Visual Culture and Communication - William Morris
- Harriet Best
- Jan 21, 2020
- 13 min read
Updated: Mar 9, 2022
"Select an innovative designer of your choice (or aspect of their practice (e.g. materials) and discuss how visual culture and communication (past or present) has influenced their design practice and consider how their ideas could be applied to your own practice"
Born 1834 in Essex, England, poet and printmaker William Morris (Fig 1) had a normal, middle class family life. His father, who he is named after, was a financier who worked as a partner in the firm Sanderson & Co. but died in 1887. He inherited £900 (£120,000 today (UK inflation calculator)) which set him up for a good start in life. Whilst studying medieval architecture (Fred Showker, 2004) at Exeter College, Oxford, he spent three years trying to become a painter, he was not artistically gifted and swiftly gave that up. He moved on to observe the effects Victorian industrialisation was having on the current architectural mise en scene and witnessed the destruction of buildings soon replaced with modern forms of quick, meaningless, architecture all over Oxford. Morris became frustrated with this and his attitude towards architecture changed from the invention of new design methods to the preservation of traditional craftsmanship, and it was these thoughts that led to an iconic movement of the 19th century (Ray Watkinson, 1967, William Morris as Designer P9-19).
In the late 1800s, people were becoming concerned with the increase of steam powered machines, factories (Fig 2) and their negative effects on design and traditional craft (Emma Taggart,2018). The emergence of the ‘visual turn’ in western culture occurred during the industrial revolution (1760 to 1840 onwards). The development of mass consumer markets and urbanization required wider communication of goods and services as users settled in disperse locations and production evolved (Mitchell, 1994; Mirzoeff, 1998; Julier, 2006). The Victorian period visualised the industrial culture through department stores, catalog shopping, mass tourism and entertainment (Julier, 2006).
In response to industrialisation, and the rise in fast fashion, architects, designers, craftsmen, and artists turned to new ways of living and working, pioneering new approaches to create decorative arts. William Morris led this movement and “called for a fitness of purpose, truth to the nature of the materials and methods of production, and individual expression by both artist and worker” (Meggs & Purvis, 2011, p. 160) essentially investigation of the relationship between the viewer and the viewed” (Julier, 2006, p.64). Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company’s prospectus 1861, established the firm as fine art workmen providing mural decoration, wall hangings, stained glass, metal work and furniture. By 1862, the firm started designing Wallpaper. Morris noticed an increase in national sales with 1,222,000 rolls sold in 1834, and 32,000,000 rolls in 1874.
Morris designed the prints and commissioned a company Barret’s, to carve the designs into wood. The blocks would be taken to Jeffry & Co. who printed the designs onto paper. The cost of cutting 12 blocks was £15 (£1800 today (UK inflation calculator)) with each design taking months to make and produce (Lesley Hoskins, 1996, William Morris, P198 – 206).
Wallpaper was a standard decorative item and was available at all levels of the market. MMF&Co. entered at the top of the market dominated by two styles. ‘French’ (Fig 3) design was popular with aristocratic clientele; consisting of pale realistic floral bunches whilst the ‘reformed’ (Fig 4) style used dark, dramatic colours with sharp floral patterns suggesting a more gothic style. Wallpapers Daisy (Fig 6) and Pomegranate (Fig 7) (1864-1866/7) tend to be associated with the informal medieval look similar to the ‘reformed’ style, however because they differ from both, it is hard to know where they fit. (Lesley Hoskins, 1996, William Morris, P198 – 206).
In 1865, Lady Mount Temple, wife to William Cowper (a politician) describes ‘French’ decoration in her memoirs, “watered papers on the walls, garlands of roses tied with blue bows.” Rosetti (a British poet, illustrator, painter and translator) came to dinner and was asked his opinion on the wallpaper. He said, he “should start by burning everything she had got”. They commissioned MMF&Co. to redesign the house to a more reformed, gothic style.
