The Flowers of William Morris

This is the first book to take a close look at Morris's gardens and flowers and in so doing it throws fresh light on the life and work of this passionate yet practical individual.After a short introduction to Morris the book opens with a description of his childhood homes and their large Victorian gardens on the edge of his beloved Epping Forest. Student days at Oxford with Burne-Jones and the important influence of Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites come next, and then the book turns to Morris's own homes and gardens: Red House, Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire, Kelmscott House in Hammersmith and the Abbey Works at Merton. Morris's own words and those of his daughter May show his very personal approach to flowers and gardens and how his ideas anticipated the theories of William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll.The final chapter takes a close look at Morris's use of flowers in his designs. Did he draw the flowers he knew and loved or did he instinctively rely on the timeless wood engravings in old herbals? His lectures on the use of twining stem and curling tendril are a lesson to pattern-makers still.