William Morris. Arthur Clutton-Brock

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СКАЧАТЬ according to his own designs or the designs of his friends was the immediate cause of the foundation of the firm of Morris & Co. It is not certain who first proposed the enterprise, though it had long been in Morris’s mind, but Rossetti, Madox Brown the painter, Burne-Jones and Webb were all parties to it. To them were added Faulkner, Morris’s old College friend, and Peter Paul Marshall, a friend of Madox Brown, and a sanitary engineer. He never did much for the firm, but Faulkner worked hard for it, both as a man of business, and, to the best of his ability, as a craftsman.

      The circular of the firm, which is headed Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., insists upon the need of co-operation in all decorative art and upon the continual supervision of the artist. This, indeed, was what distinguished the firm from ordinary commercial enterprises. They may employ an artist to make designs, but they seldom employ him to supervise the execution of them. The result is that the designer usually produces what will suit the workman instead of the workman working to satisfy the artist. When execution and design are thus estranged, execution inevitably tends to deteriorate. For it is the spur of design, especially when the designer is himself the workman, that makes the workman do better than his former best. New tasks are set to him, as they are set to executants in music; and the artist at his elbow, or the artist in himself, urges him to perform them. But when the designer never sees the workman, and has no control over his work, his designs are often so unsuited to the material that the workmen get the habit of doing what they will with them. And in a purely commercial business the employer is content if the result sells well. He, being a man of business and probably knowing little about art, demands from artists designs which he thinks are likely to sell. He prefers an artist who follows the fashion to one who follows his own bent. We cannot blame him but only the public, which expects such a system to supply them with works of art.

      Morris’s aim was as far as possible to put an end to this estrangement between design and execution. He was determined that his design should be executed just as he wished; and further, he was determined to design as if he had the object designed already before him. He knew that an artist who designs in the abstract without any knowledge of his material can never follow his own bent, for it is knowledge of the material that provokes real invention in design. And he meant to follow his own bent and then see if the public would not buy his goods. The taste consulted in the ordinary decorator’s business is nobody’s taste; it is merely what some businessman thinks may be the taste of the public. Morris meant to consult his own taste, for he knew that only by doing can an artist produce works of art.

      41. Philip Webb, The Forest (Detail), 1887. Design for the tapestry The Forest. Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

      42. The Forest, 1887. Tapestry. Woven wool and silk on a cotton warp, 121.9 × 452 cm. Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

      The circular gave the following account of work that the firm proposed to do:

      I. Mural decoration, either in pictures or in pattern work, or merely in the arrangement of colours, as applied to dwelling houses, churches or public buildings.

      II. Carving generally as applied to architecture.

      III. Stained glass, especially with reference to its harmony with mural decoration.

      IV. Metal work in all its branches, including jewellery.

      V. Furniture, either depending for its beauty on its own design, on the application of materials hitherto overlooked, or on its conjunction with figure and pattern painting.

      Under this head is included embroidery of all kinds, stamped leather and ornamental work in other such materials, besides every article necessary for domestic use.

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