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16th October 2020
If you’ve read about William Morris, you’ll know he was hugely talented and passionate about a number of things. Did you know this included setting up the Kelmscott Press. From 1890-1896, he mastered the skill of fine hand printing. Our friends at the wonderful William Morris Society sent us these lovely photos to share with you.
In 1888, Morris attended a lecture on printing by his neighbour, Emery Walker. Mass produced, badly made and unsightly, his vision was a return to traditional craftsmanship. The books, as shown in the photos, now remain a wonderful representation of the Art and Crafts aesthetic typical for Morris.
You can see the fine detail within the books – not just ordinary passages of text. Instead, intricate, beautiful Morris designs. In total, the Kelmscott Press printed three books. According to Helen Dore, an authority on Morris, this equalled 18,234 volumes.
With Morris, this new venture was very much how his love for architecture began – pushing back on the new ways of manufacturing. At the time of the Victorian industrial revolution, Morris wanted to keep and celebrate traditional craftsmanship. Morris was a lifelong lover of medieval manuscripts, with the craft of hand printing declining. By his death, he’d collected over 1000 books of their earliest print. These all lived in the library of his home, Kelmscott.
Just like his other passion projects, the Kelmscott Press was created to perfection. “The aim of the Press was to revive the allied art crafts of type-designing, fine printing and book production, producing hand-printed limited editions on handmade paper. William Bowden and his son were employed as compositors.” (Helen Dore, William Morris, 1990)
Morris aimed to revive the craft of printing which had become less popular due to commercial degradation. “As with the other decorative arts, he was not content just to design beautiful books, but went to considerable lengths to familiarise himself with all the materials and processes involved- the paper, ink, and the cutting and making of the type.” (Helen Dore, William Morris, 1990)
Because he already knew about block printing from his time printing designs in Merton Abbey and also his talent at calligraphy. Therefore could design type fonts; “Chaucer,” “Golden” and “Troy.” Inspired by 15th Century type with all three fonts, he designed all three. Then, he continued to study them to understand the difficulties of using intricate lettering.
The images of Nature of Gothic and News from Nowhere show how detailed and beautiful the texts are. Definitely not just your average book. As you can see, each page is a work of art. He made over 600 designs for these borders, title pages and inscriptions in the last years of his life. His work, as always, was an impeccable example of artistry. Using pure linen rags instead of paper to model it on 15th Century Bolognese paper.
Each page printed for the Kelmscott Press (printed by Joseph Batchelor) had a watermark, designed by Morris. “His authoritative Arts and Crafts essay on printing gives a survey of its early history and his own views on the principles of good typography, emphasising the importance of legibility; well laid-out pages (stressing that the double, not the single, page should always be considered the unity), with margins in due proportion to the type area. Although Morris excelled at decorative borders and initials, he also felt that books could be most beautiful in terms of typography alone, without any other ornament.” (Helen Dore, William Morris, 1990)
Thank you to the William Morris Society for sending us these photos! Referenced throughout was Helen Dore.
Posted in Kelmscott manor by Laura
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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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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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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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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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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Pimpernel Cream is just such a beautiful design 😍 Remember 20% off our website ends Thursday so be quick! Use code, FLORALFRIDAY at checkout 🎄
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