The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle

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bbc sounds music radio podcasts you're about to listen to you're dead to me episodes will be released on fridays wherever you get your podcasts but if you are in the uk you can listen to the latest episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else first on bbc sounds

hello and welcome to you're dead to me the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously.

My name is Greg Jenner.

I'm a public historian, author, and broadcaster, and today we are packing our William Morris book bags and heading back to the 19th century to learn all about the arts and crafts movement.

And to help us spin this story, we have two practitioners of very different arts.

In History Corner, she's curator of the Royal School of Needlework and a research consultant at Whitney Antiques.

She's an art historian of the material culture of the 17th to 19th centuries with a particular focus on needlework.

You might have listened to her podcast, So What?

It's a pun.

It's Dr.

Isabella Rosner.

Welcome, Isabella.

Thank you so much.

I'm really excited to be here.

We're delighted to have you here.

And in Comedy Corner, she is a comedian, actor, improviser, writer, and podcaster.

You may know her from her podcast, Griefcast, an award-winning show, its spin-off book, You Are Not Alone, her many TV appearances, her Weirdos Book Club podcast with lovely Sarapasco, or her new children's book, The Christmas Wish Tatastrophe.

And you'll definitely remember her from our episodes about Agrippina the Younger, Georgian Courtship.

It's the wonderful Carriead Lloyd.

Welcome back, Carriead.

Hello.

I wanted to think of a sewing pun, but I couldn't.

So nice to meet you.

Goodbye.

You're an expert in the Regency period.

That's your.

I'm pretty good on, yeah, Georgians.

No, you're very good.

You're very good.

But today we're in the Victorian era.

Yeah.

And even into the early 20th century.

So what do you know of the arts and crafts movement?

I know the arts and crafts movement.

I love the arts and crafts movement.

I have been to an exhibition of the arts and crafts movement when I was in glasgow yeah i doubt my memories because i have two small children so i'm always like did it happen or was it a fever dream

great fever dream

before they had the fire at the glasgow school of art i did a tour and they had an amazing exhibition there and it was incredible like amazing chairs and tables and like proper like the good stuff and just the building itself yeah so i'm a fan i'm a fan I'm a fan of the movement.

Although I did, I was saying to Isabella earlier, I had a moment on the way here when I was like, oh yeah, it's William Morris.

And then I thought, is it?

Have I made that up?

Is it William Morris?

Or is he like Elizabethan?

I googled it and it confirmed it was Elizabeth Morris.

He'd love to be Elizabeth Morris.

William Morris.

He'd love to be Elizabethan.

Yeah, he would.

He would love it.

And we should, quickly, I know it's audio, but Isabella is wearing a very cool William Morris jacket.

I wore this and I was like, maybe it's going to be him giving me his blessing.

And he'll be like, you're doing great.

But I'm a little bit scared that he will actually be violently turning in his grave and I'm going to be talking about him while wearing this.

No, it's not.

It's both beautiful and useful.

So he'll be happy.

Such a strong story.

So, what do you know?

This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject.

And I imagine most people will have heard of the big dog of the arts and crafts movement, William Morris.

His floral designs are still printed on curtains, wallpaper, notebooks, pencil cases, even on football kits.

What's more, modern homeware brands like Kathy Kidston owe a huge amount to the arts and crafts movement, and we see the design legacy in TV shows like Grand Designs and Queer Eye.

But the wider history of the movement is perhaps more hidden.

Beyond the cutesy curtains, what was arts and crafts really about?

Why did traditional manufacturing methods have a resurgence in Victorian Britain?

And what is a strawberry thief?

Let's find out.

Right, Dr.

Isabella, where do we start our story?

I think we should start with an overview.

I hope that's okay.

Just set the scene.

So the Arts and Crafts movement is an art movement, as you could guess, that begins sometime in the late 19th century.

Nobody can agree on the exact start date.

Some people put it at 1861, which is when William Morris starts getting on the scene.

Other people say it doesn't really start until the 1870s or 1880.

And it lasts until about the beginning of World War I.

The movement is a style of art.

It's primarily domestic furnishings, and it promotes craftsmanship and aesthetic unity between all sorts of objects in the home.

And those would range from textiles to furniture to ceramics to metalwork and everything in between.

It has some overlap with other contemporary art movements at the same time or just a little bit previously, and those include the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the aesthetic movement, and even Art Nouveau.

The name itself comes from the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society.

That's a very long name for a society, I think, but okay.

