The William Morris who persists in the public mind is mostly the one who lingers on our walls – so much so that curators have often felt compelled to ‘reveal’ his other sides, such as his poetry or his interest in social reform. In focusing on the medium for which Morris is best known, it might seem as if ‘The Art of Wallpaper: Morris & Co.’, curated by Mary Schoeser and now on display at York Art Gallery after its initial showing at Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh, has avoided this tendency. But in fact the exhibition is far from familiar. What we have here is a concerted exercise in taking wallpaper seriously as an expressive medium, as well as a deep dive into a burgeoning Victorian industry whose reference points may not be what we expect.
This initially means having Morris step aside. He didn’t come out of nowhere, after all, and the first room makes that clear. It was the design reform movement, inspired by the writings of A.W.N. Pugin, that inaugurated his rejection of illusion and verisimilitude, and Owen Jones’s influential The Grammar of Ornament (1856) that informed his approach to colour and outline. Curiously, though, it is the opportunity to see the papers with which he had less in common that is really enlightening: the scrollwork, festoons and flower baskets of fashionable French imports from the 19th century may not have been to Morris’s taste, but their sheer artfulness tells its own, no less engaging, story. Among these are the scenic papers of Jean-Julien Deltil, the putti-haunted friezes of Charles-Louis Müller and the illusionistic wallpaper of Paul Balin, which he based on embroidery designs from the reign of Louis XIII.
Chrysanthemum (1877), designed by William Morris and published by Jeffrey & Co., for Morris & Co. Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The exhibition also gives space to their English interpreters – notably, the ribbon-work, gilt stamping and naturalistic flower garlands of William Woollams & Co. The delicacy of these examples is as apparent as their shortcomings (Morris ventured that it might be better to nail some flowers or twigs to the wall). All of this ensures a refreshingly broad view of the world of Victorian wallpaper. At the weirder end of the scale are the so-called ‘sanitary’ wallpapers, which were made to be fully washable and free of arsenic – an ingredient controversially present in the green of Morris’s own productions. Japanese leather papers also form part of this busy mix. Their embossed, tooled and metalised surfaces had such an influence on Morris that he had Jeffrey & Co. give versions of Vine (original, 1873–74; leather, 1876) and Chrysanthemum (original, 1877; embossed metallic, 1879) the same treatment.
Access to the archive of the Sanderson Design Group, which has loaned most of the pieces in the exhibition, pays dividends in the second room: we see unusual variations on well-known patterns and can readily appreciate the matt finish and subtle shades of the original papers, qualities that are often lost in modern reproductions on the page. At the same time, seeing so many patterns, one after the other, has its drawbacks. We gain an opportunity to look closely, but lose the pattern’s overall intricacy and rhythm, usually experienced across long stretches of wall. Indeed, something strange happens when wallpaper is framed as art: the details that remain are not bespoke, as one might expect of a painting, but stand as guides to a whole whose repeating effect is left to the imagination because it stretches out of view.
Vine (1873), designed by William Morris and published by Morris & Co., 1884. Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The last room’s circuit of Morrisian legacies might sound perfunctory, but it is just as fascinating. We witness the talents of Morris’s friends and family: his friend Kate Faulkner’s Bramble (1879), the striking Honeysuckle (1883) designed by Morris’s daughter May, and the patterns of his assistant John Henry Dearle, including such triumphs as Compton (1896) and Seaweed (1901), each more impressive on the wall than in photographic reproduction. The continuity is apparent, but so too are forms of change. Later designers preferred flatter compositions, often isolating a bird or flower motif, as in C.F.A. Voysey’s Bird and Tulip (designed 1895; printed 1920s) or Sparhawk (c. 1898). The revelation here is Kathleen Kersey, whose finds a pleasing compromise between Morrisian leaf rhythm and the new era’s emphasis on linearity. This last room also tracks the process whereby Sanderson gradually bought up the intellectual property and woodblocks of all the major Victorian wallpaper producers, including those of Morris & Co. in March 1940, to become the commercial last-man standing, whose archives are correspondingly broad and deep.
Honeysuckle (1883), designed by May Morris and hand-printed by Morris & Co. Victoria and Albert Museum, London
There are some gaps, of course. The rich contextual treatment can’t quite explain how a man with no formal training gained such technical facility in this field. And there is only incidental attention to the medieval sources from which Morris derived his emphasis on the ‘continuous growth of curved lines’. Seeing the original pear-wood printing blocks made by Alfred Barratt of Bethnal Green Road is an opportunity not to be missed, though it is a shame to have no practical demonstration of the printing process. And there is a curious lack of direct quotation from Morris’s writings. Rather than imagining a gallery interior, Morris never lost sight of the domestic wall, and he tended to think of decoration as a craft. He disdained imitation, certainly, but it was pattern – embraced for its own sake – and the mysterious interlocking repeat that distinguished his approach. He also stressed a kind of selectivity that guaranteed ‘the wall of order against vagueness, and the door of order for imagination’. He summed this up as ‘the conventionalising of nature’, a principle whose balance between the Romantic and the abstract bears examination, along with the equally productive tension between rhythm, growth and repetition. But an exhibition cannot cover every base. The achievement of ‘The Art of Wallpaper’ is that it provides the means and materials to think a great deal harder about the medium for which Morris is most famous. In so doing, it offers the satisfactions of a rich new field discovered amid an apparently familiar scene.
‘The Art of Wallpaper: Morris & Co.’ is at York Art Gallery until 23 February.