My visit to the William Morris Gallery on the 28/4/23 was shortly after watching ep. 1 of Genius of design.

Both the episode and the museum mentioned and showed examples of Morris’ expertise in wallpapers and his skilled and detailed craftsmanship

“He took patterns from nature and made them into these wonderful, imaginative, white formalised but very simple patterns, very unlikely anything that was around at that particular period in Victorian design”

Genius of Design: Objects of Desire

I was drawn to how detailed these designs were, but was unable to make a copy of my own onto my sketchbook to replicate one of the pieces from the museum. The woodpecker tapestry is one of my favourites with all of its colourful details and depictions of animals, but interestingly enough, the gallery’s website mentions that “by the mid -1880s (around the time of this tapestry) tapestry designs at Morris & Co. were a collaborative effort”, with the exception of this one. The Chrysanthemum piece is also an interesting piece, as you can see that at the bottom, there is a lower portion of the drawing that reveals how Morris drew in pencil over a grid before adding watercolour, which is much different than the other pieces that are fully finished.