As a self-proclaimed cottagecore girlie, I often joke that the artwork of William Morris formed a large part of my personality. I adore the intricate designs which combine foliage, birds and rich colours with a touch of whimsy. As a child, someone gave me a set of vintage postcards of his designs – postcards which never got sent to a single person in favour of being laid out on my bedroom floor to be studied and pored over. This developed into a habit of scouring charity shops for vintage curtains to transform into hobbitcore clothing and browsing 1970s Laura Ashley dresses on eBay (that I sadly can’t afford).

In the pandemic the cottagecore aesthetic, defined by a return to nature, soft living and a simpler life boomed across social media, with the gingham prints, milkmaid dresses and wicker baskets still showing up in shops today. Like any trend, it was unfortunately co-opted by fast fashion brands who produced huge quantities of trendy styles in poor quality materials made by underpaid and mistreated workers, primarily women and children. It’s also been warped by the growing tradwife movement which advocates for a return to traditional 1950s family values complete with misogyny and undiagnosed mental health issues but that’s a discussion for another day.

Morris’ designs are not only aesthetically beautiful, they also represented a movement towards mindful and ethical production, however his legacy has been bastardised by modern capitalism. The poor man is rolling in his grave and sighing at our folly, so I thought I’d write a short piece to soothe my ire.

William Morris, *Strawberry Thief,* designed 1883, printed cotton

He is probably best known as a designer and the founder of Morris & Co, however he emerged as somewhat of an artistic polymath in the mid-19th century. After abandoning a potential career in the clergy as a young man, Morris studied classics at Oxford and then trained as an architect in response to his love of medieval architecture and the burgeoning romantic movement which rejected Victorian industrialisation. As a painter and poet, he and his university friend Edward Burne-Jones joined up with Dante Gabriel Rossetti to helm to second generation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, creating widely loved artworks which enjoy the brightly coloured Arthurian dreamworld.

Edward Burne-Jones, *The Beguiling of Merlin*, 1872-77, oil on canvas

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, *Joan of Arc*, 1864, watercolour, gouache on paper

He championed the Arts and Crafts movement which sought to raise the value of traditional crafts at a time when art critics only defined the triad of painting, architecture and sculpture as Art with a capital A. Morris instead believed that the definition of art should be expanded to include and object that is beautiful. Furthermore, he founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) based on the belief of shared cultural heritage and his outrage against the freedom of the rich to remodel medieval buildings as they chose. Throughout his career, his views became more socialist, and he has been considered ‘the greatest theoretician of the alienation of labour’ alongside Karl Marx (Stansky, 2003).

Victorian revivalism spanned multiple artistic movements and widely influenced the transformation of artworks and critical art history. Romanticism as a movement sought to rediscover ‘aspects of the past that [were] perceived to represent the antithesis of the modern world’ and encouraged a ‘valorisation of emotion and intuition’ (Barnes, 2024). The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood aligned with this view and sought to rebel against the rational development of artistic practise by attempting to ignore the previous three centuries of ‘conventional wisdom’ and taking inspiration from before the time of Raphael, the most revered artist at the time (Barker, 2024).

An important aspect of many examples of Morris’ artworks is their function as home furnishings. In a lecture, Morris mourned that

‘all works of craftsmanship were once beautiful, unwittingly or not, they are now divided into two kinds, works of art and non-works of art’ and professed that it had been forgotten that art used to be ‘made by the people for the people as a joy for the maker and the user’ (Morris, 1882).

The Pre-Raphaelites wanted to eliminate the ‘hasty production’ needed to satisfy the ‘voracious, high-capitalist art market’ and often spent months covering their canvases with ‘minute brushstrokes’ (Prettejohn, 2000 in Barker, 2024). Furthermore, by branding themselves as a ‘brotherhood’ they professed oneness with the pre-industrial craft guilds and advocated for a ‘medieval ethos of community’ (Barker, 2024).

This is such a stark example of artists understanding the assignment and showing solidarity with the not only the makers who came before them, but also the small creators who are being crushed by the capitalist machine. This is not to say that the Pre-Raphaelites didn’t have their own problems such as rampant sexism and the inherent classism in affordability for ethically made soft furnishings, however the rebellion against the harmful aspects of industrialisation is a sentiment which should be carried forward into modern debates over sustainability in fashion.

As a side note, if you would like to delve into the world of the women of the Pre-Raphaelite movement then I highly recommend the blog guggums.com by Stephanie Chatfield – previously known as the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood blog.

Morris’ La Belle Iseult, 1858, demonstrates the equal care he gave to all forms of art. Within the painting there are delicately intricate patterns on the dress, table, carpet and bedspread, a premonition of how his art would be transformed into soft furnishings such as the Peacock and Bird Carpet in the following years.

William Morris, *La Belle Iseult,* 1858, oil on canvas

William Morris and Morris & Co, *Peacock and Bird Carpet*, 1885-90, hand-knotted pile on cotton warp

Although there remains a modern distinction between so-called fine art and decorative art, it is a greater reflection on how museums classify their object libraries than of the ‘interconnectedness of the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts movement’ (O’Neill, 2015).

