William Morris and the Book

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Morris in his 30s when he was already famous, painted by Charles Fairfax Murray in 1870

I was fortunate this summer to be able to make a return visit to Kelmscott Manor and to visit the Morris family home in Walthamstow for the first time. Kelmscott has a temporary exhibition on William Morris and the book and the extensive collection at his old family home also had a lot of material on Morris’s Kelmscott Press and his involvement with books.

The Morris family home in Walthamstow

An early reader, Morris became interested in medieval manuscripts, collecting them from an early age. By the end of his life he owned 17 medieval Bibles, 117 Manuscripts and 280 early printed books, one of the finest collections in private hands. According to his daughter, May Morris, he: ‘had an intimate knowledge of French and English medieval painted manuscripts, knowing the finest books in the Bodleian and the British Museum as if they belonged to him.’ In turn these books had a strong influence on Morris’s own design ideas.

He loved romances and legends and from the 1880s started writing his own, inspired by the Icelandic sagas and indeed it was probably for his writing that Morris was most famous in his day. From the samples I have read though they come across now as tedious and stilted: reading them makes me feel like the friend of Morris in this sketch subjected to the writer’s performance of his own work:

One of Morris’s 17 Bibles (pic): 13th century illuminated Vulgate bible from southern France

Morris’s copy of Gerarde’s Herbal, rebound by Doves Bindery

He loved calligraphy and it became one of the many interests he pursued in his spare time, though heaven knows he probably had precious little of that:

Example of Morris’s own calligraphy

Morris was dissatisfied with the quality of machine-made, mass-produced books, and determined to apply his belief in the importance of quality of design and handmade production to the production of books. He wanted books to be: ‘a pleasure to look upon as pieces of print.’  

In 1888 following a lecture on early typefaces by Emery Walker (partner of TJ Cobden-Sanderson and co-creator of the Doves Press), Morris spend 2 years researching typography and handprinting and in 1891 produced the first book of his new Kelmscott Press, using an Albion handpress. Over the next few years until 1898, the Kelmscott Press produced 52 different titles, including Morris’s masterpiece, the Kelmscott Chaucer, finished just 4 months before his death.

In his book production, Morris paid great attention to all the elements involved: type design and fonts, page layout, illustration, ink, paper and binding. His typefaces are heavily influenced by Gothic script from medieval manuscripts and early printed books and he applied their illuminated scenes and floral border decorations to some of his own productions.

He designed 644 initials, borders and decorative ornaments used in the Kelmscott Press’s 53 titles. In all Morris produced 3 typefaces. His first, Goden, was inspired by Nicolas Jenson’s press in late 15th century Venice; the second was Troy, ‘a semi-Gothic type designed…with special regard to legibility’; finally, Chaucer, that Morris created specially for his edition of the poet’s works.

Both Kelmscott and Walthamstow featured browsing copies of Morris’s Chaucer enabling anyone to leaf through the book and admire it as a book rather than a double page spread displayed under glass. Personally, particularly in the Kelmscott Chaucer, beautiful book though it is as an object, the effect is overwhelming with the eye fighting against the page layout and illustrations. There is no space around the text for the eye to rest and Gothic script is not the easiest typeface to read. Not everyone found Morris’s type successful. Stanley Morrison, a famous typographer, described it as ‘positively foul.’

The intense black ink he used for printing was manufactured in Germany and was, unfortunately for his pressmen, thick and difficult to use. The Kelmscott press also used red and blue inks.

Example of the use of the three ink colours in a Kelmscott book

Morris collaborated with a papermaker called Joseph Batchelor to produce paper of the right quality for the Kelmscott Press. He believed the finest paper was made in the fifteenth century, particularly admiring a book printed in Venice in 1475 for ‘having the clean, crisp quality of a bank-note’.

