Accumulating in the family home over the past half century or more, is this collection of consumer products. These objects stocked the shelves in an age before plastic and the hard sell.

Life

Picture an unpretentious roomy villa named ‘Elm House’ with a pretty verandah and fine views of a well planted garden and the nearby forest. It was here that William Morris was born on the 24 March 1834.

His father was a well to do stockbroker in nearby London, who made a fortune with some shares from a Devonshire copper mining company.

This windfall ensured that young William’s future was more than financially assured. He was educated at Marlborough college where the environment was so anarchic that he chose to educate himself (including Gothic architecture and medieval literature). Later he studied at Oxford intending to become a clergyman, but his career path veered first into architecture and then onto painting and crafts.

While still a student he got his first public commission, painting a mural. Although not entirely successful, the project did allow him to find his real talent: decoration. In 1858 Morris married Jane Buiden and the newlyweds had constructed for them ‘Red House’ in Bexley heath (designed by a friend, the architect Philip Webb). It was a building in the style of a thirteenth century Medieval palace, and when it came to furnishing the interior they were unable to find anything in the shops that took their fancy.

Enhanced Objects

So it was that, along with a few colleagues, Morris went to work designing furniture, wallpaper, textiles and other decorative items for the household. These designs were stylised and simple, influenced by John Ruskin’s interest in the natural and medieval worlds. Instead of being swamped in ornamentation (as was the style of the times particularly at the great exhibition of 1851), the objects had a restraint which made them reasonable and pleasant to use. To Morris, decoration should ‘enhance objects’ forms and functions rather than disguise them’.

His wallpapers, for example, are like abstracted forests: a profusion of leaves and flowers appearing almost natural. The patterns have well proportioned negative spaces, plus a near fractal (and a not immediately noticeable) geometry. These surfaces of natural harmony seep into our consciousness: a reassuring memory of humanity’s roots in the forest.

In 1861 the ‘Firm’, as it was affectionately known, was established by Morris and several associates to produce murals and stained glass. While not well known for their efficiency, the endeavour did at least stay in business over the forthcoming decade. Morris made a habit of visiting the continent to improve the ‘breadth of his palette’. One visit to Iceland proved particularly inspiring. ‘It was no idle whim which drew me there, but true instinct for what I needed’: he found a society which still knew their ancient literature and were friendly and tolerant, living in relative harmony with nature and undivided by the acute social inequities of Victorian England.

He gained new strength and inspiration from travel (Northern France also was fertile ground). In past years, a good deal of time had been spent on literary pursuits, but now his focus returned toward the visual arts. The 1870’s were his great years of experiment in design and manufacture. The business developed strongly and branched out into wallpapers, carpets, embroidery, tapestry and textiles. Designs were drawn not only from nature but also from a good deal of historical research into medieval and oriental sources.

Too Successful

As well as being well known for his poetry, Morris became a fashionable decorator as well. However the success of the ‘Firm’ caused a schism amongst the partners as they fought over the rich pickings. The company was dissolved in 1875 with Morris becoming the sole proprietor.

It was in this period that Morris left London for Kelmscott Manor in the Cotswaids, but somehow the rural environment did not prove stimulating enough and he returned to the city six years later to re-establish his workshop. Much work was farmed out to other weaving mills

Although produced by machinery, the prices of Morris’s creations remained high and the clientele very much at the high end of the market. The commissions he undertook were to decorate the interiors of such exclusive buildings as St James Palace and Balmoral.

This increasingly became, something of an contradiction, as it was at this time (in the 1880’s) that his political ideals were taking root. It was perhaps one of Ruskin’s writings that broadened Morris’s concern from the aesthetics of surfaces (wallpaper etc.) into a ’social aesthetic’ (a concern for the make up and arrangement of society)

‘…in spite of all drawbacks my work is little else than pleasure to me… over and over I have asked myself why should not my lot be the common lot… I have been ashamed when I have thought of the contrast between my happy working hours and the un-praised, un-rewarded, monotonous drudgery which most
men are condemned to’.

The Second Wave

Victorian England was swept up in what the contemporary social critic, Alvin Toffler, called ‘the second wave’: that is, the industrial revolution. There was a massive drift from the countryside to work in urban sweatshops producing consumer goods for the moneyed classes. Under the division of labour, work was broken up into meaningless, highly specialised tasks. Furthermore the factory’s caused enormous pollution and society was polarised between upper and lower classes. People were increasingly alienated from their work, alienated from nature and alienated from each other.