Not for Victorians, they loved it.

They loved wordiness, didn't they?

So, that exhibition society was founded in 1887 to exhibit decorative arts alongside fine arts.

And it had exhibitions in London from 1888 to 1890.

And there was one guy in it in particular, Thomas James Cobden Sanderson, speaking of long Victorian names, who first coined the term in 1887.

William Morris is considered the head honcho.

He's the daddy.

He's the grand pumba in the situation.

It's his ideas and view of the world that inspires so much of the movement.

What is a movement?

Are there rules?

Is there a manifesto?

Do you have to have like a...

Who

It seems like just a vibe.

A vide.

And it's kind of a term that we use to encapsulate people bound together by an ethos rather than a specific crew.

They were all people with similar ideals at a similar time.

We're not sure quite when it starts.

And you said 1860, you went into 1870s, but this is 1887 that it gets its name.

So that's not very good branding if you've been going for 27 years.

We should really call this something.

There is a quote by Morris in an 1877 lecture.

Do you want to read the quote for us?

Yeah, he says, and he's giving this lecture in December of 1877 to the Trades Guild of Learning.

And I think he summarizes

the Trades Guild of Learning.

From the best Trades Guild.

My favorite Trades Guild.

Also, Trades Guild.

Like, so confusing to say, but that's fine.

He summarizes his feelings about kind of everything really well when he says, I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few or freedom for a few.

He's really about art and wellness for everybody, as many people as possible.

He's got great vibes, I think, generally, William Morris.

William Morris fan club over here.

He and the other arts and crafts people are really invested in handicraft and utilizing really learned skills to create beautiful, pleasant, pleasing, comfortable, useful objects.

So is it kind of reaction to industrialization?

Oh, have you read the scripts?

No,

I was just thinking like that.

Is that what it's kind of like, you know, you've lost you know you have oh god my brain what's it called encroachment what's the thing they do when they get all the land of everybody enclosure so you have enclosure yeah and then like you get industrialization and you've lost all these skills right these amazing weaving skills and sewing skills so is it william morris like harken back to good times where you should have been in the arts and crafts movement i would have loved it i love the clothes i love the i love the vibe it's all vibes it's all vibes for me but yeah exactly like victorian london London, Victorian Britain saw a huge amount of change when it came to industrialization in good and bad ways.

So in terms of the population, by 1851, the census tells us that more people live in cities than in the countryside.

That's a big change.

You have huge numbers of people flocking to industrial city centers, but the conditions are bad oftentimes.

People are living in slum conditions, in slum housing with overcrowding and a lack of sanitation, and generally just bad living situations, lots of disease.

And industrialization is good for some people, for a lot of people, in that it means that there are more affordable items available to more people, but the actual manufacture is gnarly.

The work is dangerous.

The work hours are crazy long.

The pay was abysmal.

Disease is everywhere.

And it's usually children who are most affected by this in the Victorian period.

And I have a, I was going to say a fun fact.

It's the opposite of a fun fact.

I have an unfun fact.

A grim fact.

A grim fact for you.

So by the 1850s, the average life expectancy for mechanics, laborers, and their families in Manchester was 17.

Compare that to 38 years old in rural Rutland.

So nobody is thriving.

Nobody's thriving.

38 is also a terrible age to die at, but an average age of 17 to pass away at is so dark.

Big leap, isn't that?

But that's also a mean average, which means mostly it's children die.

Mostly it's children, right?

We have then a movement that comes along that's reacting to the trauma of the Industrial Revolution.

You know, it is a trauma, right?

Absolutely, yeah.

These artists are responding in a way that feels like they're looking for escapism.

And they go hunting for escapism in the past.

Carrie, where, you know, what bygone age would you daydream about or do you daydream about?

Oh, well, obviously, I do.

I heavily daydream about the Regency period being where you live there.

I live there doing a show called Ostentatious, Improvised Jane Austen.

And yeah, I wrote a kids' book set there as well.

Big fan of Elizabethan times as well.

I like, I'd go there happily.

I'd like to go and see you play at the globe.

That's what I'd like to see.

That would be good.

Yeah, yeah.

If we can time travel, I'll go anywhere.

I'll go last week.

It'd be interesting.

I mean, the artists that we're talking about here, they're interested in Elizabethan, but it's the medieval world that they're particularly drawn to.

Medieval obsessed.

Nice hats.

Hats, good hats, pointy hats.

Nice hose, good old pointy shoes as well.

Sure.