Supertertium Sententiarum by Alexander of Hales printed by Johannes de Colonia, Venice 1475
Kelmscott pressmen at work on the edition of Chaucer

The Kelmscott Press offered its books in a variety of different bindings according to individual taste as this handbill makes clear:

Handbill for the different editions of the Kelmscott Chaucer

The Poems of William Shakespeare: one of the most popular books Kelmscott ever produced:

The exhibition at Kelmscott Manor includes an interesting story about a young girl that Morris encouraged to become a bookbinder. Katherine Adams (1862-1952), described in the exhibition as one of the most accomplished bookbinders of the early 20th century was a local Oxfordshire girl. Her family lived in nearby Little Faringdon and Morris encouraged her to become a bookbinder, introducing her to private printing presses for commissions. She set up her own bindery, Eadburgha Bindery in Broadway, and in 1907 became one of the first members of the Women’s Guild of Artists (founded by May Morris). The exhibition features a beautifully designed and executed order of service that she bound in 1911.

Morris’s work at the Kelmscott Press inspired the development of the private press movement in England (eg Doves Press, Ashendene Press, Essex House Press). His influence continues down to the present day through the modern private presses (such as Incline Press) and organisations such as Designer Binders whose members specialise in artistic and highly creative bindings for books.

Wells Cathedral West Front – a close encounter

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“We’re now at the level of the nine orders of angels’, says our guide, as we look directly at the remnants of these heavenly beings. We would be looking them in the eye, but unfortunately most of them have lost their faces, eroded over the centuries. We are standing on scaffolding at the top of the West Front of the Cathedral being given a guided tour by a conservator from Cliveden Conservation. The company has been working here since April cleaning the central portion of the façade and doing some light restoration work that they’re aiming to complete by about mid-September.

I am in a group of 6 people who have bought tickets to do a 9.00am tour – there’s only one other tour planned that’s taking place about an hour and a half after ours – and feel very privileged to be here to see the statuary at such close quarters.

A Cathedral guide has already given us a brief introduction to the West Front. It depicts the Last Judgement with Christ in Majesty at the top of the façade with the Apostles and Angels beneath him. Below that are rows of kings and bishops and scenes from the New Testament (on the left) and the Old Testament (on the right).

The metal panel wall around the foot of the scaffolding was only recently installed following an attack by vandals on the West Front stained glass which damaged Christ’s face. This is about to undergo repair by a specialist stained glass restoration company.

At the bottom of the scaffolding, our conservator guide gives a brief introduction to the work they’re doing and shows us how they record what they are doing. Each piece of statuary has its own book (the size of a school exercise book) in which are recorded its condition and areas of damage, what conservation has been carried out on it previously and what is being done (if anything) during the current work phase. Detailed drawings record the areas of damage and repair. In addition, each statue has its own A3 sheaf of photographs recording its state.

Conservation work is these days very conservative. They use lime water a bit but not lime mortar poultices, a technique I learnt from reading Andrew Ziminski’s books about working as stonemason on Somerset churches. The idea is to cover a figure in lime mortar to draw out pollutants from deep in the stone. Our guide tells us that when this was tried on a carved head at the Cathedral a few years ago, the head exploded.   

Donning our hi-vis jackets and white hats we make our way up the 9 sets of ladders that take us right to the top where our tour starts.

I am not great with heights, but the ladders and scaffolding are robust: the only slight concern coming from small gaps in places between the planks and a bit of a wobble when you walk over some of them. But the view from the top is breath-taking: far below is the Cathedral Green, the Old Deanery; in the distance over the city rooftops rises the tower of St Cuthbert’s Church and beyond it, the countryside; to our left lies the Market Place and the Bishop’s Eye.

I could stand here for ages just taking it all in, but I have a tour to do and our guide is already talking about the upper level.

The figure of Christ and the two Seraphim flanking him look like replacements from the 1980s when a lot of restoration work was done on the West Front.

The Apostles are in a worse state, particularly their faces. Some of them are immediately identifiable: a slightly more prominent St Andrew (to whom the Cathedral is dedicated) carrying his diagonal cross; St Paul carrying an Islamic-looking curved sword; St John carrying a chalice; St Peter; St Bartholomew carrying his own skin (he was martyred by being flayed alive).

Beneath the Apostles are the angels in poor condition. The amazing thing about them though is that many of their wings retain a dark reddy-brown colour from their medieval paint. The whole façade was painted in bright colours when it was originally built: it was said that from the top of Glastonbury Tor (about 6 miles away you could see it glinting in the sun).

There’s a lot of pigeon guano on the statues, but it’s not this that causes a lot of damage. Most of it is caused by weather erosion and the friability of the Doulting stone from which the Cathedral is built. Doulting is a village just outside Wells with an old stone quarry, now occupied by a Charlie Bigham food production facility.