Small wonder then, that William Morris chose to turn away from the ugliness of the present day and gaze into the rear vision mirror: drawing inspiration from back down the road medieval society and the natural world. Meanwhile, he ran his factory as best he could in a capitalist world, paying generous wages and making the work environment pleasant, surrounding it with gardens, and providing an excellent lending library for the worker’s upliftment.

Nevertheless, he saw himself as ‘ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich’. In 1883 he joined the Democratic Federation, the only socialist body in the England at that time. Morris sacrificed much for the cause: being subjected to a hostile press and losing many of his former acquaintances as he gave his whole self to the hope of change in his lifetime. In the name of the ‘Constructive Revolution’ he lectured widely and wrote many essays on social concerns.

With the arrival of the 1890’s Morris began a new enterprise: Kelmscott press which produced small runs of books in a medieval style. They were sumptuously embellished with borders and illuminated initial letters. However the reader turned their pages more to witness the adornments, rather than to read the body text. But the quality of the production did have an enduring influence on the publishing industry into the twentieth century.

Kelmscott Press was Morris’s last great project: a fitting finale to a design career. In eight years the press issued 53 books, each requiring extensive ornamentation. His working life produced an extraordinary array of diverse achievements. As a writer he had produced close to twenty volumes of poetry, prose and lectures.

There was over five hundred patterns mass produced as wallpapers, textiles, carpets and many one-off pieces as well. He supervised the production of over 500 stained glass windows and also revived largely forgotten techniques of dying and tapestry. Others were to carry his ideas into the twentieth century. He was the inspiration for a whole movement of artists working many years after his death.

His influence also contributed to the rise of Art Nouveau and the Vienna Secession. In the field of politics, he was seen as one of the few major English social thinkers, giving over 250 public lectures.

Death

Now In his sixties, morris was an old man exhausted by his own energies and he died on 3rd October 1896. The funeral would have been to his liking: the coffin was carried through the countryside in a red and yellow farm wagon, wreathed in vine and strewn with Willow branches. However, the essential nature of his ideas and the quality his designs live on. George Bernard Shaw wrote at the time of his passing ‘You can lose a man like that by your own death, but not by his. And so, until then, let us rejoice in him.’

Life

So let us rejoice in him. If he is alive today, then, where on earth is he? In who’s body and at what address is he now dwelling?

Tibetan Yogi’s say that reincarnation occurs, in a body and social environment very similar to the one you last left. One’s mental waves can only move into a congenial environment. So perhaps he has found his new body and environment somewhere in one of the developing countries which is presently undergoing rapid industrialisation. He’d certainly feel quite at home there, as they are experiencing a similar ’second wave’ to the one he encountered in nineteenth century England.

An enormous drift to the cities; millions slaving in sweatshops for a small upper class; enormous ecological problems; and the erosion of traditional rural cultures. In Bangkok or Bombay his ideals are just as relevant today as they were in his day. Surely a William Morris will emerge in those cultures as they attempt to balance modernity with human dignity.

Or could he have ended up in the West? We are now attempting to surf Toffler’s third wave(i.e. the technological revolution). In the past one hundred years society has undergone enormous changes in terms of scientific development. For anyone travelling from the last century, 747’s, CD ROMS and smart cards might provide temporary disorientation.

Same Old.. Same Old

However, in terms of the ethical landscape, a reincarnated Mr Morris would find his bearings pretty quickly! While the basic necessities of life are more of a guarantee than in his day, masses of employees still feel like cogs in the machine. Moreover, the sense of alienation and breakdown of community in the big cities is probably worse than in Victorian England, as is the environmental crisis. There would certainly be no shortage of social ills for him to agitate about.

So, he’s probably here somewhere.

I got a Tibetan Lama onto the case and before long, we found him, right here in Sydney! After a six year stint in Lismore, he’s come back to the big smoke. The Lama provided me with an email address, and because I just happened to be doing a school assignment on him, I thought it might be a good idea to pay him a visit.

Three days later I had a long interview with Mr Morris. The following is some impressions and transcripts from that interview:

He had a design studio in the Eastern Suburbs. He wants neither asceticism nor luxury. He likes working with his hands. He likes nature and the outdoors. He went bush a lot, and it was a big influence on him. He had a strong interest in Aboriginal culture too, and this also is a big influence on him. He liked surfing (it’s to do with stability).

