‘Everything made by man’s hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it accords with Nature, and helps her; ugly if it is discordant with Nature, and thwarts her.’ – William Morris
As Christmas is upon us, you have likely put a lot of thought into gifts and decorations in the last few weeks, and possibly, how to make these more environmentally-friendly. Over the last few years, the idea of sustainable gifting, plastic-free gift wrap, and hand-made crafts has become more and more popular, especially with endless inspiration from online platforms like Etsy and Pinterest. This could be described as a pushback on modern globalisation and mass-production which are both wreaking havoc on the environment – but this isn’t the first pushback of the kind which our society has seen. The Arts and Crafts movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was a stand against widespread industrialisation which was revolutionising the country in almost every way through that period. One of the leaders of this movement was William Morris - a manufacturer, designer, poet, political activist, novelist, and printer, and possibly one of the most famous artists of the 19th century, whose patterns are still hugely popular today. His designs are gorgeously intricate and poetically imitate the beauty of nature, but the story behind them, and what Morris was trying to achieve through them, makes them so much more. Morris clearly loved nature – one glance at his work tells you that, but the question I’ll be considering is, could he be described as a Victorian eco-warrior?
Firstly, let’s consider his most notable work – his designs. If you are familiar with his work you will know that his designs are exclusively depictions of foliage and flowers, sometimes visited by garden birds. To Morris this was the only true subject of art, and he believed nature, like true art, to be inimitable. Morris & Co were all about doing things by hand, at a time when ultra-efficient machines were taking over the market. This included creating their famous wallpapers with hand-cut wooden blocks instead of steam-powered rollers, cutting and painting their decorative tiles by hand, and printing paper products using their own invention – the Kelmscott hand-printing press. Morris also had a great passion for using natural dyes over chemical dyes, and spent years researching how to extract them, and fix them to retain their colour for as long as the synthetic ones. He wrote to one of his employees Thomas Wardle that ‘we want to get something quite different from the ordinary goods in the market: this is the very heart of our undertaking since… the ordinary manufacturer throws away precious opportunities that the natural fibres and dyeing drugs give him.’ (1)
This attitude of embracing the 'natural' extended to the factories where the designs were created: Morris describes his ideal workplace as being ‘amidst gardens ... our working people will assuredly want open air relaxation from their factory work… our factory must make no sordid litter, befoul no water, nor poison the air with smoke… it does not injure the beauty of the world, but adds to it rather.’ (2) Using natural processes created much less pollution and material waste than industrial methods, and although it could be argued that these environmental benefits were merely a by-product of Morris’ key motive: creating high-quality work which was longer-lasting than mass-produced items, to me this sounds like the attitude of someone who took great inspiration from the natural environment and cared a lot about its welfare, against the grain of his era. He tactically, and sacrificially, used his position as a commercial manufacturer in a highly competitive business environment to advocate for his vision of our connectedness with nature.
Morris also believed in an unbreakable trinity between people, art, and nature. Historian Sara Wills refers to figures such as Morris as ‘newly urbanised Victorians’ who ‘grappled with a culture of nature that put human life firmly within nature at the same time many felt increasingly distant from it.’ (3) We can probably relate to this – the Victorian urban sprawl has become the modern tech sprawl, and we are grappling with the same issue of embracing this inevitable social development whilst remaining connected to our natural roots which are so integral to our wellbeing. Morris believed that ‘love of nature in all its forms must be the ruling spirit’ of true art (4), that humans need art and beauty in order to thrive (reflected in the aforementioned beautiful factories he created for his workmen and women), and that nature is reliant on humans for its sustenance. The three are inseparable – this is the heart of the Arts and Crafts movement. However the sad irony, noted by Linda Parry, is that through using natural, hand-crafted methods, Morris' designs were very expensive, and therefore inaccessible to the poorer classes enslaved to the industrial system whose lives he wished to improve (5).
