Hadrian Garrard, the curator of Morris Mania – an leading edge exhibition now appearing on the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, east London – tells the tale of being in King’s Move Station and recognizing any individual wheeling a buying groceries trolley lined in a plasticised Morris trend. It jogged my memory of the time when a scholar thanked me for my educating with a couple of Morris-themed flip-flops.
Mugs, tea towels, notepads, purses and all way of alternative incongruous items make up this international of Morris products. A lot of it’s made in China and far flung from the needs William Morris had in thoughts. How did this Victorian fashion designer and socialist, identified for championing craftsmanship and who prefer substance over taste, change into an icon of client tradition?
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The exhibition’s tagline – How Britain’s Biggest Dressmaker Went Viral – makes just right sense. It’s no longer simply that Morris levels an break out from the Victorian ornamental international, however that his artwork proliferates in out of control tactics. The stroll from Walthamstow station lays the groundwork on this regard: exhibition posters in store home windows, end-of-terrace work of art or even the civic structure, discuss of one thing leaking from the gallery partitions.
A couple of Nikes glance fetching in Morris’s ‘Willow Bough’ trend.
William Morris Gallery
The primary show within the exhibition inform the tale of the way we were given right here. Morris started spreading because of the commissions he gained from aristocratic and royal shoppers. They have been attracted to the medieval ethos of his paintings, and its rejection of industrialism within the arts. A very powerful early contract was once for the interiors at St James’s Palace.
However those established order associations quickly morphed and mutated, first some of the English center categories, who welcomed Morris’s designs into their suburban villas in spite of his new fondness for revolution, after which extra remotely: one {photograph} displays Morris-patterned partitions at St Peterburg’s Iciness Palace, taken in a while after the Bolsheviks stormed the construction. The socialism because it have been, is became inside of out.
Mugs changed into a well-liked income for museums looking to carry money.
William Morris Gallery.
George Harrison’s “golden lily” jacket, from the Chelsea boutique Granny Takes a Travel, stands proud as a poignant instance of the tactics wherein Morris was once recut and repurposed for the counterculture.
The ‘golden lily’ jacket made for George Harrison in 1966.
Man Bell/Alamy
Morris’s “rose” trend proves a specifically intrepid traveller, because the design selected for the officials’ cushions on HMS Valliant, an early nuclear-powered submarine. Its onboard domesticity blends apparently with the risk of its undertaking.
3 turning issues get ready us for the latest sorts of Morris mania. The V&A’s 1996 exhibition repopularised Morris’s paintings, and due to new virtual generation, its products incorporated revealed mugs.
‘Pimpernel’ wallpaper, 1876.
William Morris Gallery.
Then, in 2001, the British govt steered public collections to open their doorways without cost. Searching for new source of revenue streams, museums became to promoting themed items via their stores. The upward push of China as a producing hub complemented this emphasis – much less by way of revolutionising operating prerequisites and democratising design, as Morris had was hoping, than with a flood of affordably produced items.
Past this revealing timeline, what in point of fact impresses is the exhibition’s care in keeping distinctions. It’s specifically cautious to turn that going viral don’t need to imply promoting out. From Nanjing – a big centre of Chinese language production – comes a poster for the 2023 exhibition Past William Morris on the Nanjing Museum. It attracted over 1,000,000 guests, reminding us that at the back of the products are new wells of affection and recognize.
One thing an identical applies on the degree of constructing. For each sweatshop Hi Kitty, the similar personality seems in a superbly crafted yukata (an off-the-cuff kimono) in Liberty materials made in Japan.
Autumn/wintry weather assortment 2015 for Marc by way of Marc Jacobs.
William Morris Gallery
A Brompton Motorcycle hangs from the wall – manufactured in London, and carrying a good-looking “willow bough” livery. Likewise, a neon “strawberry thief” motif, made at Walthamstow’s God’s Personal Junk Backyard, rekindles the embers of native manufacturing. This emphasis extends to the exhibition’s personal making. A movie paperwork the weaving of the Axminster carpet that furnishes the primary room. Even the labels have been dyed by way of hand with weld, a herbal pigment whose use Morris revived.
In those tactics, the exhibition champions moral and bespoke manufacturing, whilst confronting the darker currents that transfer items round our international. It additionally remains curious sufficient to push additional by way of exploring the kitsch new frontier of “Morris” patterns generated by way of AI, or by way of populating a Victorian cloth wardrobe with “crowdsourced” Morris bric-a-brac.
Eastern waving cat in Morris’s ‘strawberry thief’ trend.
William Morris Gallery
There may were extra space to imagine why the skin results of trend commute so readily, and to cite Morris’s writings at the matter. However a lot of this is implicit and there for audiences to apply up.
Morris Mania excels by way of nurturing the enjoyment at the back of all this promiscuous expansion. Maximum pleasingly, that trolley from King’s Move makes a reappearance, dressed right here in an AI-adapted “strawberry thief”, courtesy of Sholley Trolleys, Clacton-on-Sea. Similar to Morris himself, it was once made in Essex.
Morris Mania: How Britain’s Biggest Dressmaker Went Viral is on the William Morris Gallery till September 21 2025.
