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Report Case Study 25 Case 9 2013/14: A pair of wall hangings by May Morris Expert adviser’s statement Reviewing Committee Secretary’s note: Please note that any illustrations referred to have not been reproduced on the Arts Council England Website EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1. Brief description of item(s) A pair of hanging panels, of hand-spun and hand-woven linen embroidered with natural dyed crewel wool. Both hangings are of the same design worked in different colours and stitches, with a central tree between rosebushes and floral trails and birds against a square trellis background. The foreground of each panel includes a robin and rabbit. Each panel measures 191.5cm by 146cm [images 1, 2 & 3]. The panels were designed by May Morris (1862-1938) and are likely to have been made for Melsetter House, Orkney. They are almost identical in design, but significantly not colour and materials, to the pair of bed hangings designed by Morris in 1891-2 for her father William Morris’s bed at Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire [image 4]. The Melsetter hangings were probably worked between 1898 and 1902. They are likely to have been ordered directly from May Morris, either as commissioned pieces or in the form of prepared designs, to be embroidered at least in part by the client, Theodosia Middlemore. The hangings are in good condition, apart from some water marks and a few loose threads. 2. Context The hangings were likely to have been made for Melsetter House on the island of Hoy in the Orkneys. Melsetter was designed by Arts and Crafts architect William R. Lethaby for the Birmingham industrialist Thomas Middlemore and his wife Theodosia, and built between 1898 and 1900. Melsetter is one of only six buildings completed by Lethaby. It exemplifies the principles of the Arts and Crafts movement in the 1890s—built with simplicity and strength by local craftsmen using local materials, and designed to be in harmony with surrounding nature [images 5 and 6]. The hangings have only recently become known outside the family, having survived by descent until now. This explains their omission from the Morris and Melsetter literature. May Morris, William Morris’s daughter and herself a talented textile artist, was a friend of the Middlemores. Literature: Clive Aslet, ‘Melsetter House, Hoy’, Country Life (August 13, 1981). Elizabeth Cumming, Hand Heart and Soul, The Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland (Edinburgh, 2006), passim. Trevor Garnham, Melsetter House: Architecture in Detail (London, 1999). P. B. Jones, ‘Melsetter House’, Architects Journal vol. 192: 15 (10 October 1990), pp. 36-57. Referring to the bed-hangings at Kelmscott Manor: O. Fairclough and E. Leary, Textiles by William Morris and Morris & Co., 1861-1940 (London, 1981), pp. 27 and 79, pl. E21. Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde, exh. cat., Tate Britain (London, 2012), pp. 203-204. Linda Parry, William Morris Textiles (London, 2013), p.39, pl. 14. 3. Waverley criteria . The objects meet criterion 3 The hangings are especially significant for the study of the Arts and Crafts in Scotland, and for the study of Arts and Crafts embroidery, and its relationship to Scottish embroidery. The workmanship seen in the physical objects themselves adds to our evidence of an artistic collaboration between May Morris and her client and friend Theodosia Middlemore, a relationship which took on new meaning once the Middlemores moved to Melsetter House in the Orkneys. DETAILED CASE 1. Detailed description of items if more than in Executive summary, and any comments. The hangings are notable examples of the importance of embroidery in the Arts and Crafts interior. William and May Morris were responsible for reviving and re-animating earlier British embroidery traditions, in the form of Art Needlework, and for elevating the status of embroidery as an art form and a profession. The Melsetter hangings are among May Morris’s outstanding achievements as a designer. Although worked with unassuming materials, the composition has depth, is vibrant and yet organised. The design successfully combines the historical prototypes loved by her father (represented by the trailing flowers and leaves in the foreground, which relate back directly to 17th-century English crewelwork) with May Morris’s own characteristic balanced composition, unifying plants and animals. Their prominent blue and green shades of wool, and other more muted tones on slubbed hand-woven linen, recall the 17th-century precedents for this type of embroidery They may also reflect the colours of Melsetter’s coastal setting and climate, very different from the rich countryside of the Upper Thames valley around Kelmscott. The hangings are testimony to the interest of families such as the Middlemores in living the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement through purposeful work. 2. Detailed explanation of the outstanding significance of the items. Significance of figures associated with the items: Maker/client/owners? May