Morris’ work was deemed an upgrade to the typical ‘French’ design which Morris tried so hard to get away from. However, people either loved or hated Morris’ work, with Lady Mount Temples guests hating the Morris makeover. “Now our taste was attacked on the other side, and all of our candid relations and friends said that we had made our pretty little house, hideous.” (Ray Watkinson, 1967, William Morris as Designer P9-19).
Morris’ wall papers were commercially successful and played an important role in raising the status of English wallpaper to a position of international interest and he was one of the first designers to take wallpaper out of anonymity. 1871 saw a rise in ‘art’ wallpapers (of which was Morris’ genre) which completely ousted the dominant ‘French’ and Reformed styles. Other companies started to recognise this increase and started to design their own form of ‘art’ wallpapers and copied Morris’ form of medieval, gothic, arts and crafts style. Customers were bored of the normal, cluttered mismatched Victorian style of decorating and were keen to expand into a new, fresh and exciting era of design. Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement offered this, and soon the slick, organised, beautiful, handcrafted, cohesive aesthetic of MMF&Co. was known in the press as ‘Morrisonian’ and paper hangings had their heyday. (Lesley Hoskins, 1996, William Morris, P198 – 206).
1870, the firm dabbled with incorporating socialist values into their expanding range of products whilst making the price accessible to a variety of customers breaking class divides. Wallpapers were handcrafted, with Morris over seeing all aspects of production, placing an even bigger emphasis on the value of Arts and Crafts. Each design and sheet of wallpaper demonstrated a form of individual expression by both artist and worker and the new range of designs used two different layers of printing. One all over background, and one top layer adding dimension and detail (Fig 5)(Lesley Hoskins, 1996, William Morris, P198 – 206).
In Vine, (Fig 5) layers are successfully interwoven providing a pattern with shallow depth making the wall flat and simplistic. Colours symbolise different things in different cultures and portray different messages. This could be because of Historical Art and Design Movements, Global perspectives or Groupings within society, (Julier, 2006) these aspects can be used separately, or all at once, but it’s a designer’s role to research, respect and explore these aspects as the designs created need to be appropriate for the user. “Culture [including cultural shifts] has distinguishable characteristics – such as peer relationships, personal aspirations, and values – that make one society [or sub-culture] unique in comparison to others” (Hofstede, 2004 cited in Scherer, 2005, p. 79) meaning that everyone is different, every society is different for different reasons, but it’s a good designer that notices this and understands why certain designs might be inappropriate.
In Western countries the colour blue, has masculine connotations and is associated with business. China, perceives blue to connote femininity and immortality. This is a problem because “designers think and work through different mediums. Different thought processes/approach[es] but [work with] one common objective: to communicate” Julier (2006, p.70) but if this design is communicating the wrong message, then the job of the designer has not been fulfilled and the work can become offensive or inappropriate for the client and space users.
This could also be down to the mentality of different cultures because they process things in different ways. Mentality influences how individual users and designers perceive objects, our culture can also have these influences as people in a certain area collectively think in the same way linking to Hofstede's individualism and collectivism concepts. Significant differences have been reported between East Asian collectivists and Western individualist users and designers. “The Western mentality is analytic, focusing attention on the object, categorizing it by reference to its attributes, and ascribing causality based on rules about it”. “The East Asian mentality is holistic, focusing attention on the field in which the object is located and ascribing causality by reference to the relationship between the object and the field” (Norenzayan and Nisbett, 2000) In an experiment Morris and Peng (1994) showed cartoons of an individual fish moving within a group. Participants were asked to explain the actions of one fish. East Asian participants described the behaviour of the fish and its actions including its relationship to the group of fish (holistic situation including the object) American participants discussed the fish and its action based on its individual characteristics (specific object alone) (Norenzayan and Nisbett, 2000, p.132) “The ancient Chinese has a holistic stance, meaning that there was an orientation toward the field in which the object was found and a tendency to explain the behaviour of the object in terms of its relation to the field” “The ancient Greek focus was on categorizing the object with reference to its attributes and explaining its behaviour using rules about its category memberships” (Norenzayan and Nisbett, 2000, p.133) This impacts how individuals perceive the objects designers make through cultural learning and influences what the design will communicate.
