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out the secret of the weaving of the fine
Persian carpets, discovering, I believe, that
they were made of goats' hair. He made
some attempt to revive this method in Eng-
land, but from one cause or another was not
successful. William Morris, when he had
learned the craft of weaving himself, set
about teaching others, and trained two
youths, one of whom (Mr. Dearle) is now
chief at the Merton Abbey Works, who
became exceedingly skilful at the work,
executing the large
and elaborate de-
sign of Sir Edward
Burne-Jones (The
Adoration of the
Magi), which was
first worked for the
chapel of his own
and Morris's col-
lege (Exeter Col-
lege) at Oxford.

In this tapestry, as was his wont, Morris enriched the

design with a foreground of flowers, through which the

Magi approach

with their gifts the

group of the Virgin and Child, with St. Joseph.

In fact, the designs of William Morris are so associated with and so often form part of the work of others, or only appear

him. His artistic influence was really due to the way he supervised work under his control, carried out by many different craftsmen under his eye, and not so much by his own actual handiwork.

In any estimate of William Morris's power and influence as an artist, this should always be borne in mind. He always described himself as an artist working with assistants, which is distinct from the manufacturer who simply directs a business from

the business point

of view. Nothing went out of the works at Queen Square, or, later, at Merton Abbey, without his sanction from the artistic point of view.

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The wave of taste which he had done so much to create certainly brought prosperity to the firm, and larger premises had to be taken; Morris & Company emerged from the seclusion of Queen Square and opened a large shop in Oxford Street, and set up extensive works at Merton Abbey -a most charming and picturesque group of workshops, surrounded by trees and kitchen-gardens, on the banks of the river Wandle in Surrey, not far from Wimbledon. The tapestry and carpet looms which were first set up at Kelmscott House, on the upper mall at Hammersmith,* were moved to Merton, where also the dyeing and painted glass-work were carried on.

The Daisy-an Early Wall-Paper Design.

in some conditioned material form, that little or no idea of his individual work, or of his wide influence, could be gathered from any existing autograph work of his.

That he was a facile designer of floral ornament his numerous beautiful wall-papers and textile hangings prove, but he always considered that the finished and final form of a particular design, complete in the material for which it was intended, was the only one to be looked at, and always objected to showing preliminary sketches and working drawings. He was a keen judge and examiner of work, and fastidious, and as he did not mind taking trouble himself he expected it from those who worked for This house was formerly held by D. G. Rossetti.

This latter art had long been an important part of the work of the firm. In early days designs were supplied by Ford Madox

"Here Morris lived when in London and his press was set up close by at Sussex House, opposite to which is the Dove's Bindery of Mr. Cobden-Sanderson. Much of Morris's time was spent at Kelmscott, near Lechlade, Gloucestershire, a delightful old manor house close to the Thames stream.

Brown and D. G. Rossetti, but later they were entirely from the hands of Morris's closest friend, Edward Burne-Jones; that is to say, the figurework. Floral and subsidiary design was frequently added by William Morris, as were also the leading of the cartoons. The results of their co-operation in this way have been the many fine windows scattered over the land, chiefly at Oxford and Cambridge, where the Christ Church window and those at Jesus College may be named, while the churches of Birmingham have been enriched by many splendid examples, more particularly at St. Philip's. Their glass has also found place in the United States, in Richardson's famous church at Boston, and at the late Miss Catherine Wolfe's house, Vinland, Newport.

An exquisite autograph work of William Morris's is the copy of "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám," which he wrote out and illuminated with his

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own hand, though even to this work BurneJones contributed a miniature, and Mr. Fairfax Murray worked out other designs in some of the borders. This beautiful work is in the possession of Lady BurneJones, and was exhibited at the first Arts and Crafts Exhibition in 1888. And it is by her special permission that I am enabled to give some reproductions of the pages here.

It is so beautiful that one wonders the artist was not induced to do more work of the kind; but there is only known to be one or two other manuscripts partially completed by him. Certainly his love for mediæval illuminated MSS. was intense and his knowledge great, and his collection of choice and rare works of this kind probably unique.

Other Pages from Mr. Morris's Manuscript Copy of

The same might be said of his collection of early printed books, which was wonderfully rich with wood-cuts of the best time and from the most notable presses of Germany, Flanders, Italy, and France.

This brings us to William Morris's next and, as it proved, last development in artthe revival of the craft of the printer, and its pursuit as an art.

I recall the time when the project was first discussed. It was in the autumn of 1889. It was the year of an Art Congress at Edinburgh, following the initial one at Liverpool the preceding year, held under the auspices of the National Association for the Advancement of Art. Some of us afterward went over to Glasgow to lecture; and a small group, of which Morris was one, found

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themselves at the Central Station Hotel together. It was here that William Morris spoke of his new scheme, his mind being evidently centred upon it. Mr. Emery Walker (who has supplied me with the photographs which illustrate this article) was there, and was his constant and faithful helper in all the technicalities of the printers' craft; Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, also, who may be said to have introduced a new epoch in book-binding, and whose name was often associated with Morris as binder of some of his books.

Morris took up the craft of printing with characteristic thoroughness. He began at the beginning and went into the paper question, informing himself as to the best materials and methods, and learning to make a

sheet of paper himself. The Kelmscott Press paper is made by hand, of fine white linen rags only, and is not touched with chemicals. It has the toughness and something of the quality of fine Whitman drawing-paper.

When he set to work to design his types he obtained enlarged photographs of some of the finest specimens of both. Gothic and Roman, from the books of the early printers, chiefly of Bale and Venice. He studied and compared these, and as the result of his analysis designed two or three different kinds of type for his press, beginning with the Golden" type, which might be described as a Roman type under Gothic influence, and developing the more frankly Gothic forms known as the "Troy" and the "Chaucer types. He also used Roman capitals founded upon the best forms of the early Italian printers.

