William Morris: Arts and Crafts Movement

William Morris was a famous artists who mainly focused on his wallpaper and fabric designs. While he was mainly known for his art, even today, he had many other notable careers and accomplishments, One of them being that he founded the Arts and crafts movement. His other careers were a political thinker, architect, novelist, poet, and illustrator. Morris was a great artist, and this is shown because many of his designs are still being created today, over a hundred years later.

One famous piece of art created by him was the piece named seaweed. The reason this piece is so popular was because of its clear repeating pattern, its organic forms, the amount of detail, and its colors. More detail about these topics are that there are no straight lines and that the colors consist of muted greens and blues. William Morris had a great way of thinking about how to go about his art and it was that beauty, imagination, and order necessary to create a successful piece of art.

Another famous piece of art created by William Morris was Strawberry Thief. This was a similar to the design of seaweed in the sense that it had a repeating pattern. There was also no straight lines and their was plenty of detail. At first, the name of the piece did not make sense however, after looking at it again, there were some strawberries throughout the design and the word thief might have come from the birds in the design. If a bowl of strawberries are left outside, birds are bound to end up taking them eventually so this might have been where the name came from.

Even though Morris influenced many other artists, his work was also influenced. His main influence was nature. This is proven because he knew almost everything there is to know about British plants and trees and he used this knowledge in his designs. Another main influence of his was the middle ages art and culture. He tried to bring back the middle ages art forms like manuscript illumination and tapestry weaving. All of these influences contributed to the great artwork he has created.

After creating his art, many people started to gain ideas for their own art based off of his. The great part about his artwork was that people could turn anything in nature into a very interesting and detail oriented design that really makes people stare and look into it and its meaning. Because of his success with creating amazing artwork as well as inspiring many other artists, he could be considered the greatest and most influential Wallpaper and fabric design artists.