The darling buds of May

May Morris shared her father’s passion for flowers, embroidery and Iceland, but was much more than William’s daughter. Influential both as a designer and as a teacher, she championed the rights of workers, particularly women, as Huon Mallalieu reveals

-  Huon Mallalieu

AS the daughter of William Morris, poet, painter, designer, printer, socialist campaigner, businessman, utopian and driving force of the Arts-and-Crafts Movement, May Morris still has not entirely escaped from his wide-spreading shadow. Much of his poetry has not worn well and, after his death in 1896, his designs fell out of fashion, to be replaced by Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Since the relaunch of his wallpapers and fabrics by Sandersons and Liberty in the 1960s, however, his reputation has risen again and hers with it. Indeed, a similar string of labels can be attached to her—designer, art embroiderer, teacher, writer, political activist, historian, socialist and supporter of women’s advancement—and, since the 1980s, not only her contribution to her father’s success, but her own achievements, too, have been increasingly understood.

In 1861, a year before May’s birth, Morris had set up Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co to make ecclesiastical and domestic furnishings by traditional methods. From the start, May and her elder sister, Jenny, were brought up surrounded by artists and craftspeople— at that time, the ‘& Co’ were Edward BurneJones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown and Philip Webb—and soon learned the discipline of standing as models. The glass-painting workshop was next door from their home and the main business premises only yards away. Their mother, Jane, and aunt, Elizabeth Burden, worked at embroideries, such as altar cloths, wallhangings and screens, and the girls were soon stitching small items for sale.