Tunnel Vision and Ignorance of William Morris

William Morris was born 24/03/1834 in Essex in England. When he was a teenager his father died so he was the oldest male of the household, he grew up in the countryside on large land. He went to Oxford University and became a poet he was offered a professorship there he then started training as an architect. William Morris hated mass production and was one of the key factors in the arts and crafts movement.

He hated the way manufactures could make so much good for people and not really care about the product. The industrial revelation is in full swing at this stage. England was now producing more than half the world steel, iron and coal. The population had doubled and England was bigger than Germany and France. While all of this was good the crafts man was textile workers were now being exploited as capitalism had set in with mass production and supplies on demand.

Craftsman that had spent a life time perfecting his skills and building for the clientele that he had. But when mass production came the skill of crafting making everyone unique had gone, mass production had removed skill from the manifesting process and now anyone could come in and press some buttons on a machine to make 10 times the amount that a crafts man could. Morris and Web started building inside Morris’s house everything in it was handmade it wasn’t until then that Morris realised for himself how bad the ecomania was. He loved building just for the fun of it, he wanted to show people that you could still do labour work like craft and not be humiliated and to do craft because you enjoy it. So that when he got the idea to start up his own company this was a Hugh risk as he was still only in his 20’s it was to be a decorative arts business.

Morris started up his own company MORRIS&CO which they liked to simply call it the firm. This company sold everything from wallpaper stained glass to furniture anything that your home could have needed at the time, Morris and his company loved to see craft man ship in their products so they would leave things exposed like dents in tablets and joints exposed in furniture. Under-priced crafts people started going for Morris, even to this day the arts and crafts movement has never really ended we still want to know where our products come from some even have a serial number on the back were you trace it back to the factory that it was made in.

William Morris made wall papers to this day hundreds of years later you can still buy his wall paper. He wanted to people to buy things that they only needed as buy one good set that will last you years, but why do that when people are always going to buy the cheaper option just to get them by until it breaks or they need another one. Morris wanted to break into all these big markets he really wanted to change the way people saw things but I think his main problem was that he was brought up in a well to do family he never suffered poverty he went off to college he could be anything that he wanted in life. When mass production started it meant that lower class family’s would be able to afford to have many items it their houses too but just the bare nasties. In the medieval the more clutter you had in your house the better well off you were.

This idea of thinking still lives on but in a different way. People will shop in the likes of Ikea to get the best bargain were your local furniture shop has much more quality in their products would you rather pay 15 euro for a plant stand or 50. Or shopping online to get the best deal all people want is average quality with a good price.

Over all from doing this essay I now know that I really do not like William Morris if he was alive today he would be an art snob and be friends with the men in made in Chelsea. He was not getting with the times, he had some serious tunnel vision and seen everything in black and white. Even to this day everything is mass produced, willy Morris just needed to catch a grip of himself and see not everyone was from such a wealthy back ground and didn’t care if they were getting a job in a factory that was stopping the crafts man. Job was a job and they needed to feed their family.

Walking around the pollination city’s complaining about the air and colour of everything, well Willy back to the country side with you.