A 19thC English designer who energised and revolutionised the arts and crafts of interiors with his emphasis on beauty and utility, the natural world as an inspiration and the aesthetic and moral importance of a connection between the process of hand-making and the result–he rejected the anonymity of mass production. He was closely connected to the Pre-Raphaelites.
William Morris designed room schemes and everything in them: furniture, flooring, lighting, furnishings, tapestries…and was intimately involved in their creation. He is especially remembered for his exquisite wallpaper and textile designs, which were alive with colours and fluid representations of the natural world, made more vivid and two-dimensional because of the play between his foregrounds and backgrounds. These were initially hand-printed, then popularised by Liberty of London –which still houses and re-issues William Morris designs as wallpapers and furnishing fabric.