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30th December 2016
Whilst walking round a very festive Ilkley in Yorkshire last week, we stumbled across a book shop, selling The Twelve Days of Christmas with illustrations by Liz Catchpole (with all the original William Morris artwork belonging to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.)
The special edition of the book takes the classic Christmas carol and allows her to combine Morris’ designs and the lyrics of the song to create this beautiful book which we’re sure will be a firm favourite amongst many for years to come! It was also interesting to read how the V&A has a long association with beginning Christmas traditions; in 1843, the world’s first Christmas card was sent by their founding director, Henry Cole. It was also Prince Albert- V&A’s patron and founder, who began the custom of decorating a Christmas tree in Britain- inspired by the German custom.
Bringing the artwork to life, in line with the song, Liz Catchpole introduces new artwork, heavily influenced by Morris, along with Morris’ classic designs in this book.
Four Calling Birds; Strawberry Thief
This design will always be one of our favourites, not only for the beautiful design itself, but for the glimpse it gives us into Morris’ life. Whilst we can see glimpses of the man through his work ethic, his writings and poetry, his letters and designs, it’s not possible to talk to someone who died over 100 years ago and ask about his day to day life with his friends and family; the undocumented everyday life of someone who’s legacy inspires thousands of designers in particular so long after he created his designs. We therefore love the stories written about his life at Kelmscott Manor, from his letters, or his daughters Jenny and May recollections of their father.
May Morris conjured up this scene when speaking of the design, “You can imagine my Father going out in the early morning and watching the rascally thrushes at work on the fruit beds and telling the fanned who growls ‘I’d like to wring their necks!’ that no bird in the garden must be touched. There were certainly more birds than strawberries in spite of attempts at protection. And the walls of the little dining-room are hung with this note of the June garden and the little lords of it.”
Eleven Pipers Piping; Pimpernel
This Licensed William Morris design was first produced in 1876, the design is named after the small pimpernel flowers rather than the large poppies that dominate it. This pattern can be seen in the Billiard Room at Wightwick Manor which is incredibly beautiful. This design has a green background and cream poppies, we also have the design available in Pimpernel Cream. We love this pattern, producing it in Green and Cream.
This is a beautiful book, if you have chance to pick it up, make sure you do, there’s so many other pages which showcase his designs with a festive twist!
Posted in William Morris by Laura
Happy first day of Spring 🌷what’s your favourite thing about spring? 🌱 Ours is of course all the stunning flowers blooming all around us 🪴 To get 15% off our website to bring some florals indoors, use code; SPRING at checkout on our website 🤍
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#williammorris #williammorrisfabric #williammorrisdesign #morrisdesign #williammorriscollection #spring #springflorals #springflowers #flowerarrangement #flowerarranging
Our fat quarters are ideal for quilting or patchwork projects, in all our licensed William Morris designs we also sell them in bundles 🌿 Our website has 15% off everything at the moment with code; SPRING 🌷
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A bit of a different one today, and we’re very amateur so don’t zoom in on our planting too much, but isn’t spring lovely tidying up the greenhouse ready to plant in? 🌱 Next up is getting some tomato plants and might even take on a dahlia or two! 🤍 If you’re a gardener and know how to keep this grape vine alive, do let us know how 😂
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Celebrating International Women’s Day today 🤍 As a female founded and run business, it’s always important for us to look at the women throughout history that have been empowered and made a difference. Few have made such a difference than May Morris, not only an expert in embroidery and design, she ran the embroidery department at her father’s business, Morris & Co. She also founded the Women’s Guild of Arts as the Art Workers Guild did not admit women - like her father was a true pioneer at the time with her talent and activities to progress women’s rights - a remarkable woman indeed 🌿 We were lucky enough to see some stunning original May Morris embroideries at our friends @williammorrissocietyuk - she was a true talent 🧵🪡
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Give us all the spring florals, we’re absolutely ready for the blooms to bloom this spring 🌷🌿 To celebrate, use code: SPRING on our website for 15% off everything (including our beautiful spring sale with exclusive colour ways and different products!) 🌱 Hope you’re all enjoying the sunshine today 🌞
