May Morris

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May Morris (1863–1938) (Mary Morris) was an English craftswoman and designer. She was the younger daughter of the Pre-Raphaelite artist and designer William Morris and artists' model Jane Burden Morris.

May Morris was an influential embroideress and designer, although her contributions are often overshadowed by those of her father, a towering figure in the Arts and Crafts movement. May learned to embroider from her mother and her aunt Bessie Burden, who had been taught by William Morris. Morris himself is credited with the resurrection of free-form embroidery in the style which would be termed art needlework. Art needlework emphasized freehand stitching and delicate shading in silk thread, and was thought to encourage self-expression in the needleworker; this contrasted sharply with the brightly coloured Berlin wool work needlepoint and its "paint by numbers" aesthetic which had gripped much of home embroidery in the mid-nineteenth century.

May Morris was active in the Royal School of Art Needlework (now Royal School of Needlework), founded as a charity in 1872 under the patronage of Princess Helena to maintain and develop the art of needlework through structured apprenticeships.

May became the director of the embroidery department at Morris & Co. in 1885, when she was in her early twenties.

She edited her father's collected works in 24 volumes for Longmans, Green and Company, published 1910 to 1915, and also commissioned two houses, as had her mother Jane, to be built in the style that he loved after his death, and which are still standing in the village of Kelmscott in the Cotswolds in England.

[edit] References

• Pre-Raphaelites in Love by Gay Daly, Ticknor & Fields (1989), ISBN 0-89919-450-8.
• The Earthly Paradise: Arts and Crafts by William Morris and His Circle from Canadian Collections edited by Katharine A. Lochnan, Douglas E. Schoenherr, and Carole Silver. Key Porter Books (1996), ISBN 1-55013-450-7.
• Pre-Raphaelites at Home by Pamela Todd, Watson-Guptill Publications (2001), ISBN 0-8230-4285-5