Morris was wont to say that he considered the glory of the Roman alphabet was in its capitals, but the glory of the Gothic alphabet was in its lower case letters.

He was asked why he did not use types after the style of the lettering in some of his title-pages, but he said this would not be reasonable, as the lettering of the titles were specially designed to fit into the given spaces, and could not be used as movable type.

The initial letters are Gothic in feeling, and form agreeably bold quantities in black and white in relation to the close and rich matter of the type, which is still further relieved occasionally by floral sprays in bold open line upon the inner margins, while when woodcut pictures are used they were led up to by rich borderings.

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The margins of the title and opening chapter which faced it are occupied by richly designed broad borders of floral arabesques upon black grounds, the lettering of the title forming an essential part of the ornamental effect, and often placed upon a mat or net of lighter, more open arabesque, in contrast to the heavy quantities of the solid border.

The Kelmscott Chaucer is the monumental work of Morris's press, and the border de

signs, made specially for this volume, suppass in richness and sumptuousness all his others, and fitly frame the woodcuts after the designs of Sir Edward BurneJones.

The arabesque borders and initial letters of the Kelm

scott books were all

drawn by Morris himself, the engraving on wood was

mostly done by Mr. W. H. Hooperalmost the only first-rate fac-simile engraver on wood left and a good artist and craftsman besides. Mr. Arthur Leverett engraved the designs to "The Glittering Plain," which were my contribution to the Kelmscott

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Press, but I believe

Mr. Hooper did all

The Peacock-Woollen Hanging.

Design for Silk Hanging.

the other work, while Mr. Fairfax Murray and Mr. Catteson Smith drafted the BurneJones designs upon the wood.

It is not, perhaps, generally known that many

years before the Kelmscott Press was thought of an illustrated edition of "The Earthly Paradise" was in contemplation, and not only were many designs made by Burne-Jones, but a set of them were actually engraved by Morris himself upon wood for the "Cupid and Psyche," though they were never issued to the public.

I have spoken of the movement in art represented by William Morris and his colleagues as really part of a great movement of protest-crusade against the purely commercial, industrial, and material tendencies of the day.

This protest culminated with William Morris when he espoused the cause of Socialism.

Now some have tried to minimize the Socialism of William Morris, but it was, under the circumstances of his time, the logical and natural out

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come of his ideas and opinions, and is in direct relation with his artistic theories and practice.

For a thorough understanding of the conditions of modern manufacture and industrial production, of the ordinary influences which govern the producers of marketable commodities, of wares offered in the name of art, of the condition of worker, and the pressure of competition, he was in a particularly advantageous position.

So far from being a sentimentalist who was content melodiously and pensively to regret that things were not otherwise, he was driven by contact with the life around him to his economic conclusions. As he said himself, it was art led him to Socialism, not economics, though he confirmed his convictions by economic study.

As an artist, no doubt at first he saw the uglification of the world going on, and the vast industrial and commercial machine grinding the joy and the leisure out of human life as regarded the great mass of humanity. But as an employer he was brought into direct relation with the worker, as well as the market and the public, and he became fully convinced that the modern system of production for profit and the world-market, however inevitable as a stage in economic and social evolution, was not only most detrimental to a healthy and spontaneous development of art and to conditions of labor, but that it would be bound, ultimately, by the working of natural laws, to devour itself.

Never cramped by poverty in his experiments and in his endeavors to realize his ideals, singularly favored by fortune in all his undertakings, he could have had no personal reasons on these scores for protesting against the economic and social tendencies and characteristics of his own time.

He hated what is called modern civilization and all its works from the first, with a whole heart, and made no secret of it. For all that, he was a shrewd and keen man in his dealings with the world. If he set its fashions and habits at defiance, and persisted in producing his work to please himself, it was not his fault that his countrymen eagerly sought them and paid lavishly for their possession. A common reproach hurled at Morris has been that he produced costly works for the rich while VOL. XXII-10

he professed Socialism. This kind of thing, however, it may be remarked, is not said by those friendly to Socialism, or anxious for the consistency of its advocates-quite the contrary. Such objectors appear to ignore, or to be ignorant of, the fact that according to the quality of the production must be its cost; and that the cheapness of the cheapest things of modern manufacture is generally at the cost of the cheapening of human labor and life, which is a costly kind of cheapness after all.

If anyone cares for good work, a good price must be paid. Under existing conditions possession of such work is only possible to those who can pay the price, but this seems to work out rather as part of an indictment against the present system of production, which Socialists wish to alter.

If a wealthy man were to divest himself of his property and distribute it, he would not bring Socialism any nearer, and his selfsacrifice would hardly benefit the poor at large (except, perhaps, a few individuals), but under the working of the present system his wealth would ultimately enrich the rich-would gravitate to those who had, and not to those who had not. The object of Socialism is to win justice, not charity.

A true commonwealth can only be established by a change of feeling, and by the will of the people, deliberately, in the common interest, declaring for common and collective possession of the means of life and of wealth, as against individual property and monopoly. Since the wealth of a country is only produced by common and collective effort, and even the most individual of individualists is dependent for every necessary, comfort, or luxury of life upon the labor of untold crowds of workers, there is no inherent unreasonableness in such a view, or in the advocacy of such a system, which might be proved to be as beneficial, in the higher sense, for the rich as for the poor. It is, of course, quite possible to cling to the contrary opinion, but it should be fully understood that Socialism does not mean " dividing up," and that a man is not necessarily not a Socialist who does not sell all that he has to give to the poor. "A poor widow is gathering nettles to stew for her dinner. A perfumed seigneur lounging in the ail de bœuf hath an alchemy whereby

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