The William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow, London
Address
William Morris Gallery, Lloyd Park, Forest Road, Walthamstow, E17 4PPTheme
Overview
The William Morris Gallery in East London houses the world’s largest collection of Morris’s work. The gallery is based in a grade II* Georgian house that was Morris’s childhood home from 1848 to 1856. William Morris wrote some of his earliest poetry seated by the tall window on the main staircase and his friend Edward Burne-Jones visited the house in the 1850s where he painted studies of the trees in the gardens, now Lloyd Park.
The Gallery’s permanent exhibitions document Morris’s life from his origins in Walthamstow through the foundation of Morris & Co. to his successful career as a poet, craftsman, businessman and Socialist campaigner. Highlights include original designs for well-known wallpaper patterns, highly detailed embroideries and tapestries and pre-Raphaelite paintings. Works by Morris’s daughter May Morris also feature prominently as well as works by other members of his circle, including stained glass panels designed by his good friend, Edward Burne-Jones.
Highlight
St Cecilia panelArtist, maker and date
Designed by Edward Burne-Jones and made by Morris & Co., c.1897Reason for highlighting
This stained glass panel depicts St Cecilia, a Roman martyr and the patron saint of music and musicians. Cecilia is shown here holding a miniature pipe organ, a musical instrument she is strongly associated with. The original cartoon for this figure, drawn by Edward Burne-Jones, was first used at Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge in 1873. It was later reused at St. Nicholas, Halewood, Lancashire in 1881 and at Holy Trinity, Sloan Street, Chelsea from 1894 to 1895.
This window itself was made around 1897 for a house called ‘The Hill’ at Witley in Surrey. It was commissioned by the then owner of the property, Edgar Horne, alongside another window titled ‘Flora’. During the early years of the Firm, Morris & Co. had a close association with ‘The Hill’ when it was first owned by Myles Birket Foster. The house contained several works by Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown as well as Morris & Co. interiors.
This panel, one of a number of stunning Morris & Co. stained glass windows on display, can be seen in the Workshop Gallery at the William Morris Gallery.
Artist/maker notes
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-98) was born in Birmingham and studied at Exeter College, Oxford where he met William Morris (1834-96), with whom he would be forever be linked. The stature of this formidable artist and designer was recognised after his death when he became the first artist to be given a Memorial Service at Westminster Abbey.
Morris & Co. (1875-1940) was the successor to original business of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. William Morris had always been the driving force behind ‘the Firm’ and he finally determined to remove his earlier partners and to take the business into his own hands, with Burne-Jones as principal designer. The business flourished and continued after Morris’s death, when it also continued to use Burne-Jones’s designs. It finally closed in 1940.
Sources:
For a brief overview of the two companies see Morris & Co on Wikipedia
The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination by Fiona McCarthy, Faber & Faber, 2011.
William Morris: A Life for Our Time by Fiona MacCarthy (Faber & Faber, 1994)
Burne-Jones Special Issue, The Journal of Stained Glass, Vol. XXXV, 2011
Damozels & Deities Pre-Raphaelite Stained Glass 1870-1898 by William Waters and Alastair Carew-Cox (Seraphim Press Ltd, 2017)
Comments by
Ainsley Vinall, Assistant Curator, William Morris Gallery and Vestry House Museum