The Gardens Of William Morris

Jill Hamilton et al

Editions

Review

William Morris’ work in interior decoration has long been appreciated as highly important and has indeed remained popular to the present day.  Less well-known are those of his ideas which contributed to a new direction in gardening.  In her magisterial biography William Morris: A Life For Our Time pbk £16.99, Fiona McCarthy goes so far as to ask whether there would have been a Gertrude Jekyll had Morris not insisted on the integration of garden and building.

As with his designs for the interior, in the garden Morris looked back to medieval sources, the herbal, and in this fascinating book we can explore the principles which emerged in his lectures, and were taken up by the disciples of the Arts and Crafts movement.  His principles thus had an influence on successive generations of garden designers.

We visit the sources of his childhood fascination with nature and explore the gardens he created at his Red House in Kent, Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire, Kelmscott House in Hammersmith, and also at his factory at Merton Abbey.  All of these places were inextricably bound up with the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts movements.

Included is an index of these plants, many of them our native species, which inspired his designs and we can compare the flowers, fruits, boughs and birds in nature with his most celebrated designs for wallpaper, fabrics, painting, needlework, tapestry and stained glass.  This book provides interesting new ideas on Morris and a wealth of unusual and beautiful images. - review by Stewart Grimshaw

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