James Shoolbred & Co Catalogues

Illustration: James Shoolbred & Co catalogue, 1874.

James Shoolbred started his company in Tottenham Court Road by purchasing number 155 in the 1820s. He was involved in supplying textiles to the burgeoning interior decoration market in London. He must have done well and quickly because he soon purchased numbers 154 and 156, either side of the original building. With his newly expanded premises, the shop was restructured and the stock was expanded. The new premises included a haberdashers and a carpet warehouse, as well as expanded accommodation for the stock of textiles, which included wool, silk and linen.

By the 1880s the company had expanded to such an extent that the business had to move again, this time into premises that functioned as an early department store. The new store was popular from the start. One aspect that proved popular with customers was the detailed displays of interior decorative schemes. Furniture, textiles, carpets and various accessories would be laid out as they would be seen in a real interior. This made it much easier for customers to perceive what their purchases would look like outside the constraints of the department store. It was also a good retail trick as it encouraged customers to buy whole ensembles, which they could reconstruct in their own home without having to hire an interior designer or sort out interior schemes themselves. This marketing trick is still used extensively today by such retail giants as Ikea.

By the 1870s, the company had started to design and manufacture their own furniture. This furniture, along with other interior accessories, were displayed in a series of catalogues that started to appear from about 1873 onwards. The catalogues were meant to expand the appeal of James Shoolbred & Co beyond their department store, and more importantly, beyond London.

Furniture design became an increasingly important aspect of the company and therefore played a large part in the catalogues that the company produced every year. All the major fashionable Revival movements were included, ranging from Gothic to Japanese, and included the numerous French styles.

Interestingly, because James Shoolbred & Co produced catalogues that were so detailed and wide ranging, many were used as literal pattern books in order to copy the latest London styles. This was a particular problem in far-flung British outposts like Australia and New Zealand where there was a brisk trade in James Shoolbred & Co furniture design, with details being worked out from the illustrations generously provided by the company. This furniture was then passed off as being part of a locally designed production.

The catalogues today are an intriguing view of interior tastes and styles of the later nineteenth century and are an invaluable tool, as are all catalogues, for any researcher, historian or anyone with an interest in the history of domestic interior design and decoration.

Unfortunately, the company did not survive the financial crisis of 1929 and closed its department doors for good in 1931.

Further reading links: 
An album of nineteenth-century interiors: Watercolors from two private collections
Domestic Space: Reading the Nineteenth-Century Interior
House Proud Nineteenth Century Watercolor Interiors from the Thaw Collection [HC,2008]
Interior Designs of the Nineteenth Century
Travelling by Sea in the Nineteenth Century Interior Design in Victorian Passeng
Nineteenth-Century Decoration: The Art of the Interior
History of Interior Design and Furniture: From Ancient Egypt to Nineteenth-Century Europe
English Furniture, Decoration, Woodwork, and Allied Arts; From the last half of the Seventeenth Century to the early part of the Nineteenth Century
Victorian Revival in Interior Design
Late Victorian Interiors and Interior Details
The Antiques Book of Victorian Interiors
Victorian and Edwardian Furniture and Interiors: From the Gothic Revival to Art Nouveau
Victorian House Style: An Architectural and Interior Design Sourcebook
Hints on Household Taste: The Classic Handbook of Victorian Interior Decoration
Victorian interior design

William Morris Wallpapers of the 1860s and 1870s

Illustration: William Morris. Daisy wallpaper, 1864.

William Morris's first wallpaper designs started to appear in the 1860s. They came as a slightly later edition to the textile designs. Morris himself was not a big fan of wallpaper for interiors. He much preferred the idea of using hung textile work, such as tapestry or heavy fabrics framed as panels, which he saw as more traditional for interiors than the fairly recent wallpaper industry. Another reason was the difficulty in achieving a good and faithful reproduction of initial design work. Morris was a definite perfectionist and was not prepared to take on a medium if the results were to be less than perfect.

However, he was aware of the strong Victorian interest in wallpaper for financial and hygienic reasons, and though not always a pragmatist, he could usually be encouraged to when it concerned Morris & Co. It was felt increasingly in the 1860s and 1870s, that the home should be the centre of family life, but also the centre of a healthy family life. Wallpaper was seen as a much cleaner and perhaps more importantly, cheaper alternative to heavy dust laden tapestries and wall hangings.

Illustration: William Morris. Pomegranate wallpaper, 1866.

Morris's first commercial wallpaper designs, as can be seen in the first two illustrations shown in this article, Daisy and Pomegranate, were very much a case of stamped motifs on a fairly simple and plain background. Some of the motifs were actually reproduced from Morris's medieval style tapestry work, usually from incidental backgrounds or lower foregrounds where they were used to fill in spaces around the more important human figures. Incidentally, most of the figures in Morris's tapestries were produced by Edward Burne-Jones, while the backgrounds were very often Morris's own.

