In this video lesson, Hollie will show children different leaves, flowers, birds and insects; and she encourages children (ages 7-11) to try to create a symmetrical pattern on their own designs. He particularly liked to use the indigenous plants that grew wild in the hedgerows and along the riverbanks of the English countryside. The Willow Boughpattern (1887) was based on drawings that he made of the willow trees growing near his country home, Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire – the elegantly intertwining branches and leaves in the design attesting to his abiding love of natural forms. MORRIS AND COMPANY are often asked "What is the advantage of hand-printed papers over those printed by machine?" / From 1877 less exalted customers could buy wallpapers from the company’s new Oxford Street showrooms. There they were displayed alongside other products, including textiles and furnishings, to suggest how a range of Morris items might be combined.

By the 1880s, Morris’s designs had become even more stylised and he increasingly came to accept the mechanical nature of his pattern repeats. Many, like Wild Tulip(1884), also reflected his growing interest in weaving; they used the strong, diagonal, meandering stems that appeared in the 15th-century Italian silks and brocades that he studied at the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A). While always politically conscious, at 49 William Morris crossed ‘the river of fire’ and became a revolutionary socialist. Throughout his life he felt uneasy about the disparity between his comfortable lifestyle and the conditions endured by most of the British working classes. In the 1880s Morris began to take action, hoping to overthrow the system that enabled the rich to profit from the labour of others. He attended marches, wrote articles and lectured all over the country.The Lament’ is considered to be Edward Burne-Jones most significant painting in the classical style of the late 1860s. Burne-Jones was a life-long friend of William Morris after the two met at Oxford University, he was a founding partner of Morris & Co. as well as an established painter working in the pre-Raphaelite style. Key stylistic features of this work can be seen in the chalky colours, simple outlines, and low relief of the figures. The work is washed in a mood of restrained sadness, characteristic of other paintings in 1866. After a few weeks you should have a bar neatly dotted with little seedlings. These will be happy growing together in the bar for a further month in their sunny location.

It’s safe to say that William Morris (1834-1896) had a soft spot for flowers - his wallpapers, tapestries and textiles show his complete fascination with them. Did you know that in his lifetime Morris designed over 50 wallpapers, with even more being produced by his fellow designers at Morris & Co.? The machine-printed papers are placed at the end of one of the books or in a msall book by themselves. / KS2 Art Video Lessons are a brilliant way for children to stay engaged and active in their learning. They work just as well in the classroom as they do in a home learning environment. The Arts and Crafts movement reacted to the industrial revolution at the time. William Morris wanted people to have beautiful things in their homes to improve their quality of life. However, ironically most of his products were unaffordable to the everyman. This was mainly due to their laborious craftsmanship. Morris liked to use traditional methods and natural dyes with his designs.During the rallies Morris and his comrades attended, they carried banners to identify their political allegiance. In this banner, the image of Adam and Eve has been borrowed from Burne-Jones’s illustration to Morris’s socialist novel ‘A Dream of John Ball’. The novel followed the story of a priest who was one of the leaders of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381. John Ball believed all people were created equal, asking "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" In an era obsessed with decorum and propriety, it is perhaps not surprising that the Victorians liked the idea of subtle messages that could be given through flowers. Some of these associations - such as red roses with love or lilies with purity - are still familiar to us today. Even though Morris himself didn’t necessarily sign up to this way of thinking, many of his Victorian clients would have been well-versed in the supposed hidden meanings of flowers. This could have meant a very different take on some of his designs for some at the time. Laura: William Morris and his daughter May used repeated shapes and colours to create beautiful printed fabric and wallpaper. Verity Pugh examines William Morris's lifelong fascination with flowers: his inspirations, his garden, his designs and the hidden meanings behind the petals.

From looking at William Morris’s patterns and designs, it’s obvious that he was inspired by nature. His textile patterns and wallpapers incorporate plants, fruits, flowers, and leaves. Very much like the art nouveau prints of Maurice Verneuil. Trellis' was the first wallpaper ever designed by William Morris, and the third to be printed by his company, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. Morris grew up in Walthamstow, East London though during most of his lifetime it was actually a small village with a relatively rural feel. The young man travelled around nearby Epping Forest and other scenes of natural beauty within Essex and this helped to give him a love of nature from a very early age. His use of flowers and plants within his patterned designs was never just for aesthetic value - he longed to remind victorians about what we have, and what we could lose to industrialisation. In a sense, these concerns have never been satsfied and are now even more acute. The city has since expanded and swallowed up his beloved Walthamstow, just as he may have predicted. He may however be pleased to see the changing attitudes to the environment of the current generation within the UK and globally, and see it as a sign of hope for the future. Having developed his own particular taste from a young age, he began to realize the only way he could have the beautiful home he wanted was if he designed every part of it himself. As he famously once said, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” Henry James described William Morris as "the poet and paper-maker" in 1881 and, despite his prolific work as a designer of stained glass, textiles, tapestries, furniture, and books, it is for his wallpapers that Morris is best known today. Reinventing the decorative vocabulary of his time, Morris believed that "any decoration is futile…when it does not remind you of something beyond itself." He turned to nature for inspiration, seeking to "turn a room into a bower." Throughout his more than three decades as a wallpaper designer, the native field and garden flowers of the English countryside proved a touchstone.

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Victoria and Albert Museum, Department of Engraving, Illustration and Design & Department of Paintings, Accessions 1919, London: Printed Under the Authority of His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1921