Illustration: William Morris. Bullerswood carpet design, 1889.
William Morris Bullerswood carpet was completed in about 1889 and is said by many to be his most ambitious and most accomplished achievement out of all his carpet and rug attempts. It was created and produced within the Morris & Co establishment and should perhaps be seen as one of the high points of Victorian decoration and pattern work.
Although the pattern is said to derive at least in part from various traditional Persian carpet designs, this has to be seen on a largely inspirational and incorporational level, rather than as a direct copy. While the framework of the design and the use of traditional Persian floral motifs are present and obvious, there is much more to the decorative pattern work than the Persian context. How those traditional motifs were used and then incorporated into the complexity of the pattern work should be seen as being largely a construct by Morris himself.
The carpet is full of an energetic and enthusiastic embrace of nature. There are many elements that are linked to Morris textile design work of the period, particularly the involved and intertwined Wandle, Cray, Windrush, Avon and others, all produced in the 1880s the same decade as Bullerswood. It is the clever linking of traditional Persian as well as characteristically Morris signatures, which has perhaps made the carpet such a success over the intervening generations, it is still popular today.
The carpet design has one obvious repeat. A vertical line down the centre of the carpet gives a faithful repeat either side. Often this is used in carpet design, as in many other textile forms, and can be repeated a number of times, both vertically and horizontally. Another variation of this theme of mirror imaging is to project an exact copy, as produced in the Bullerswood example, and then to subtly change either side so as to give the appearance of symmetry but also of variation without the starkness than can sometimes be the result of rigid mirror imaging. This manipulation of mirror imaging can be done to such an extent that symmetry is lost altogether and another form of decoration or pattern design is achieved.
Bullerswood itself is so complex a piece of work that it matters little that it is an exact symmetrical copy, one of the other. There is so much going on in the pattern work, creatively, that the eye has plenty to follow and tends not to get restless. There is both large and small scale detailing, so that there are levels of interpretation depending how far away you are from the piece. It has to be remembered of course that this example would have been on the floor and would therefore be perceived differently than it appears on a largely vertical computer monitor. Colours and tones would also have been different, but the complexity would have remained as intriguing wherever the carpet was set.
Illustration: William Morris. Bullerswood carpet design (Morris own design work), 1889.
The high density of decoration as seen on the Bullerswood carpet had become a more-or-less standard feature of Morris work during this period and compared to his earlier pattern work, shows a level of maturity and confidence derived from a career that was by this time nearly thirty years long.
Interestingly, this level of complexity has been missing from much of the contemporary carpet and rug production of Europe over the intervening generations. Although there are always exceptions to the rule, much of the designer led decorative pattern work for rug and carpet design has played along the well-worn path of minimalist experiments of the 1930s. While this proved to be both an innovative and exciting journey through much of the twentieth century and a useful and perhaps timely switch from the often complex decorative work of the nineteenth century, we perhaps do need to ask ourselves whether it has run its course and whether new visions of decoration need to be sought.
Fortunately there are a number of contemporary rug and carpet designers from both Europe and increasingly from the traditional carpet making areas of Asia, which are exploring much more complex avenues of pattern, decoration, texture and colour. They are literally and figuratively weaving the rich vocabulary of carpet and rug decoration, both traditional and twentieth century modernist, into new forms and new creative journeys.
One interesting final note is that the Bullerswood carpet was made using natural dyes. This has inevitably led to a loss of colour over the years and is now agonised over by the V&A, highlighting the dilemma between the inevitable passage of time and that of conservation and preservation. Morris must have been fully aware of the chemical reaction produced by natural dyes when faced by a number of factors including direct or indirect sunlight, cleaning and general wear and tear to name just a few. Whether this was built into the piece as part of the creative process, or was just a natural consequence of using particular dye techniques is difficult to tell. However, the inevitable fading process produced by natural dyes is part of the history of any piece using this method, and is therefore usually understood by the creative individual. Perhaps natural fading should be seen as an inevitable consequence and part of the on-going journey of the carpet. As everything eventually fades away to nothing, the conservation of a piece could be said to halt that natural process, or at least leave it in a stratified limbo. That perhaps will always be the dilemma between the intended journey of a piece of work and the preservation through conservation, of that piece.
Further reading links:
William Morris Full-Color Patterns and Designs (Dover Pictorial Archives)
William Morris: Patterns & Designs (International Design Library)
Designs of William Morris (Phaidon Miniature Editions)
V&A Pattern: William Morris: (Hardcover with CD)
William Morris (Temporis)
William Morris
William Morris on Art and Socialism
William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Home
William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (Spectre)
The Beauty of Life: William Morris and the Art of Design
The Essential William Morris Anthology (12 books) [Illustrated]
William Morris and Morris & Co.
William Morris Decor and Design
William Morris
William Morris Designs CD-ROM and Book (Full-Color Electronic Design Series)