“The reason designers looked into nature for inspiration had much to do with earlier scientific research into the working of the natural world, such as Darwin’s treatise on the origin of species published in 1959, the botanical illustrations of Ernst Haeckel 1899 and the photographic flower studies taken by Karl Blossfeldt in 1865”. (Charlotte and Peter Fiell, 2001) This suggests designers were first attracted to nature because of the effects publishing had on society. Designers of the time had nothing more to go off than societal hype and current publishing and with all of the excitement of new plant discoveries, illustrations and recordings; it would be quite easy to conclude that the publishing of someone else’s work might have been one of the influences for Morris’ wallpapers. Ironically going against pure originality and conforming to the status quo.
It is more likely that Morris perhaps was influenced by other examples of Botanical publishing than the ones mentioned above, however, it is clear that he was subjected to a chain of textuality, and a collection of ideas and messages that shaped his own. Having said that, his use of flowers and different species of plant, could have been used rhetorically, as the messages he was receiving from society could have been that these books were only good enough for the working classes or for educated people, these messages could have then been distorted by his socialist views, which would explain why he then went on to make his floral, reformed, wallpaper for all classes (Cavallaro, 2001).
Morris once said on the Art and Craft movement that it is, “the expression of man’s delight in his labour, a joy to the maker and the user” and his creations were “made by people, for the people”. (Lesley Hoskins, 1996, William Morris, P198 – 206). He strove for architectural and social emancipation, and was wanting to preserve the natural life form and the traditional methods of producing such fine work. The movement he led was a reaction and a revolt against the mass production of the industrial revolution and he even preferred poorly made hand crafted items to new, sparkly mass-produced ones (Fred Showker, 2004).
He looked to the medieval past and took a lot of inspiration from the gothic style and making of churches and the way they made their furniture with basic means of production. Global influences from Japan filtered through with the opening of trade; incorporating new ideas of clutter free, organised living, opposite to the cluttered, classic Victorian style of displaying inanimate objects. He once said “we should have nothing in our houses which we do not either know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”, taking the materialistic aspect out of design and encouraged people to invest in humble products made by humble men to serve a purpose in the home.
His ideologies have influenced many design movements since then including Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Surrealism and some movements even happening today. The Biophilia Hypothesis (also called BET) is a theory that investigates the way humans seek connections with nature and other forms of natural life. Edward O. Wilson wrote the book Biophilia in 1984 and defines his theory as "the human urge to affiliate with other forms of life". The etymology of the word Biophilia derives from the ancient Greek language, βίο- (bío-) meaning life and φιλία- (philia) translating to the love or liking (of something); therefore essentially meaning the love or liking of life. Today, Biophilia refers to a sustainable design strategy (Fig 8) that incorporates reconnecting people with the natural environment. Studies by the Environmental Protection Agency have concluded that “Americans, on average, spend approximately 90% of their time indoors, where the concentrations of some pollutants are often 2 to 5 times higher than typical outdoor concentration” where there is also no connection to nature. Not only can being indoors for too long increase the chances of contracting: Irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat headaches, dizziness, and fatigue, respiratory diseases, heart disease, and cancer, but it can also majorly impact mental health. Professor of psychology from the University of Rochester, Richard Ryan, states “spending time outside in green, natural environments can boost your vitality—a feeling of physical and mental energy—by nearly 40%”. More research has linked time spent in nature to improved mood and mental health, reduced sensations of pain and milder symptoms of attention-related disorders among kids. Like meditation and other practices that promote mindfulness, spending time outside and in nature seems to relax and heighten your focus while simultaneously clearing your mind’s workload”.