In the 2020s though, clothing and soft furnishings as artworks have been metamorphosed and warped by modern reproduction techniques. The Peacock and Bird Carpet was originally created as a floor covering, however the pattern was recently reimagined by the Heathcote & Ivory, recolouring the various elements to cooler tones and printing the central motif on mugs and a luxury advent calendar.

William Morris Advent Calendar by Heathcote and Ivory

This new iteration of the design is transformative not only in the colour changes, but in the quality and longevity of the product. Most modern advent calendars are factory made and intended to be discarded after the festive period with a new one is bought the following year. The single-use concept is borne of capitalist interests and exists in direct opposition of Morris’ desire for high quality home furnishings designed by fairly paid craftspeople and artisans.

A particularly egregious example of this issue is a set of four William Morris cushion covers being sold for £6.63 from Shein, a notorious fast fashion company. Such businesses often sell their products for ‘only 1% of the manufacturing costs’ and reach this value by forcing workers, including children, to ‘perform their duties in precarious conditions’, such as ‘poorly ventilated environments’ for hours without rest (Adams, 2002 in Buzzo and Abreu, 2019).

William Morris cushion covers from shein.com

Morris ‘championed rural crafts and the rights of artisans’ (Barnes, 2024) and the art critic John Ruskin (a staunch supporter of the Pre-Raphaelites) insisted on ‘the value of careful craftsmanship’ (Birch, 2024), calling factory jobs ‘soulless and degrading’ (Crawford, 2003) therefore the modern transformation of the Morris & Co patterns is an ideological disaster for the socialist beliefs espoused by both men. Revivalism, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the Arts and Crafts movement and heritage activism cannot be separated from their politics.

Events such as the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh which caused ‘the deaths of more than 1100 workers’ (Butler, 2016 in Buzzo and Abreu, 2019, p.7) are horrific examples of the effects of rampant capitalism and the ultimate realisation of Morris’ statement that ‘the present course of civilisation will destroy the beauty of life’ (Morris, 1882).

So, for those of us who love vintage fashions and cottagecore designs, how can we embody Morris’ socialist ideals through our soft furnishings?

First, buy second hand whenever you can. According to the British Fashion Council, we have enough clothing on the planet to dress the next six generations so we as a society really shouldn’t be manufacturing more clothing. Charity shops, vintage boutiques, Vinted, Depop and eBay are your best friends.

Second, learn to sew. If you can make or alter clothing then the world is your oyster – you can buy a set of curtains for five quid in a charity shop and make a skirt or corset. I recently found these lovely Laura Ashley goose curtains in one of my local charity shops and am waiting for a free weekend to make something beautiful out of them.

Being able to sew allows us to alter clothes when we lose or gain weight, transform fabric if you wear a size which is not easy to find second hand as well as to maintain the clothes you love by mending holes or replacing zips and buttons. Not to mention you save oodles in cash.

Third, if you can afford to, please support local small businesses! There are definitely people making ethical clothing, one great example is Becky from relovedstudio.com who has been running a vintage shop for the last five years and has recently begun releasing small batches of sustainable knitwear inspired by vintage Pachamama jumpers using deadstock yarn made by a group of artists in Nepal.

The cloud jumper courtesy of Becky’s Instagram @relovedstudio

The heart jumper courtesy of Becky’s Instagram @relovedstudio

Whilst ethical clothing or soft furnishings are an investment, they are definitely worth it. Morris’ own golden rule

‘have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful’ (Morris, 1882)

became a tenant of mid-20th and 21st century bohemian maximalism however I believe it also requires us to be intentional about purchasing.

My internal thought process when buying something has recently involved the question: would this purchase make William Morris roll in his grave? If so, I don’t want it. I bloody love the man and I want him to enjoy eternity peacefully.

References

Barnes, A.J. (2024a) ‘Reinventing the past’ in Barnes, A.J. and Barker, E. (ed.) The past in the present. Milton Keynes. The Open University, pp. 5-42

Barker, E. (2024) ‘Picturing the past’ in Barnes, A.J. and Barker, E. (ed.) The past in the present. Milton Keynes. The Open University, pp. 43-86

Birch, D (2024) ‘Ruskin, John’, Grove Art Online. Available at: https://doi-org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T074542

Buzzo, A and Abreu, M.J. (2019) ‘Fast Fashion, Fashion Brands & Sustainable Consumption’ in Muthu, S.Senthilkannan. (ed.) Fast fashion, fashion brands and sustainable consumption. 1st ed. 2019. Singapore: Springer Singapore. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1268-7

Crawford, A. (2003) ‘Arts and Crafts Movement’, Grove Art Online. Available at: https://doi-org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T004452 (Accessed 25 May 2025)

Morris, W. (1882) ‘Hopes and Fears for Art’. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1882/hopes/chapters/chapter3.htm (Accessed 25 May 2025)

O’Neill, M. (2015) ‘Arts and Crafts Painting: The Political Agency of Things’, British Art Studies, Issue 1. Available at: https://www.britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-1/arts-crafts

Stansky, P. (2003) ‘Morris, William’, Grove Art Online. Available at: https://doi-org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T059724

Please note, this article is adapted from an essay I wrote as part of my degree so some of the references are from my course books which may not be easily accessible for non uni students.

Thank you for reading!