He surfed ‘the second wave’ some time back in a manner that was an example to us all… now for the third wave. He gave the impression that sometimes he was walking backwards, yet he had a great vision. He knew the past (perhaps) to know the future. He used to have an explosive temper, but somehow he channelised it into creative energy. He loved his work and wanted everyone else’s work to become artwork too.

He thought ‘art was something which they can no more do without than water or lighting’. He agreed with Milton Glaser that art was nothing else but great work (any sort of great work). He had six or seven people working for him. He let them work in a ‘wholesome’ manner, let them get into their own creative flow:

Masters of Our Machines

A man at work,making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as his body. This combination of physical exercise with creativity was the key to satisfaction… the aim should be varied, pleasant… creative work for all.’

He used a Macintosh quite a bit, but not all the time. He was no Luddite. He certainly did not believe that all machinery should be abolished.

‘We should be the masters of our machines and not their slaves, as we are now. It is not this or that tangible steel or brass machine which we want to get rid of , but the great intangible machine of commercial tyranny’. He foresaw a great role for labour saving machinery, and hoped through the simplification of life, the reduction of demand and the development of machinery, it would be possible ‘to reduce the work of the world to a minimum… till at last pretty nearly everything that is necessary to men will be made by machines except works of art’.

Rather than standing in the way of technological progress, he was relying on it for the fulfilment of his vision. He was very definitely non mainstream. He looked a bit like a hippy, but was more than that… more concrete.

‘He did not favour unfettered individualism in personal relationships. One could do as they please ‘ as long as you don’t interfere with other people’s rights to do the same’. Hence the exercise of some kind of authority becomes necessary. Never-the-less he hoped to reduce all forms of authority, whether government, education, or systems of morality, to the minimum. The object of his society was to provide a framework for individual fulfilment rather than to organise for the collective good’.

He was a ‘cool’ hippy, who rather than reacting or dropping out, worked hard at his craft and at his ideas for the future. He was in contact with thousands over the internet, agitating for change, transmitting megabytes and megabytes about his Utopia. He is sometimes told that he underestimates the diversity of human nature.

He was surfing the net one day when he came across ‘VS’: Voluntary Simplicity: Professional people too busy to be happy, ‘downshift’, by reducing their spending, perhaps by 300% and join the newly leisured class… doing what they really want to do. He reads ‘Simply Living’ magazine and has their bumper sticker too: ‘Live simply so others may simply live’. He had an idea for a factory as it should be:

Suburbia - Utopia?

‘It would be a well designed building set in fine gardens. There would be no litter, no water pollution, no fumes or smoke. It would be a social centre in it’s own right, with it’s restaurant, library, school and concert hall, and would contain some first rate paintings and sculpture. It would combine work with technical and intellectual education, music and drama. Quality products would be produced and with the use of extensive machinery and the reduction in demand it would be possible to reduce working hours to less than four a day’.

He didn’t mind suburbia… at least it was a start. Perhaps it was the first step to the sort of settlements he had in mind.

‘The simplification of demand and diversifying of work would be accompanied by a redistribution of the population. The great conurbations would be broken up and the villages and country towns repopulated … all houses, well set in gardens and near open spaces [thus] I want the town to be impregnated with the beauty of the country and the country with the intelligence and vivid life of the town’.

He believed that these changes would lead to a settled, completely decentralised life without any government in the modern sense. ‘It will be necessary for the unit of administration to be small enough for every citizen to feel themselves responsible for its details, and be interested in them.

Coming home from the interview I had a few final thoughts: Technology is neutral. The third wave is, after all, just water. It is completely malleable, we can choose to do with it what we like. Good or bad. It’s up to us to manipulate it with a well developed ethical sensibility.

We can allow Big Brother and BigCorp. to have us wired up to every one of their digital prompts. Or we can go for something else… I don’t know… a human scaled horizontal society perhaps. Mr Morris seems to have some ideas on this point.

Bibliography

• Sparke, Penny. Design in Context, Bloomsbury, London, 1987
• Clarke, Fiona. William Morris: Walllpapers and Chintzes, Academy Editions,
  London, 1963
• Thomson, Paul. The Work of William Morris, Heinemann, London, 1967
• Schwarz, Walter. So simple. sell up, downshift. live easy, SMH, Saturday,
  October 28, 1995
• Toffler, Alvin. The Third Wave