cimorene

Proto-fantasy novelist and pre-Raphaelite William Morris is the father of the Arts & Crafts movement (my favorite architectural and decorative style), and his textiles and wallpapers were wildly popular in Victorian homes and today are ubiquitous in yuppie remodels and with set dressers creating interiors of the period (partly because they are probably the best-known designs of the period and are widely available because his company, Morris & Co, is still printing his designs from the original wooden blocks. They were not nearly as widespread as you'd think from tv and movies of recent years though, nor have they ever been affordable enough to be).

Icons are free to good homes. Modify if you wish. Credit appreciated.

*titles at bottom

Obviously they are decades earlier than the Bauhaus paintings I've been making icons of lately, but actually, both Arts & Crafts and Bauhaus were strongly political and philosophical movements. Morris was a socialist, and the driving principle behind his work was the democratization of art - the elimination of classist distinctions between the fine arts and the work of craftsmen, and the availability of beautiful objects for everyone. His ideas on this subject were one of the strongest influences on the Bauhaus, which sought to democratize the arts by teaching fine arts, skilled crafts, and architecture simultaneously; and also to make their designs reasonably affordable to manufacture, focusing much of their work on institutional design.

It's ironic that the popularity of Morris's designs and the expense of manufacturing them has made them too expensive for the average consumer for their whole life cycle, but on the other hand that popularity has also helped make them available to everyone - they are now available in unlicensed variants and products all over RedBubble, Zazzle, Etsy, etc, as well as the extremely pricey licensed products you can still buy. The same thing has happened to a lot of Bauhaus designs - vintage pieces of furniture and decorative objects still in production are exhorbitantly priced due to trendiness, even where they are relatively inexpensive to manufacture; but the aesthetic itself had such a tremendous impact that it's not hard to find its descendants cheaply (for example, from Ikea).

1-3 "Lodden"
4-5 "Lodden" 6 "Larkspur"
7-8 "Larkspur" 9 "Pomegranate or Fruit"
10-11 "Pomegranate or Fruit" 12 "Marigold"
13 "Marigold" 14-15 "Golden Lily"
16-18 "Golden Lily"
19-21 "Acanthus"

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From:

princessofgeeks

I fell in love with Arts and Crafts through learning about house designs and then found the textiles and furniture.

Thanks for the tour; the icons are lovely.

cimorene

I was familiar with Morris's wallpapers first actually, I think, which was how I learned about the Arts & Crafts movement! But I love everything about it, philosophically and aesthetically. And thank you!

zana16

Very pretty!

Thanks! :)

just_ann_now

*waves from The Network*

These are gorgeous! I'm not taking any now but have bookmarked for later. Thanks much!

Hello, and thank you very much!

stonepicnicking_okapi

I am really loving these. Thanks so much for the commentary, too. Very interesting. I will snag #1.

Great to hear! 😊

laurajv

I bought some Morris & Co fabric today, planning to make a shirt out of it. Such lovely patterns. If the fabric works out as I hope (I couldn't find it locally so I had to buy online, not 100% sure it will be fit for purpose but if it's not I'll quilt with it), I plan on many more Morris shirts.....

I am envious! I looked at the papers and textiles even though I couldn't REALLY use them in our house (too ornate), and I know they're pretty expensive! Of course the amount you need for clothes is less than what you'd need for decorating.