Between the Angels are holes for trumpets and on high festival days actual trumpets would have been blown through them, no doubt to the amazement of the people gathered in the graveyard (now the Green) below. At right angles to the angels at either end of the angel rank are depictions of trumpeting angels and figures rising from their tombs, including Bishop Jocelyn who built the Bishop’s Palace in the 1220s.

Peering through a gap in the architecture I manage to get a shot of the Cathedral’s central tower.

On the next level down our guide points out several statues with Arabic numerals on them. These were only just coming into use in Europe at the time the West Front was being built, so it could be that this is an early example of them being used in stone masonry, or it could be that masons of middle eastern origin were working on the Cathedral.

I often think that some of the thin, round pinnacles used on the Cathedral, particularly for example on the porch of North Door are inspired by minarets. It seems highly likely to me that pilgrimages to the Holy Land and the Crusades contributed to the cross-fertilisation of ideas, so why not the sharing of ideas about constructing buildings?

Lots of Bishops appear on the façade:

and queens:

There are some impressive statues of kings from the Middle Ages.

Two are shown standing on other people: one on his mother-in-law who poisoned him and another on his sister who tried to kill him. There’s some debate about the identity of a prominent figure: is he King Henry II or King Richard I? The consensus of those with a better grasp of English history of the period is that it’s more likely to be Richard. Our guide tells us they refer to him as the ‘bendy-arm king’.

Around the corner is a king wrapped in a conservation blanket, looking like he’s been tucked up in bed.

We’re fortunate on our tour to see a stone mason carving a piece of foliage from a block of stone, a pencil gripped in his mouth, using a range of different chisel sizes and mallets.

On one corner is a Knight in chain mail that covers the lower part of his face so delicately carved, like those eighteenth century Italian sculpted figures covered in veils.

On a lower level, two niche carvings show God creating Adam, and in the other God creating Eve from Adam’s spare rib. Then at some point in the story it all went wrong: here are the first couple standing next to the Tree of Knowledge – a serpent wrapped around it – with Eve biting into the apple.

In the central part of the same level are the lower parts of two figures which would have shown Christ crowning the Virgin Mary. To the right of this is a beautiful depiction of St John the Evangelist.

Finally, on the lowest level we are able to admire at close quarters one of my favourite pieces, the Virgin and Child that guards the West Door. It’s covered over with mesh to protect it from the pigeons and it looks original though it must have been restored at some stage as the Virgin still has a gold crown. The miracle is that, if it is original, it survived the iconoclasm of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that destroyed many other statues on the West Front.

As a final treat the Cathedral have laid on a cream tea – at 10.30 in the morning. No angel cake, but the sandwiches and scones are delicious.

Exploring the world of William Morris – Kelmscott Manor 2

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This is the second in a series of posts about William Morris – the first was published here

Continuing a walk around Kelmscott Manor, the home that Morris rented from a local farmer, we go upstairs

On the first floor is Jane Morris’s bedroom with a four poster bed covered with a rather chintzy (and unMorris-like) canopy and valance. A jewellery box made by Rossetti sits under a glass case on a chest of drawers. The walls are covered in a beautiful Morris-designed wallpaper, again by Sanderson, reproduced from the original woodblocks.

Morris’s own bedroom is just along the corridor. It also has a four-poster bed with a canopy embroidered by May Morris featuring a charming little poem Morris wrote about his bed:

Bookshelves in his bedroom contain some of Morris’s library, including editions of his own works published in his lifetime and the complete works edited and published by his daughter after his death. Here too are a complete set of Dickens and Walter Scott, whom Morris started reading at the age of 4 and finished at 7! I wonder how many people today read Walter Scott, let alone children. He is pretty unreadable in my experience. Many of Morris’s books were dispersed after his death, apart from the ones here and the collection held by the Society of Antiquaries in London.

Above the chest of drawers to the left of the bed is this wonderful pencil drawing of Jane by Rosetti:

Up a short flight of steps from Morris’s bedroom is the Tapestry Room used by Rosetti as a studio. The old Dutch Tapestries still hanging there were in place when Morris and Rosetti rented the Manor in 1871, and now they are in need of serious restoration work. Rosetti suffered from sleeplessness and hallucinations probably caused by an addiction to Laudaum and left Kelmscott in 1874. After that it was used initially by the Morrises as a sitting room and then as a work room.

