Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1540685
Resists L ong before his w a l l p a p e r s made him a h o u s e h o l d name, William Morris was a revolutionary — a n e n v i ro n m e n t a l i s t , preservationist, and social justice advocate who believed beauty could change the world. He founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, helping to establish modern conservation standards and the premise that heritage should be preserved, not rebuilt. By the 1880s, Morris was a committed environmental and social activist who railed against industrial pollution and campaigned for better housing, free compulsory education and school meals, and the eight-hour workday — causes as urgent now as they were then. Even as he stood with the working classes, Britain's elite — aristocrats, wealthy industrialists, and entrepreneurs — sought him out for their homes. Royal commissions followed, from stained glass and textiles for St James's Palace to hundreds of yards of fabric and wallpaper for Tsar Nicholas II's Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Widely credited as a founder of the Arts and Crafts movement, he reshaped interior design by insisting on nature-inspired, hand-made craftsmanship in place of industrial mass production. These ideas are at the core of The Nature of Morris, a new collaboration between House of Hackney and the William Morris Gallery. The collection spans wallpapers, fabrics, furniture, and accessories in reimagined A legendary designer and a radical activist who made craft an instrument of social change, William Morris sees his ethos carried forward by House of Hackney in a The Nature of Morris — a collection of wallpapers, fabrics, and furniture. William Morris By Rebecca Sherman. Above: House of Hackney X William Morris, Hyacinth Novellus wallpaper. Left: Earthly Paradise was inspired by an embroidery by William Morris' daughter, May Morris. archive prints and original designs. The collection includes designs by conceptual artist Jeremy Deller, digital- collage artist Andrea Zanatelli, and Ray Azoulay, founder of Los Angeles's Obsolete Gallery. Launched in 2011, House of Hackney puts craft, nature, and community front and center. A certified B Corporation, the company regularly works with small- scale, family-run businesses and artisans, preserving specialist, age-old trades by partnering with craftspeople across the UK. That commitment to materials, method, and makers echoes Morris' own practice. As a craftsman, he revived long- forgotten techniques of weaving, dyeing, and hand printing at a time when factory methods had reduced everything to cheap, standardized goods. Rejecting synthetic aniline dyes, he returned to natural colorants such as indigo, walnut shells, cochineal, kermes, and madder. He insisted on learning production techniques himself, using quality raw materials and hand processes. In doing so, he preserved endangered crafts, p u t a p p r e n t i c e s back to work, and restored integrity to British design. For Morris, beauty was inseparable from ethics, labor, and harmony with nature. Some of Morris' most seminal ideas a n d m o t i f s a r e represented in the House of Hackney's collection, with larger- t h a n - l i f e f l o r a l s , reworked classics, and a contemporary palette. Utopia, a panoramic wallpaper i n s p i r e d b y h i s radical novella News from Nowhere — his 1890 vision of a post- capitalist future — reimagines London as a flourishing city in bloom where wild foliage entwines with landmarks like Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. Earthly Paradise draws from a turn-of- the-century embroidery by his daughter May Morris, the pioneering artist and campaigner; its fruit trees, florals, and acanthus leaves nod to recurring Morris motifs. houseofhackney.com. 108