 1887.
In particular, the of South Australia’s collection includes a number of designs by May , ‘s daughter, and one of the leading woman artists of the Arts and Crafts movement. May continued her father’s innovations in the resurrection of free-form embroidery, developing a style that emphasised the creativity and personality of the individual embroiderer. A prominent lecturer of embroidery, in 1907 she and Mary Elizabeth Turner formed the Women’s Guild of Arts, as the Workers Guild did not admit women.
In December 2019, the collection underwent a significant redesign for the first time in several years.
The interiors of the Barr-Smiths can also been seen at Auchendarroch House in the Adelaide Hills, a palatial mansion with restored wallpaper and light fixtures, today open to the public as a restaurant and venue space.