Over the fireplace hangs a Bruegel painting left behind by Rosetti:

Below, in the fireplace, sit two Islamic incense burners in the shape of metal peacocks. It is one of things that has always intrigued me about Morris: there’s such an apparently strong Islamic influence in his work. I remember visiting the mosques of Istanbul and the Topkapi Palace and being reminded by the tile designs featuring birds, tulips and tendrils of Morris’s designs.

As in Islamic art, that is non-figurative for religious reasons, Morris avoided depicting the human form (in his case because he could not draw people). Instead his art features the natural world, plants, animals and especially birds. Where did the influence come from? He never visited the Middle East. Almost certainly it was from books, exhibitions and shops that sold Middle eastern artefacts, like these two incense burners. Apparently at the Red House, his house in Kent, Morris kept a group of Islamic artefacts on a table because he liked them so much.

On the top floor are the attics and two further bedrooms, all beautifully atmospheric spaces. Now an unusual staircase leads up there, but in Morris’s time there was just a ladder:

When May Morris was a girl she would climb up through a hatch in the attic and go ‘roof-riding’ as she put:

View of the garden and surrounding countryside from the attics:

In an outhouse there’s a kitchen / laundry room with a baker’s oven in the fireplace. Morris used to brew beer here too.

In a corner of the garden is this small building that looks like a summer house but was actually the Morris privy.

unusually it was also a three-seater:

A willow tree stump in the Manor gardens next to the River Thames:

Morris and Jane are buried in the local churchyard with this simple gravestone:

On the road through the village are these unusual slates used as fencing material to stop sheep getting out of the field.

In my next blog post about Morris, I am going to explore his relationship to the book.

Exploring the world of William Morris – Kelmscott Manor 1

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Visiting William Morris’s home, Kelmscott Manor, in high summer it is easy to see why he regarded it as ‘heaven on earth’. Just 3 miles from the town of Lechlade, it seems to be buried deep in the west Oxfordshire countryside. The Manor is only open 3 days a week (Thursday to Saturday) and has timed entries, so there is restricted access which, from my two visits over the past year seems, to discourage large groups from visiting.

You park in a largish car park on the edge of the village and then walk the 1/4 mile to the manor through the beautiful village with its Cotswold stone houses and idyllic pub, The Plough, and past a working farm:

On the way you pass a row of houses designed by Morris’s friend, Philip Webb, that features a carved stone panel depicting Morris sitting under a group of trees:

The road leading to the Manor is a dead end. The absence of through traffic adds to the deep silence of this spot.

The many gabled manor has a formal front garden and large gardens to the rear.

On the walls of the wooden panelled entrance hall hang pictures of Morris and some of his friends, together with this sale notice from 1939. William Morris died in 1896 and his wife, Jane, bought Kelmscott Manor for their daughter May just before Jane died in 1914. May continued to live there and continue her career as an outstanding creative person in her own right until her death in 1938. After that Kelmscott was acquired by Oxford University who owned it until the 1960s when it was taken over by the Society of Antiquaries who still run it.

To the right of the entrance hall is the flagstone-floored old hall used by Morris, who likened it to a ship’s cabin, as a dining room.

The room features probably one of Morris’s most ionic designs, the Strawberry Thief, on a wallhanging:

One of the many joys of visiting Kelmscott is the guides who are so knowledgeable and always happy to answer questions.

A corridor leads to a dark inner room, the Garden Hall, containing two of Morris’s first experiments with embroidery. The first dates to 1857 and features a repeating bird and tree motif with the device ‘If I can’: this is alleged to come from Jan van Eyck, one of Morris’s personal heroes. It expresses his aspiration to do the best he could with his talents and abilities:

The second is one he produced with Jane, a simple daisy design on a dark blue background, based on a flower he saw in the medieval illuminated manuscript of Froissart’s Chronicles:

On the wall outside the Garden Room hangs Morris’s first embroidered wallhanging, a sophisticate design based on birds, tendrils and acanthus leaves:

