F&P 25 Years: Caroline Bennett-Jane on ‘My Love Affair with William Morris’

As part of F&P Interiors’ 25th-anniversary celebrations, we delve into the life of William Morris, whose iconic designs have been featured on our website since the outset.

We spoke with the curators at the William Morris Gallery, the source of the William Morris At Home designs, and enjoyed a fascinating tour of Standen House with Caroline Bennett-Jane (aka Mrs Morris) a freelance lecturer and advisor on restoration projects, TV dramas, documentaries and more, who shared her passion for the designer’s enduring legacy.

The William Morris Gallery, based at Morris’s childhood home in north-east London, is the largest public collection devoted to his work anywhere in the world. It numbers thousands of printed textiles, wallpapers, tapestries, carpets, embroideries, stained glass, book designs, ceramics and furniture. These include everything from initial pencil sketches to worked-up design drawings in ink and watercolour, traced embroidery patterns, printing blocks for textiles and wallpaper, photographic cartoons for tapestries, printed proofs, as well as the finished products.

Alongside what's on display in the eight permanent galleries, there is about 100m² of storage across various sites. Everything is kept in climate-controlled, dust-free conditions to ensure consistency of temperature and humidity. We also have rigorous pest control measures in place to prevent damage from moths and other insects.

Morris always worked collaboratively, so there are many other named designers in the museum’s archive, including painter and designer Edward Burne-Jones, architect friend Philip Webb, William's youngest daughter May Morris, William's successor John Henry Dearle and artist Kate Faulkner, sister to Charles Faulnker, one of the founders of William's original company Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. The products were also created by skilled artisans, many unknown. This ranged from embroiderers and woodblock carvers to stained glass painters and tapestry weavers.

The gallery owns the original design for Morris's first ever wallpaper, Trellis, which he designed in 1862 in collaboration with his friend Philip Webb. Morris was never good at drawing animals, so Webb designed the birds in this pattern. The last wallpaper designed by Morris & Co also features birds – Bird and Pomegranate wallpaper – designed by Kathleen Kersey in 1926. You never know what you'll find in the archives. We also have his original design drawings, objects owned by him, such as books, his favourite coffee cup and his faithful leather satchel, plus a beautiful embroidered book bag made for him by his daughters, May and Jenny.

William Morris's first wallpaper design Trellis — Trellis Wallpaper From the Archives

Trellis Wallpaper at Standen House — Trellis Wallpaper from The Cornubia Collection in collaboration with Ben Pentreath

While the majority of Morris's original designs made it into production, there's almost unlimited potential for works to be discovered and reimagined. Thousands of designs are accessible on the gallery’s website. Morris took inspiration from the past but believed in never copying historic forms. He thought design should carry the spirit of the past without imitating it. The gallery has taken this to heart, working with craftspeople and emerging designers to help them incorporate Morris's patterns and messages in their own work while making it distinctively contemporary.

Visit The William Morris Gallery

Located in Walthamstow, the William Morris Gallery is the only public museum dedicated to Britain’s most celebrated designer. Housed in his former family home, it brings Morris’s world to life with original textiles, wallpapers and furniture, alongside engaging exhibitions. A visit offers a chance to step into his creative vision and see the lasting influence of his designs on art, interiors, and modern living.

Meet ‘Mrs Morris’: A Leading Authority on William Morris

I was given my nickname when I started working for Sanderson and Morris & Co. 21 years ago. At trade shows and events, my colleagues would introduce me to customers as Mrs Morris, and it grew from there. My husband has even suggested I write a book entitled My Love Affair with William Morris.

His designs were always in the background when I was growing up, visiting relatives, museums and National Trust properties. It came to the fore when my husband and I moved into a converted part of a Victorian manor house on the outskirts of East Grinstead, West Sussex, 25 years ago.

Built in 1895, the property needed redecorating in keeping with its age. Who else to turn to than the founder of the Arts & Crafts movement, William Morris (1834-1896). With the National Trust property Standen on our doorstep for inspiration, one of the first wallpapers we chose was Standen from Morris & Co for a small cloakroom, an adapted design from the Lily wallpaper.

