The Victorian designer, poet and craftsman William Morris helped shape the look of 19th-century interiors with his beautiful prints taken from the natural world, and his reverence for nature remains a striking call for ecological compassion
Words: Rosanna Morris
Although a century and a half has passed since one of Britain’s most extraordinary cultural figures, William Morris, first trod through the village of Kelmscott – describing it in a letter to his business partner Charles Faulkner, as “a heaven on Earth” – it still feels like a tranquil haven blocking out the rest of the world.
At the end of a no-through road and set among flat fields bordering the River Thames, it is clear why Morris chose this pocket of West Oxfordshire as his country retreat from the noise and industrial turmoil of London. A dozen cows graze in a small pasture, bumping up against an old house; drystone walls frame neat gardens of old farmworkers’ cottages clustered around the medieval church. The only commotion is the whispering of treetops mingled with the trills and whistles of birds and the low hum of busy insects.
Morris, a prolific designer, craftsman and decorator in the 19th century, is still renowned today as the man behind enduring patterns such as Willow Bough and Strawberry Thief. But he was also a poet, a businessman, a political activist and conservationist, and his work is as relevant today as it was 150 years ago. His great artistic, literary and political output during Victorian times was fuelled by his anger at the harm wreaked on nature by reckless consumerism and mass production and his belief that there must be more beautiful, less wasteful, fairer and greener ways to live. As we face the consequences of an environment damaged by long-term industrialisation and overconsumption, his ideas about living in harmony with the natural world remain as significant as ever.
RURAL BEAUTY
The farmstead Morris leased in Kelmscott from 1871 until his death in 1896 became a place where he was able to think deeply and imaginatively. The buildings embodied all that he cared for in architecture – the gabled Oxfordshire farmhouse, with its steep, stone-tiled roofs and mullioned windows, is layered in history and, to Morris, was beautiful in its simplicity. The house was built in 1600 and extended in the 1660s. Morris felt i