Morris used the Green Room as a sitting room and later May Morris used it for weaving. This room features one of Morris’s most beautiful designs, Kennet. In the context of the Manor it is easy to see how Morris was inspired in his design work by his observations of the gardens, river and countryside surrounding Kelmscott:

The wallpaper in many of the rooms use Morris designs and was produced for the Manor’s restoration by Sanderson, using Morris’s original woodblocks. Morris’s designs are very vegetal and do not include figures. He didn’t consider that he could draw or paint them well, so stuck to what he could do best. The evidence for this is in on show in a small side room off the Green Room that includes his painting of Venus:

The White Room was the main parlour. It has a beautiful parquet floor and an impressive settle with leather inlaid design on the back that Morris & Co, his fabric, wallpaper and furnishings company, manufactured and sold for £30. It contains Rossetti’s stunning portrait of Jane Morris in a blue silk dress (the Preraphaelites invented the term ‘stunner’ for an attractive woman):

Jane Morris, the daughter of an ostler in Oxford, had a very striking appearance which we now associate with the classic Pre-Raphaelite look. This is borne out in the photographs of her that survive. She was very tall for the era (nearly 6 ft) while Morris was 5ft 7in and she was described as having an ‘enquiring mind, kindliness and sense of fun’. She clearly made up for her lack of education: studying French and Italian, learning to play the piano and mandolin and reading widely. She also became a very skilled needlewoman, working with Morris on his designs. Jane was more than capable of holding her own in Morris’s circle of friends.

Morris’ relationship with Jane was a fraught one. She claimed that she didn’t love him even though she married him, pursuing an on/off affair with Dante Gabriel Rossetti for 20 years, and after Rossetti’s death with the poet Wilfred Scawen Blunt. Morris seems to have turned a blind eye to this straying, for example travelling to Iceland in the early 1870s leaving Jane with Rossetti at Kelmscott.

The room also features two beautiful drawings of the Morrises’ daughter, Jenny and May, by Rossetti, both looking older than their actual ages at the time (12 and 14). This one is May (I think):

New portrait found of the last Emperor of Byzantium

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Image courtesy of the Greek Ministry of Culture

On his excellent podcast about the history of Byzantium (Byzantium & Friends), Professor Anthony Kaldellis interviews Anastasia Koumousi (Director of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Achaea) about the recent discovery of a portrait of the last Emperor of Byzantium. Constantinos XI Dragases Palaiologos died in the Ottoman siege of 1453 which ended in the fall of Constantinople.

The portrait was found during restoration work in the abandoned monastery of the Archangels at Aigialeia, near Aigio in the northern Peloponnese. It is believed to be be the only contemporary portrait of the Emperor.

The podcast provides links to two published articles on the find here and here.

Two poems of Cavafy’s

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I’ve just translated a couple of Cavafy’s poems, both on historical themes. The first one is a fictional tomb inscription for a young Alexandrian youth called Iasis;

Iasis’s tomb

Here lie I, Iasis, a youth of this great city
famed for his beauty.
Wise men admired me and also thoughtless,
ordinary people. I’m equally glad

for both of them. But because people considered me too much like Narcissus and Hermes,
debauchery ruined and killed me. Traveller,
if you’re Alexandrian, you won’t judge me. You know the ardour
of our lives: what warmth it has, what supreme pleasure.

The second poem is the last one that Cavafy wrote and it returns to a favourite subject of his, the Emperor Julian the Apostate. I like the way it is written in the dismissive voice of a Christian enemy of Julian who hates the Emperor’s attempt to revive the worship of the old gods:

In the environs of Antioch

We were perplexed in Antioch when we found out
about Julian’s latest antics.

Apollo made himself clear in Daphne!
He did not want to give prophecies (we could not care less!),
he had no intention of speaking prophetically, unless
they first purified the sanctuary in Daphne.
He was annoyed, so they say, by the dead buried nearby.

In Daphne there were many tombs –
One of them buried there
was the wonder-working saint, the glory of our church,
the beautiful martyr, Vavilas.

The false god was afraid of him.
Therefore it was considered he didn’t dare venture near him
to give his prophesies: silence.
(The false gods are terrified of our martyrs.)

The impious Julian set to,
got angry and shouted: “Dig him up, move him,
Take this Vavilas away immediately.
Do you hear me? Apollo is annoyed.
Dig him up, take him away at once,
Re-bury him, take him wherever you want.
Get him out, drive him out. Do you understand?
Apollo told us to purify the sanctuary.”

