Wednesday, November 4, 2009

William Morris and the Oriental Carpet

Illustration: William Morris. The Redcar carpet, c1880.

While William Morris and his company Morris & Co had a very definite and somewhat individual approach to the decorative arts, influences did come from a number of avenues, not all of them were from the English decorative past and not all of them were given the credit that perhaps they should have been.

Morris himself was more than aware and indeed happy to declare that he was influenced by what he saw as the best that the past could offer. However, 'the past' as far as Morris was concerned, often had a very narrow English definition. As far as carpet and rug design was concerned, the best was definitely not from the English past. There is very little in the way of any real historical tradition of carpet and rug design in England. Much of the high status floor coverings were imported from Persia and Turkey, with lower status domestic interiors having to make do with basic and rudimentary coverings, if at all.

Illustration: William Morris. The Redcar carpet design (detail), c1880.

It was this tradition of the importation of carpets and rugs from the Middle East that Morris was keen to tap into. The English, even in the nineteenth century had certain expectations of what a floor carpet should be. Much of those pre-conceptions came from the traditional carpet design work of the Middle East and Central Asia. Many saw the standard carpet design as containing a central medallion, some interlaced pattern work, which was then all surrounded by a thick and sometimes heavy border. This formula was followed relatively closely by most of the English carpet manufacturers.

Morris himself rarely strayed from this same formula, though he did inject a fair proportion of his own take on traditional English design work within the traditions of the oriental carpet, changing some of the foliage and floral work to those that were intrinsically English, rather than those of foreign tradition. It is interesting to note how coy Morris was about influences that he considered not to be English. There was a definite level of reluctance on his part to name cultures and regions outside of his self-created medieval English fantasy. While other Victorian designers saw useful and interesting traditions from Japan, China and India for example, many of which they felt could be incorporated into contemporary English decorative art, Morris was always critical and sat in opposition of what he saw as fads of fashion. To some extent, he was right. However, there was also a legitimate purpose in expanding a designer's influences and ideas, which added to the depth and complexity of any design work. Limiting an influence to one medieval ideal with no other form of input, was bound to be both constricting and would inevitably lead to a lack of originality and dynamism when the ideal had run its course.

One of the best known of Morris carpets is The Redcar produced in about 1880. All of the images shown in this article, bar one, show various views of The Redcar carpet. The one image that does not shows instead an example of a Persian carpet from the area of Heriz near Tabriz.

 Illustration: Traditional silk Heriz carpet design.

This in no way implies that Morris copied the design work of traditional Persian, Turkish or any other area of carpet and rug weaving. What it does imply is that Morris was always aware of the constraints of English taste and was equally aware of their narrow parameters as far as innovations within the decorative arts were concerned. Morris may well be seen in some quarters as a revolutionary designer, but it would be perhaps more prudent to see him as working his revolution within the realms of an English framework. His carpet design work never really strayed from the English estimation of what a floor carpet should be, and while he may well have produced pieces that are definitely identifiable as 'Morris', they were still well within the relatively narrow parameters of English expectations of the decorative arts.

Whereas some English and Scottish designers such as C F A Voysey and B J Talbert, as well as many of the more strident European carpet and rug designers of the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s produced design work that did not necessarily follow the traditions of the Middle East and Central Asia, some even breaking out of the constraints of that tradition entirely, Morris never really went that far and so his carpet designs could be seen as a perfect example of a designer working within the accepted levels of English taste, rather than working around them.

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