Morris (1862-1938) learnt to embroider as a child and worked closely with her father William Morris. She took on the management of the Morris & Co. embroidery workroom at the age of 23. The success of Morris embroideries in the late 19th century is due to May Morris, although her contribution has not always been recognised. She became a leading authority on the subject of embroidery, and exhibited frequently at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. After the death of William Morris in 1896 she worked as a freelance embroiderer, becoming an influential teacher at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, under the headship of William R. Lethaby, the architect of Melsetter House. May Morris also lectured at British art schools and in the United States, and did much to support the work of women artists and designers, founding the Women’s Guild of Art in 1907. May Morris played a key role in promoting embroidery as a profession, and, unusually for the time, excelled both as a designer and maker. Her work undoubtedly influenced the development of the distinctive embroidery styles taught by Jessie Newbury at Glasgow School of Art from 1896. Theodosia Middlemore (1861-1943) was married to Thomas Middlemore (1842-1923) of Birmingham. His saddlery business provided a comfortable living, and the couple became enthusiastic clients of Morris & Co., as did other Birmingham couples who made their money in business. The Middlemores commissioned and bought significant furnishings for their Birmingham home, including an inlaid chest by George Jack (V&A) and an important silk ‘Fruit Garden’ portière or door curtain (V&A) designed by May Morris and embroidered and signed by Theodosia in 1894. A surviving photograph probably shows Theodosia at work on it [images 7 and 8]. In 1896 Thomas Middlemore sold up his business, and the couple began to spend time in the Orkney Islands. In 1898 they bought the islands of Walls, Fara and Hoy, the last with the 18th-century Melsetter Hall, which was close to Theodosia’s childhood home on the north coast of Scotland. In 1898 the Middlemores employed William R. Lethaby (1857-1931) a disciple of William Morris, to re-work the existing house at Melsetter. Further commissions for furnishings from Morris & Co. followed, including for tapestry panels (later donated to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery) and also embroidery designs by May Morris [image 9]. Although remote, the Orkneys had become accessible by rail to Thurso and then boat, and in summer the Middlemores received many visitors at Melsetter. It is likely that the embroidered hangings considered here date from this time. May Morris visited Melsetter at least twice, where she studied the local craft of wool spinning. It is important to note that while the Kelmscott curtains were embroidered onto machine-woven linen, the Melsetter hangings—the only other known example of the design—were embroidered onto hand-spun and hand-woven linen. May Morris greatly admired the house, describing it as ‘a building standing like a fairy-castle in the loneliness of the far North, and filled with all the glow and richness of Morris invention, every room thought out with absolute fitness and beauty by the genius of the Lady-of-the-house’. [1] Significance of subject-matter? The subject-matter of the hangings reflects British embroidery traditions and the plants and wildlife that inspired many Morris designs. The design recalls William Morris’s first wallpaper design, ‘Trellis’ (1862). The large fruit tree motif was also used repeatedly in Morris & Co. textiles, including in tapestries. Its historical antecedent was the Tree of Life, often depicted in painted textiles imported into Europe by the East India Companies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and enthusiastically adopted into contemporary English embroidery design. May Morris adapted the motif many times for her own designs [image 7]. The first version of these hangings was made personally as a gift for William Morris and the fact that a similar set was made, with appropriately modified ‘Orkney’ colouring, may demonstrate May Morris’s approval of the Middlemores and their house. Significance of materials/process/usage? The embroideries reflect the ethos of Melsetter House, designed by Lethaby to express a close relationship with the landscape and with traditional craft skills. Hand-spun and hand-woven linen was chosen for the hangings. The sky, sea and beach tones of the crewel wools are in sympathy with the surface of the ground fabric—the rich colours of the original Kelmscott hangings, worked with silk as well as wool, would have created a harsh contrast. The embroideries are not lined, as would be expected of bed-hangings or curtains, and may therefore have functioned simply as decorative hangings. A photograph of the hall and drawing room at Melsetter [image 10] shows the use of what appear to be 17th-century crewelwork hangings at the house, with which the Morris hangings would have been in much harmony.
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