FREE THE DESIGNS OF WILLIAM MORRIS PDF Phaidon Press,William Morris,Editors of Phaidon Press | 160 pages | 19 Oct 1995 | Phaidon Press Ltd | 9780714834658 | English | London, United Kingdom + Best William Morris patterns images | william morris, morris, william morris designs William Morrisa founder of the British Arts and Crafts movementsought to restore the prestige and methods of hand-made crafts, including textilesin opposition to The Designs of William Morris 19th century tendency toward factory-produced textiles. With this goal in mind, he created his own workshop and designed dozens of patterns for hand-produced woven The Designs of William Morris printed cloth, upholstery, and other textiles. The first textile designs Morris made were created in the s. Furthermore, it is not worth doing unless it is either very copious and rich, or very delicate - or both. His first The Designs of William Morris designs were primitive, but later, working with his wife Jane, he created a set of wall hangings for his residence in the London suburbs, Red House. One of his designs in this historical style, stitched by Jane Morris, won the Morris company an award in an international competition in Morris and his workshop began making embroideries for the households of his friends as well as larger panels for some of the many new churches being constructed in England. In these designs, Morris created the decorative elements, while his friend Edward Burne-Jones drew the figures, and a team of embroiderers manufactured the work by hand. Other wall hangings were designed to be sold off the shelf of the new Morris and Company shop on Oxford Street which owned in Later, he and his daughter May made designs for panels for "embroider yourself" kits for cushion covers, fireplace screens, doorway curtains, bedcovers and other household objects. InMorris turned production of embroidery entirely over to his daughter. In the late s Morris began to experiment with a genre, textiles for furnishing or upholstery. His first design was jasmine trail or jasmine trellis —70based on a similar wallpaper design he had made in INhe brought a skilled French silk weaver, Jacques Bazin, from Lyon to London, rented a studio at Great Esmond Yard, and established Bazin and his mechanical Jacquard loom there to make woven wooden fabrics. Inhe opened new workshops at Merton Abbeyseven miles southwest of London, for manufacturing printed and woven textiles. The workshops were next to the River Wandleproviding a source of abundant clean water, and also had a grassy meadow where dyed clothes could be dried in the open air. He produced a number of furnishing fabrics there, including the Wey and Wandle designs. Acanthus design, block-printed velveteen cotton Morris made his first experiments with printed textiles for his company Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. These first textiles were recreations of earlier designs he had made from the s, and were printed for Morris by the workshop of Thomas Clarkson of Bannister Hall, in Lancaster. This was printed with synthetic analine dyes. Next he made Tulip and The Designs of William Morrisa design he made inbut he was very disappointed by the result. He blamed the problem on the artificial dyes, and began doing research into the natural dyes which had been used in the 16th century. The Strawberry Thief became one of Morris's best-known designs. It depicted a scene from his own garden, where thrushes came The Designs of William Morris dine upon the ripe strawberries. Morris moved with his family to Turham Green inwhich created greater The Designs of William Morris in his house at Queen Square in London where Morris had his workshop. Morris and his assistant John Smith made a series of experiments with indigo and other natural dyes, but were unable to attain colours that satisfied Morris. InMorris tried working with a commercial printer, Wardle and Company, using wood blocks with a reduced number of colours and modern chemical dyes, This time he was dissatisfied with the lack of quality control by the workers, and the uneven results. He therefore decided to establish his own workshop, where he could control everything. For printed textiles, the design was traced onto a block of pear wood, and then the wood was sculpted so only the desired surface would touch the fabric. Thin strips of brass were pounded edge-first into the block to make the fine lines. One block was used for each colour of the final fabric, The block was inked by placing into a vat of colorant, and then carefully placed onto the fabric on the table in front of the craftsman. He pounded it with a mallet to impress the colour, then he lifted the block carefully, moved the fabric, re-inked the block, and printed the next section with the same colour. When the first colour was finished, the finished The Designs of William Morris was set aside to dry. If more than one colour was used, once the fabric was The Designs of William Morris, a block with the next colour would be inked and carefully impressed over the image left by the first. The same process and the same blocks could be used for making both fabrics and wallpaper. Since fifteen or more colours might be used, It was an extremely laborious and long process, sometimes lasting several weeks, and the cost was higher than that of mechanical printing methods. Textiles printed by hand at Merton Abbey Carts ran on a track behind the craftsmen, bringing them vats of fresh colours. Morris wrote that making tapestries was 'the noblest of all the weaving arts', and most suitable for his interest in reviving medieval arts and crafts. He set up his first tapestry loom inand made completed his first tapestry, was 'Acanthus and Vine' in He wove the tapestry himself, often getting up at dawn to work on a loom in his bedroom at Kelmscott House. His The Designs of William Morris was modelled after the The Designs of William Morris leaf" tapestries The Designs of William Morris in France and Flanders in the 16th century, and he deliberately gave them a faded appearance to make them look two centuries old. He recorded that it took him five hundred sixteen and one half hours to complete. Once he had mastered the technique, he created a full-time tapestry workshop at the Morris and Company house on Queen The Designs of William Morris. For most of his tapestries, Morris worked with other artists, particularly Edward Burne-Joneswho designed the figures, Philip Webb, who designed birds and animals, and with his primary assistant and successor as chief designer, John Henry Dearle. A photographic image was made of he design with figures, to which Morris or The Designs of William Morris added a floral background, and a border equally filled with designs of trees and flowers. The full scale image was transferred onto cloth by rubbing with a piece of ivory, and then woven on a loom. Large-scale tapestries were made in this way at Merton, mostly by the employment of boys ages thirteen and fourteen, who received shelter, board and a daily wage. In addition to full-scale tapestries, the Merton Abbey workshop produced smaller works, designed as coverings for cushions and furniture. Multiple copies were made of some popular tapestries. Ten copies were made of The Adoration between and Holy Grail tapestries s. Wool and silk on cotton warp. The Designs of William Morris Museum and Art Gallery. In March,Morris became the sole owner of what became William Morris Company, buying out the shares of his partners. He decided to diverify the products by adding carpets, a market that was almost totally dominated by original or imitation oriental carpets. Within three months, he had registered his first design for the Cataline floor cloth, a decorative covering for linoleum floors, a material which had been invented in By December had registered two designs for machine-woven carpets which he had made by the Wilton Royal Carpet Factory. As usual, Morris set a high goal for himself. His aim, he declared, was to make England independent of the Orient for the provision of hand-make carpets which aspire to the status of art. He made a careful The Designs of William Morris of techniques and materials, and made a series of experiments. When he moved to Kelmscott House in he began to produce a series of carpets called Hammersmith. He hired a labor force of young women to work on looms he set up in the former stables and garage of his London residence. He also revived the art of hand-knotting for making small carpets. In the s, in addition to the Hammersmith carpets, Morris created series of designs for machine-made Axminster and Kidderminister carpets, made at the Wilton factory or at Heckmondwike Manufacturing company in Yorkshire. Many of the carpets he designed used the patterns he had invented for printed fabrics, but others, particularly the Hammersmith carpets, resembled the designs he made for his woven textiles. His early carpets sometimes borrowed popular oriental motifs. The designs he made for Axminister and Wilton carpets were less lavish in their ornament and more geometrical, to The Designs of William Morris them more affordable. In he moved the workshop to Merton Abbey, where there was The Designs of William Morris to weave much larger carpets commissioned by his clients. His designs for these large Hammersmith carpets moved farther away from the Oriental influence, and took on a more specifically English style. As with his wallpapers other textiles, his inspirations were most often flowers, plants and animals found in English gardens.