Beautiful William Morris Daisy is on the table today 🌼
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#springtime #springflowers #springflowers🌸🌺🌼🌷❤️ #floralsyourway #floralsforspring #williammorris #morris #morrismagpie #preraphaelite #daisy
Celebrating World Book day with a coffee meeting over one of our favourite books; our French archive ⚜️ Filled to the brim with beautiful designs, we might have picked a couple to be our new designs! Quilters, you’re going to want to watch this space! 🫶🏻 If anyone’s interested in how we bring a new design to life, let us know we’d be happy to film it for you! 🥰
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A little afternoon tea set up 🧸 Using stunning Willow Bough blue, we thought this is a perfect William Morris kids afternoon tea party 🤍
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Prepping some beautiful blooms 🌷 Got to include our fabulous William Morris tea towels of course 🩷
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#floralhome #myfloraldays #myfloraljoys #myfloralgaff #flowers #flowerstagram #williammorris #preraphaelite #williammorrisfabric #independantbusiness
What do you think to our new tote bags? ✨ Now in cotton fabrics, we’ve been perfecting the samples for weeks and they got stolen out the office and taken on a cruise by one of our team who thought they’d be the ideal holiday totes 🤍 what do you think? Shall we make these part of our range? ♥️
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Stunning Daisy is on the table 🫶🏻 Daisy was the first design William Morris produced so it’s always such a special one amongst his fans ✨
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#floraltablecloth #placemats #placematset #daisy #williammorrisdesign #williammorris #williammorrisfabric #fabric #floralfabric #florals #floraltable
Pack a fabric stack order with us ✨ which William Morris design is your fave? 🤎
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Oh Compton we love you! 🧡 All the details within Compton are so stunning, the winding leaves and florals, did you know it was the last design Morris himself before he passed? 🤎
featuring; William Morris Compton, our licensed digitally printed design ✨
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Back in stock alert! 🐇 One of our all time favourite designs is William Morris Brother Rabbit and we’ve just digitally printed it on cotton in the red everyone has always loved so much from our licensed collection 🥰
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📣 We’ve got a big announcement! 📣 We are now digitally printing our fabrics 🎉 Still printed in the United Kingdom (of course!) we always aim to bring you the highest quality, licensed William Morris designs (and exclusive florals but more on that later..) and by digitally printing them we can really focus on the details within the fabric, you can see how crisp all the aspects within the design are here: the little strawberries and the birds are so clear in the design 🍓 Printed onto high quality cotton, we’re so pleased to be able to print Morris designs displaying all the details just as he drew all those years ago 🎨 Timeless designs that when he was printing his designs in Merton Abbey Mill using the Indigo dye technique he’d never have been able to imagine the progress made that we can now digitally print them! 🤍 Strawberry Thief red is now back in stock, such a gorgeous design we adore it ♥️
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To celebrate Valentine’s Day this week, we’ve been looking through some Pre-Raphaelite love quotes including this one from Dante Gabriel Rossetti ♥️ They sure knew how to write poetry, we’ll share more of their beautiful words this week ✨
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#dantegabrielrossetti #rossetti #preraphaelite #preraphaelites #preraphaelitebrotherhood #poetry #lovepoetry #lovequotes #valentines
Today’s tablescape feels very Valentines pretty 🤍 Beautiful Charlotte Rose is our design from our French archive, so timeless it’s on our table constantly through the year 🌹
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We’re closed for holiday soon! 🪩 From the 21st Jan- 6th Feb we’ll be taking a little break, so make sure your orders are placed before then, or we will send it when we’re back ✨ since we’re treating ourselves, we thought we’d treat you too with 15% off our website with code; MORRIS - valid until we close 🤍
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Merry Christmas everyone! 🎄 We hope you’ve all had a wonderful day ✨
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There’s still time to get your Christmas shopping ticked off! ✨ Free gift wrap on your orders and 10% off everything with code; festive 🎄 Just email us or message us to let us know you’d like us to gift wrap your order ☺️
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Loving cutting beautiful fabric stacks this Christmas! 🎄 A fabric stack is an ideal gift for quilters and crafters in your life, they’ll be able to enjoy using them for their next project ✨
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