Friday 12 July 2024

A Morrissean journey to Iceland with Dr. Alexandra Gushurst-Moore

Follow Dr. Alexandra Gushurst-Moore (@algmoore) on Instagram on a Morrissean journey to Iceland!

https://www.instagram.com/algmoore/


Retracing William Morris’s 1871 journey to Iceland (funded by the US WM society). She is live blogging the journey in her Instagram stories and has created a highlight so that people can watch the journey from the beginning!





Friday 10 May 2024

Online Lecture: Greene and Greene

 

Greene and Greene


Our speaker, Jennifer Trotoux, is Director of Collections and Interpretation at Gamble House in Pasadena

Wednesday May 15, 2024
On Zoom at 7:30 pm EDT

The Gamble House


Greene and Greene were among Southern California's most influential architects of the early 20th century, forging a distinctive style that was an expression of California's landscape and culture while reflecting international themes in its design and materials. Charles Greene once declared himself "in sympathy with the William Morris movement" to an Arts-and-Crafts-loving client; this sympathy manifested itself in the firm's work over time as they explored a regional expression for the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement.

Jennifer Trotoux is an architectural historian and historic preservation planner and has served
as the Director of Collections and Interpretation at the Gamble House in Pasadena, California, since 2017. The 1908 house is a National Historic Landmark and Greene and Greene's best-known work, retaining its original furnishings and decorative arts features designed by the architects.

Monday 15 April 2024

Bill Reid: His Life and Legacy

 Bill Reid: His Life and Legacy

Our presenter: Aliya Boubard, Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art, Vancouver
Wednesday April 17, 2024
On Zoom at 7:30 pm EDT


The presentation will focus on the life and legacy of renowned Haida artist Bill Reid (1920-1998). Bill Reid was an acclaimed master goldsmith, sculptor, writer, mentor, and community activist. He was born in Victoria, BC to a Haida mother and an American father, and only began exploring his Haida roots in his early twenties. He went on to be one of the most-renowned Indigenous artists in Canada.

Aliya will cover different periods of his life as an artist, several of his well-known works, his legacy, as well as the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art and how we continue to carry on his story.

Aliya Boubard is an Anishinaabekwe artist and emerging curator from Sagkeeng First Nation, located in Treaty 1 Territory in Manitoba. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba in 2020, and recently completed a Post-Baccalaureate Diploma in Indigenous Studies from. Simon Fraser University. Aliya is currently working as the Curator at the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art and has been a guest in Coast Salish territory since the fall of 2020.

Sunday 24 March 2024

WMSC 2024 Cake: Persian Pattern


The Persian pattern was chosen this year to reflect the theme of 'Global Morris'. This pattern was designed by John Henry Dearle, alongside praise from Morris himself.

In 1882, Morris wrote: “To us pattern designers, Persia has become a holy land, for there in the process of time our art was perfected, and thence above all places it spread to cover for a while the world, east and west.”

The cake was a Ukrainian honey cake with sour cream filling, the vines and patterns rendered in royal icing.


Watch the making of the cake on YouTube below!

















Tuesday 20 February 2024

Lecture and 190th Morris Birthday

 

"Where is our William Morris?" - Tracing Global Arts and Crafts
Lecture by Professor Antonia Behan

Sunday March 24th, 2pm EDT.
Enoch Turner Schoolhouse, 106 Trinity Street, Toronto, M5A 3C6


African Marigold furnishing fabric, designed by William Morris, 1876

The craftsman, designer, and writer William Morris had a surprising influence on thinkers and makers all over the world who were variously inspired by ideas about the validation of the craftsman and hand work, the value of tradition and vernaculars, and critiques of contemporary Western industrialism and imperialism. But why were so many people around the world inspired by Morris? What did craft practitioners and theorists embrace and what did they critique? How did the principles of Arts and Crafts change over time and in different contexts? And how was Arts and Crafts used by different empires as well as by anti-colonial movements? In this talk, I will explore how Morrissian ideals were appropriated, translated, and reinterpreted by different figures across the globe, from Ireland to India, Japan to Aotearoa New Zealand in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

 

Bio: 

Antonia Behan is Assistant Professor of Design History and Material Cultures in a Global World at Queen's University, Canada. Her work focuses on the global legacies of Arts and Crafts (with a particular focus on South Asia), weaving and artisanal knowledge, and the history of materials. Her current book project, The Brain of the Machine: Crafting Design between Britain and South Asia, is a dual study of the English handweaver Ethel Mairet and the Anglo-Ceylonese art historian Ananda Coomaraswamy. Previously, she was a research fellow at Bard Graduate Center for projects including John Lockwood Kipling: Arts and Crafts in the Punjab and in London. In addition to her research, she co-hosts Craft History Workshop, a virtual works-in-progress seminar that aims to expand research on histories of making.

Presentation of this year’s birthday cake and a toast celebrating Morris’s 190th birthday will follow the lecture.

The lecture itself will be available via Zoom at no charge for those unable to
attend in person. To access professor Behan’s talk virtually, please sign up at
https://forms.gle/fJVt4GABYaESmxKg6
by 6 pm on Friday, March 22. You will receive a link before the presentation begins.


To take part in the celebrations in person, please register at
https://forms.gle/iGHXjU4g66421y2o9
by Friday, March 14.

$10 for Society members; $20 for guests. Capacity is limited. To ensure your spot, please register and pay by March 14. Send cheques made out to the William Morris Society of Canada to: 3 Wolfe Court, Thornhill, ON, L4J 6T9, or pay by Paypal below:


Type of Ticket

Monday 12 February 2024

William Morris Patterns in a New York Cottage

 Beautiful interiors from Architectural Digest's feature of Bryce Dallas Howard's New York cottage featuring William Morris prints!










See the full tour in this Architectural Digest YouTube video here.


Friday 9 February 2024

Zoom Lecture: Jane Morris – the Pre-Raphaelite muse

 

Jane Morris - Pre-Raphaelite Muse
Lecture by John Hawks

On Zoom from the UK at 2 pm EST
Sunday, February 11, 2024

 Portrait of Jane Morris by John Robert Parsons

Jane Morris’s highly individual beauty, a symbol of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, was made famous through her many portraits by her long-time lover, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In the shadow of her illustrious husband William Morris, she has been unfairly neglected by posterity. 
 
John Hawks, founder of Merton Abbey Mills, director of Wandle Heritage Limited and curator of the Merton Priory Chapter House Museum, looks at the life and contribution of someone who most certainly was ‘not just a pretty face’.

Sunday 14 January 2024

Membership Reminder


 A reminder to renew your membership with the WMSC! We have many wonderful events in store for this year!

*A reminder to please renew by January 19th, 2024 to ensure you receive The Journal of William Morris Studies.

Thursday 4 January 2024

Happy New Year!

 

 

THE year has changed its name since that last tale;
Yet nought the prisoned spring doth that avail.
Deep buried under snow the country lies;
Made dim by whirling flakes the rook still flies
South-west before the wind; noon is as still
As midnight on the southward-looking hill,
Whose slopes have heard so many words and loud
Since on the vine the woolly buds first showed.

- The Earthly Paradise, January
William Morris