Another fascinating facet of Morris’ environmental vocalism was his book News from Nowhere, written in 1890. This book is a ‘utopia’ in genre (an imagined future where everything is perfect, the opposite of 'dystopia'), inspired by Thomas More’s famous 16th century Utopia. Historian Krishan Kumar argues that News from Nowhere is also the first ‘ecotopia’ – ecological utopia (6). News from Nowhere is set in the 22nd century, (really interesting seeing what a Victorian predicted the future to be!), and Morris – represented by a character called ‘Guest’, wakes up in a future London where everyone is living an idyllic pastoral country life after a mass revolution against industrialisation. The descriptions of old London are jarring – Guest describes ‘the soap-works with their smoke-vomiting chimneys,’ the ‘“slums”… that is to say, places of torture for innocent men and women,’ the ‘sprawling mess with which commercialism had littered the banks of the Thames’, and the way ‘trees were cut down for the sake of the few shillings which the poor sticks would fetch’ (7). (Dickens also describes the Thames as a ‘deadly sewer’ in his 1857 book Little Dorrit – it was clearly quite an impressive problem). Guest writes, very poignantly, that the mistake of 19th century society was that ‘they should try to make “nature” their slave, since they thought “nature” was something outside of them’ (8). I remember stopping in my tracks when I read this – it’s profound that this insight from 134 years ago still rings so true today. No matter how hard we try to distance ourselves from nature and replace our dependence on it with a dependence on technology, it is a part of us, and to disregard that has dire consequences.
In contrast, in 22nd century London, ‘the spirit of the new days… is delight in the life of the world; intense and overweening love of the very skin and surface of the earth on which man dwells’ (9). People live in houses ‘amongst the fields with pleasant lanes leading down to them, and each surrounded by a teeming garden’, children ‘play in the woods for weeks together, and… get to notice wild creatures’, ‘the Thames is clear and thriving with salmon’, and ‘there are a great many more birds about’ (10). Morris seemed to really understand the importance of people’s engagement with nature – even children noticing the natural world around them – and the danger that it was in. We talk about ‘nature deficit disorder’ affecting young people today – perhaps that isn’t such a new thing. P.G. Mackintosh proposes that Morris ‘conceived the idea of Arts and
Crafts... in the belief that art could rescue both working people and the environment from the ravages of industrialism’ (11). Morris’s understanding of people’s dependence on nature for their wellbeing, and the effect this has on conservation appears surprisingly modern. However some historians argue that Morris cannot be considered a true environmentalist because his work is human-centric rather than eco-centric: he glorified the pastoral landscape, moulded by people, over autonomous ecosystems, perhaps influenced by trends in 19th century English landscape art which glorified upper class land ownership. It’s an interesting consideration, however I think that point is peripheral in the face of what Morris was fighting against at the time.
Although Morris was distinct from many of his contemporaries in the environmental sphere, he was not completely alone – others such as Octavia Hill, William Wordsworth, Beatrix Potter and John Ruskin were also gathering the troops to take a stand against exploitation of nature, using their artistic skills and livelihoods to show their love for the world and its need of protection - I find their lives so inspiring to research and read about. Morris’ legacy has lasted over a century and is still ‘wildly’ inspirational today . His career demonstrates a radical vision for the natural world, and although he may not have been resolutely ‘eco-centric’, he advocated for humans’ partnership with and dependence on the natural world, which is a key element of environmentalism: I would argue that amongst his many achievements, he was certainly a Victorian eco-warrior.
If you're feeling inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement like me, maybe have a go at some sustainable homemade decorations and gifts over the next few weeks (my next project is candle pouring...), or try to support some local artists in your area. Happy Christmas! 😊
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This post was adapted from an academic essay of mine, so I've included some of my references:
(1) Norman Kelvin, The Collected Letters of William Morris Volume I (Guildford: Princeton University Press,1984)
(2) William Morris, A Factory As It Might Be (1884)
(3) Sara Wills, ‘Woods Beyond Words? The Greening of William Morris’, Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies, 7.1, (2020)
(4) William Morris, The Lesser Arts Of Life (1882)
(5) Linda Parry, William Morris (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 1997)
(6) Krishan Kumar, ‘News from Nowhere: the Renewal of Utopia’, History of Political Thought, 14.1, (1993)
(7) William Morris, News from Nowhere (Bookclassic, 2015)
(8) News from Nowhere
(9) News from Nowhere
(10) News from Nowhere
(11) P.G. Mackintosh, ‘‘The development of higher urban life’ and the geographic imagination: beauty, art, and moral environmentalism in Toronto, 1900-1920’, Journal of Historical Geography, 31.4 (2005)
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