Five pink flowers with foliated tendrils

Morris & Company

last quarter 19th century · Linen embroidered with silk, in non-original frame · European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

William Morris’s Arts and Crafts’ movement prized needlework as a medium worked by hand by dedicated practitioners, in a direct riposte to the anonymous industrialization of other, increasingly mass-produced textiles. For more than a decade, the embroidery workshop of Morris & Co. was run by William Morris’s daughter, May. She supervised a team of professional embroiderers who specialized in darned needlework like this, producing a supply of elegantly stylized textile friezes for use as borders and valences.

Artist

Morris & Company

Date

last quarter 19th century

Medium

Linen embroidered with silk, in non-original frame

Culture

British

Department

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Credit line

Gift of Jacqueline Loewe Fowler, 2020