To tackle this problem, it only felt natural to start integrating plants and living organisms into indoor spaces. Designer Oliver Heath and company BRE launched, in July 2017, The Biophilic office project – “a ground-breaking office refurbishment project that will provide quantified evidence on the benefits of biophilic design on health, well-being and productivity of office occupants.” They found that “In our typical office environment in the UK up to 60% of staff don’t have sufficient access to daylight. More than 130 million days are lost to sickness absence every year in Great Britain and working-age ill health costs the national economy £100 billion a year. A 1% reduction in absenteeism would convert to a saving in lost days alone of £1 billion to the economy. The way designer Oliver Heath claimed he was going to tackle and improve this was by
· “Improving the connection to real forms of nature, things like plants, and trees and water and fresh air.”
· “Using indirect connections to nature which is how we use natural materials, colours, textures and patterns to help people to connect to nature, be that real, or indirect.”
· “To allow us to create spaces that are energising, stimulating and aspirational, but by contrast, calming, restorative and recuperative” (Fig 9)
Although The Biophilia Hypothesis was not even thought of for another century after William Morris, in some ways I think he might have been inspired by it. His basic, primitive understanding and recognition of the science behind why humans need a contact with nature was there. Every piece of furniture, or pain of stained glass he designed had a flower, vine or bird delicately integrated into the design. He felt the urge to preserve for many years to come, the natural form and even the traditional techniques used to do so. Whilst he really had no other choice than to use natural materials (because idiotic plastic hadn’t been invented yet) everything was sustainable, locally sourced and easily recyclable. Whilst he hated industrialisation, a part of modern life we are unfortunately stuck in, he hated it because it drove a wedge between the people and the art. That could mean the art of the natural world in terms of biophilia or more simply, the way an item is organically designed, produced and crafted by hand.
Whilst Morris was always focused on the past and was constantly looking back to medieval times for inspiration, there is no doubt that he truly was somewhat forward thinking with his introduction of plants into the living space and his methods of doing so. His ideas, and values of simplicity and individual craftsmanship are still with us today and have been far more successful than his career and his company, however, they gave way to a whole new period, the arts and crafts movement which has gone on to influence many more.
William Morris has influenced my work in one of my projects towards my degree called The Corridor of Uncertainty (Images below). Within this project, it was my task to theoretically redesign a cold, dark depressing corridor in our university to make it a place where people wanted to relax, study, and display their work. I have incorporated Biophilic design within my project to enhance the mood of stressed teachers and students whilst bringing in more natural light, real plants, water features, natural tones and brighter colours to accompany this. I made sure that all of my materials were either bespoke, and handmade, or refurbished and upcycled as I wanted the corridor to stick to one of Morris’ core values “made by people, for the people” whilst also making sure that everything was sustainably sourced (no further than 30 miles away) and 100% recyclable. I also had to take into account the heating source, using under floor heating methods and top-quality insulation to make it as economically viable as possible.
Regrettably I did not use any wallpaper in my design as the space was for a commercialised, professional setting and wallpaper can be easily damaged, but I incorporated key aspects of the Arts and Crafts movement including leading lines, stained glass, parquet flooring, the introduction of plants into the interior and handmade items. I think I incorporates his ethos and values more than any physical nods towards his style, however, the outcome I achieved was modern, attractive, welcoming, professional, calming and sleek.
William Morris has taught me that it’s okay not to be the best painter in the world, its okay to be a perfectionist and that sometimes design strategy and ideological values are more important than colour schemes and pillows. He has taught me not to get so caught up in one specific aspect of my design, to keep the space minimal, sleek, organised and jolly. He has taught me that a beautiful house is the most important thing a man or woman could wish to desire and to only keep in it things that are useful or deemed to be beautiful. He has taught me to look outside or to history for inspiration and to bring that inside and cheer everyone up. He has taught me to be original with my thinking and to be pragmatic with my design choices. I feel privileged to have been able to research a man who’s passion and creativity will continue to inspire myself and many others for a long time and have thoroughly enjoyed understanding his works.
Reference List
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