William Morris
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William Morris was an English textile designer, poet, artist, writer, and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts movement. He was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts and methods of production. His literary contributions helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, while he helped win acceptance of socialism in fin de siècle Great Britain.
William Morris by Frederick Hollyer, 1887
Water House, Morris's childhood home; renovated in 2012, it now houses The William Morris Gallery.
William Morris at 23
William Morris self-portrait, 1856; he grew his beard that year, after leaving university.
Arts and Crafts movement
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The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America.
William Morris' design for Trellis wallpaper, 1862
The Nature of Gothic by John Ruskin, printed by William Morris at the Kelmscott Press in 1892 in his Golden Type inspired by the 15th-century printer Nicolas Jenson. This chapter from The Stones of Venice was a sort of manifesto for the Arts and Crafts movement.
Pugin's house "The Grange" in Ramsgate, from 1843. Its simplified Gothic style, adapted to domestic building, helped shape the architecture of the Arts and Crafts movement.
William Morris, a textile designer who was a key influence on the Arts and Crafts movement