Morris Mania: a testament to the artist's 'enduring popularity'

William Morris Mural in Walthamstow, London, England, UK

(Image credit: Lana Rastro / Alamy Stock Photo)

published 18 April 2025

The designer, artist, author and all-round polymath William Morris (1834-1896) championed the democratisation of good taste, said Nancy Durrant in The Times. An "ardent socialist", he famously believed "that everyone, from any class, should have access to beauty". If only he could have known how this would manifest itself some 130 years after his death: his distinctive floral prints are now a fixture of British life, and "the breadth of items" to which they have been adhered is truly "dizzying". They adorn everything from wallpaper and curtains to mugs and trainers, from biscuit tins and tea trays to chopsticks and shopping bags – which are just a few of the exhibits in this intriguing show, subtitled How Britain's greatest designer went viral, at what was once Morris's family home in Walthamstow. Consisting of some 200 objects, many submitted by the public, it explores the "ubiquity" of its subject's work and the often surprising ways in which his radical legacy has filtered into contemporary culture. It's a testament to Morris's "enduring popularity" in a "commodified, globalised world".

The show is "a chintzy romp through more than a century of floral fixtures, fittings, fashion and furnishings", said Oliver Wainwright in The Guardian. Morris's prints were immensely popular in his lifetime, and a handy timeline explains how, in spite of his left-wing political sympathies, he became an "unrivalled tastemaker to the middle and upper classes", even receiving a commission to furnish Balmoral Castle and an order for the apartments of St Petersburg's Winter Palace. One photo here from 1917 shows a room in the latter after it was "ransacked" by the Bolsheviks – everything else is destroyed, but Morris's "rustic" paper "clings stubbornly to the walls". Another surprising exhibit is a piece of "rose-printed linen" used to upholster the seats of the Royal Navy's nuclear submarines in the 1980s. Heaven knows what Morris, who abhorred Britain's "imperialist ambitions and the futility of war", would've thought of that.

Today, Morris is synonymous with "middlebrow" taste, said Edwin Heathcote in the FT. His work is "the aesthetic of the museum shop", "the twee mail-order catalogue" and "the country-house tea room"; and the curators acknowledge that much of what we see here would have "horrified" their subject. A sworn opponent of mass production, Morris fetishised the handmade and the artisanal. It's unlikely that he would have approved of "Morris-print Dr. Martens" or even AI-generated patterns that ape his own. Yet the show doesn't judge; instead it simply rejoices in the "ridiculous, even absurd variety of applications of the great bearded man's designs". Ultimately, it demonstrates that in his legacy, "Morris has achieved what the expense of his designs prevented him from doing in life – accessibility, affordability and ubiquity".

William Morris Gallery, London E17. Until 21 September