What appeals to me is the depths he went to creating his designs, trying zinc plates for wallpaper production, which failed, then opting for beautiful carved woodblocks to create wallpaper and prints. He moved from chemical aniline dye to vegetable dyes, as they would fade more evenly over time. He taught himself embroidery so he could train others. He embroidered his first piece while studying at Oxford, and this now hangs at his country retreat in the Cotswolds, Kelmscott Manor, with the cypher, If I Can.

Caroline Bennett-Jane admiring the original Mallow Wallpaper Stand book

To perfect the manufacture of his own Arras-type tapestries, he dismantled them to learn the art of construction. His first large-scale tapestry, Acanthus & Vine, took him 516 hours to make after having a loom installed in his bedroom at Kelmscott House, Hammersmith, now the home of The William Morris Society.

His ability to capture the vitality and depth of a plant’s growth in a repeating pattern on a flat surface resonates with so many people. He chose plants that grow in one’s garden and in the hedgerows of the English countryside, which bring warmth and comfort to our lives. Not many designers have this effect after more than 160 years.

During his life, William Morris was better known as a poet rather than a designer. Many of his designs are named after the smallest element or flower within them. When he designed Evenlode in 1883, he intended to call it Crocus, but realised he had omitted including a crocus. He was suffering from gout at the time, so perhaps he can be excused.

Morris had the idea for his designs to be used for apparel long before the Beatles’ George Harrison had a jacket made with Golden Lily in the 1960s. More recently, companies such as Loewe, H&M and Next have featured his timeless designs.

Choosing a favourite is hard. I have Brer Rabbit wallpaper in the upstairs cloakroom as this design has always held a place in my heart. I also admire the Holy Grail set of tapestries, which were on display as part of an exhibition I was involved with at Modern Art Oxford and Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery for Turner Prize artist Jeremy Deller’s Love is Enough in 2014.

Brer Rabbit Wallpaper by Morris & Co. — Brer Rabbit Wallpaper, available in two colourways

Fruit Wallpaper at Kelmscott House — Fruit Wallpaper, also referred to as Pomegranate, seen here at Kelmscott Manor, was designed in 1862 and was released for sale under Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.

Accanthus Velvet, available in four colourways

My favourite places to visit with a William Morris connection are Standen House, Wightwick Manor, William de Morgan Gallery, Cragside, Castle Howard, David Parr House in Cambridge, Emery Walker’s House and Sambourne House, both in London, where you feel you’ve stepped back in time. Morris described Kelmscott Manor and church as his “heaven on earth”. In the churchyard, I’m known to have a chat with him at his graveside.

I enjoy sharing my passion and have given countless lectures for the National Trust, so volunteers can pass on the history. My proudest achievement is having a hand in preserving Morris’s legacy through the various restoration projects I have been involved with. These include Kelmscott Manor, Standen, Compton Hall, Broadway Tower, a don’s dining room at Exeter College, Oxford, as well as Wightwick Manor, where replacing a damaged section of Willow Boughs took two years after colour-matching the existing faded paper and waiting for the plaster to be repaired and dried out.

William Morris Lily Wallpaper at Kelmscott Manor — Morris Wallpaper at Kelmscott Manor

"I've been fascinated to meet people who are so passionate about Morris that they even have tattoes of his designs"

Nick Knowles’s Heritage Rescue series documented the two-year project at Kelmscott Manor. Filming showed the wallpaper being hand-block printed with Morris’s original blocks of 1864 for Fruit and 1874 for Lily. It was a wonderful experience to explain the printing techniques and see the results of producing Fruit for Jane Morris’s bedroom, Lily for William Morris’ bedroom and Daisy in the corridor.

TV dramas are rather fun. The William Morris Society recommended me to the production company of Hotel Portofino. A large amount of Morris fabric and wallpaper was provided, although some of the designs were not available at the time when this was set in the 1920s. But unless you’re an aficionado, you’d be none the wiser.

William Morris has such a broad appeal partly because he was a polymath: an expert in poetry, stained glass windows, designer of fabrics, wallpapers, tapestries, embroideries, carpets and more. In the latter part of his life, he achieved his lifelong ambition of printing his own books at his Kelmscott Press. The first typeface he designed in 1890, Golden Type, is still used to this day. I’ve been fascinated to meet people who are so passionate about Morris that they even have tattoos of his designs.

One of the Holy Grail set of William Morris tapestries — One of William Morris’s stunning tapestries from the Holy Grail Set

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