Both Daisy and Pomegranate were produced in the mid-1860s and reflect very much the simplicity of much of Morris's early textile work. In fact, many of the designs initially produced for textiles did end up as wallpaper patterns, with very few changes in the design, if any.

Today many would see this as a great opportunity to co-ordinate both textile and wallpaper so that a room would contain only one design throughout. However, Victorians would have been puzzled by this notion and would have seen it as a clear lack of imagination. They were more than happy to have up to half a dozen different designs within the same room, so there was little problem of the same Morris design in textile and wallpaper ending up next to each other.

Illustration: William Morris. Larkspur wallpaper, 1872.

By the 1870s Morris wallpaper design work had become much more accomplished,, confident and therefore much more complex. There is very little, if any plain background to be seen, and whereas the earlier examples were largely independently stamped on to a surface, the later examples are clearly intertwined with each other, making it difficult to see any obvious motifs.

The last three designs shown, Larkspur, Pimpernel and Chrysanthemum were all produced in the 1870s. They clearly show the confidence in the design work and the medium, and are therefore much more fluid and free form than the earlier, more tentative work of the 1860s.

Illustration: William Morris. Pimpernel wallpaper, 1876.

It would be tempting to see some of the fluid and meandering flower stems, rich, full flowers and languid leaves, as an indication of the roots of Art Nouveau. While there is a certain similarity in some of Morris work, it is also firmly rooted within both the British Arts & Craft movement and the styles and fashions of the mid-Victorian design world.

What makes Morris wallpaper design work stand out from others of the same era is the intensity of the compositions. There is a real observational passion for the natural world that is missing from so much of Victorian floral derived work. To Morris, these designs could not just be interpreted as 'pretty', or 'attractive', they were much more. They were indeed part of his life's work and passion. They were a record of the British traditional rural landscape, one of nature and human in a harmonic symbiosis. The intertwining of much of his floral work could be interpreted as a framework in which we are all a part, which is one of the reasons that Morris disliked geometry as a design tool, as he interpreted it as a man-made system for trying to quantify the natural world, rather than allowing the natural world to quantify itself.

Illustration: William Morris. Chrysanthemum wallpaper, 1877.

Of Morris's numerous passions and interests and his considerable and varied output of work, he will probably be commonly remembered for his nature based design work. These wallpapers of the 1860s and 1870s reflect an achievement, in not only wallpaper design but also design in general, that has rarely been matched or bested.

Further reading links:
William Morris: Patterns & Designs (International Design Library)
Designs of William Morris (Phaidon Miniature Editions)
William Morris Full-Color Patterns and Designs (Pictorial Archives)
William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Home
William Morris and Morris & Co.
V&A Pattern: William Morris (Hardcover with CD)
News from Nowhere and Other Writings (Penguin Classics)
The well at the world's end, a tale
William Morris (Temporis)
William Morris Tree of Life 20"x20"
William Morris on Art and Socialism
William Morris: A Life for Our Time
The Essential William Morris Anthology (12 books)
V&A Pattern: William Morris: (Hardcover with CD)
William Morris and Morris & Co
"Trellis" Wallpaper Design, 1864 Giclee Poster Print by William Morris, 36x48 

William Morris and Embroidery Kits

Illustration: William Morris Artichoke embroidery design, 1877.

Artichoke was a design by William Morris that was specifically aimed at the embroidery kit market. It seems to us today that 'kits' are a fairly modern invention, but Morris was a keen producer of embroidery packs which could be produced by the consumer from scratch, or bought with some of the stitching already begun, so as to help the less adventurous or accomplished embroiderer.

Morris was always keen to raise the standard of both designer and maker. Even if the skills base was not always present within the general public at large, then at least the aspiration could be developed by producing design work of the highest calibre that Morris and his company could muster. It was not the skill that was important, but the aspiration. At least that was to be the idea in theory.

However, it must be remembered that Morris was in the habit of personally controlling the output of his company and embroidery kits were only sold to individuals who he had more or less personally vetted and knew their skills base. They would then be able to produce a piece of Morris & Co work that was of a high enough standard, in Morris's eyes, to reflect well on the company, and the decorative styles and standards that he and the company stood for.

Embroidery skills in the 1870s and 1880s were much higher and more widespread than they are today, so the design did well and Morris seemed content to continue producing embroidery kits using a number of company designs.

Artichoke was first put into production in 1877, and it can still be bought today as an embroidery pack, although the high exacting standards can no longer be monitored and maintained by Morris or anyone else for that matter. We live in egalitarian times. What Morris would have made of it all, we can only imagine.

Illustration: William Morris Artichoke embroidery design (detail), 1877.

Further reading links:

William Morris: Patterns & Designs (International Design Library) 

Designs of William Morris (Phaidon Miniature Editions) 

William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Home 

William Morris and Morris & Co. 

V&A Pattern: William Morris (Hardcover with CD)
Beth Russell's William Morris Needlepoint
William Morris Textiles
Arts & Crafts Textiles