We got him and took the holy relic elsewhere:
we got him and took him with love and respect.

And indeed the sanctuary flourished.
Shortly after, a great fire
glowed red hot: a terrible fire:
and both the sanctuary and the statue of Apollo burned down.

The statue was in ashes: fit to be swept away with the rubbish.

Julian was furious and let it be known –
what else could we do? – that the fire was the fault
of us Christians. Let him say it.
It was not proven. Let him say it.
The main thing is that he was furious.

Dodona – Greece’s most ancient oracle

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The ancient site of the Oracle of Dodona lies just off the Egnatia Odos motorway, the ancient Via Egnatia that connected Dyrrachium on the Adriatic coast of Greece with Constantinople. It sits on a plain surrounded by mountains, about 60 km from the port of Igoumenitsa and 20 km south west of Ioannina in north west Greece.

According to ancient sources it is the oldest of the Greek oracles founded when two pigeons flew from Thebes in Egypt: one landing in Libya indicating the site of a sanctuary to Zeus Ammon and the other landing on an oak tree (the tree sacred to Zeus) at Dodona. The pigeon at Dodona told people to build a sanctuary to Zeus. How that came to be associated with an oracle is not clear. Dodona is in Epirus on the western side of the Pindos mountains, really remote from the rest of mainland Greece. Its fame must have spread by word of mouth as it became second only to Delphi for its oracle. I wrote about my visit to Delphi in a coupe of older blog posts here and here.

Archaeologists have demonstrated that the site has been occupied since the Bronze Age. There are various explanations of how the oracle operated. The priests of Zeus interpreted: the rustling of the leaves on the sacred oak: or the rustling of the leaves on the oak and the flight of the birds that nested in it; or the rustling of the leaves and the murmuring of a spring; or a combination of the above and the sound of tripods surrounding the sacred oak. The priests apparently never washed their feet.

There were no buildings here until the 4th century BCE, just the sanctuary around the sacred oak. Several times the later buildings were destroyed and rebuilt. The oracle was at its height between the 1st century BCE and the 4th century CE. With the coming of Christianity as the Roman Empire’s official religion, the oracle ceased and the sacred oak was cut down. In the 5th century a Christian basilica was build on the base of the temples.

It’s a beautiful spot with a calm atmosphere and on the day we were there, we shared it with only a few other visitors. Unlike Delphi many of whose oracular pronouncements have been preserved in ancient literature, I am not aware of any surviving from Dodona.

This picture shows a modern oak planted on the site of the original sacred one and next to it the Scared House where the priests were based:

Today people hang messages on the oak tree. I couldn’t read any of them as they were too faded so impossible to tell if they were prayers, wishes or messages of some other sort.

Like Delphi, Dodona had attractions to entertain its visitors, an amphitheater for games and a large and impressive theatre, build by King Pyrrhos in the early 3rd century BCE:

The view from the stage:

The base of an altar to Dionysos is still visible on the stage.

The remains of the and the prytaneion where guests were entertained:

The Temple of Heracles:

The Temple of Dione:

And finally, the Early Christian Basilica:

Mallow and autumn crocuses on the site at Dodona:

Dodona is a lovely site to explore in a beautiful setting. It is very well signed and landscaped. Restoration work continues, particularly on the theatre, but it seemed to me that there is still much of the site to be excavated. Perhaps today in modern Greece, Dodoni the company, based in Ioannina, is better known as the producer of ice cream and dairy and sheep’s milk products

Avoiding the crowds at Palaiokastritsa in Corfu

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Palaiokastritsa is set on a beautiful cove on the west coast of Corfu, north west of Corfu town. We drove slowly through the town looking for somewhere to stop for a drink as visitors swarmed across the road to the beach. Giving up hope, we headed out on the road the other side of town that was so narrow that traffic lights had been installed to control the flow of cars. The road climbs steeply and ends in the car park of the Monastery of the Mother of God (Theotokou).

The monastery is still operating with seven monks in residence.. As we reach the gates though it closes for a couple of hours. We have to content ourselves with the views from the monastery car park and back down the road the view over the cove and surrounding bays.