But it's a romantic medieval world.

You know, I'm a medievalist by training, and medieval world.

The medieval world was violent and dark and scary.

And of course, there was art and beauty and philosophy.

But, you know, this is not a time necessarily of great joy and pleasantness.

But the arts and crafts movement, they see it as a romantic age.

Yes, they really romanticize it and idealize it.

And they're interested in the medieval world because they perceive it as having a better run society and a better run system for making goods.

So they are kind of idealizing and dreaming about this system where objects were produced in small-scale workshops rather than these large, anonymous, brutal factories.

They're looking for artisan sourdough bread.

They literally are

the cottage core folks of the late Victorian days.

They would be happy in East London now.

They are so obsessed with this medieval world, but they aren't alone in that.

There are loads of people in the 19th century, especially artists who are involved in various art movements, who are really looking to the medieval period as this perfect moment in society.

They're not right, but they are looking at it through rose-colored glasses and they're like, wow, those guys, they had it so correct.

But it wasn't surprising that they were interested in that because that was the artistic world.

They were kind of becoming adults in all of these arts and crafts people.

There was the Gothic revival in the 19th century, especially in architecture, and it meant that kind of wherever you looked, there were Gothic-style buildings.

And we can see that influence all over the place, not just in art, but there was also this increased influence in Romantic poetry and more study of folklore.

And Walter Scott was writing these historical romances, and Alfred Lord Tennyson was writing Arthurian literature.

And there is such a drive to look to this dreamed-up past.

And talking of great men of the Victorian era, we should probably mention Ruskin.

Do you know Ruskin, Caroline?

I've heard of William Ruskin.

No,

you're just, it's all William Ruskin.

Try another man's name from the period.

George Ruskin.

John Ruskin.

John Ruskin.

John Ruskin.

To get there on the edge.

I mean, he's an extraordinary figure in the 19th century.

He's slightly debated these days.

Everything.

Amongst everything, absolutely everything.

Architect, critic, painter, writer, philosopher, poet.

Oh, multi-hyphenate.

He's what

the Victorians would call him a great man.

Capital G, capital M.

He did everything.

He's a polymath.

Yeah.

And

he's kind of an inspiration for the arts and crafts movement.

Definitely.

He's an intellectual kind of figurehead.

Yeah, so he is a leading figure in that Gothic revival movement.

And he thought that society would be morally better, which is a bold move already, if art, design, and industry were reimagined along pre-industrial lines.

He was like, let's just get rid of mechanization.

We'd actually all be emotionally and morally better people.

And he saw that the best, the most good period was the medieval period.

And he saw it in Gothic architecture.

And he liked the medieval stuff for the same reason that the arts and craftspeked the medieval stuff.

It was him viewing this period as a time when craftsmen were celebrated and honored, and they lived in a society that was unaffected by corruption and immorality, which is so bold.

Yeah, tell Milton Luther.

Come on.

But

he went a step kind of further where he basically equated a nation's social health to the way it made its goods.

So he was very, very interested in how production happened.

And he wrote this trilogy of books between 1851 and 1853 called The Stones of Venice.

And that middle volume was called The Nature of the Gothic.

And that became an arts and crafts manifesto.

And he said, for art and design to be successful and morally uplifting, an artist needed to be involved in every single step of the artistic process.

He's like a nightmare director.

Yeah, people have film directors now who are like, I'm in charge of casting, I'm in charge of service, and everyone's been like, it's easy if you give like somebody else some delegation here.

So there was another leading figure of the Gothic revival movement named Augustus Pugin.

Oh, he did the Houses of Parliament.

Indeed.

There we go.

And Pugin dies, and then Ruskin starts writing like, his ideas were the worst.

I hate this guy.

Like, they were in the same movement.

But Ruskin was like, this guy's trash.

Yeah.

He has some spicy opinions and he was not afraid to let you know them.

Pugin did the inside, right, of the Houses of Parliament, did the patterns.

Yeah, so Augustus Pugin did do the interiors of the Palace of Westminster.

Yes, he did the Palace of Westminster.

He did all the patterns, and it's all like repeating portcullis patterns everywhere.

And apparently, he would close his eyes, and it's all he could see.

And so he went mad.

What a hellscape.

Okay, so we have some of our intellectual figures.

Let's move on to William Morris.

We've name-checked him already.

Big William.

Big William energy.

I've called him Daddy Morris.

Yeah,

which fan of the music.

I don't know.

It feels worse.

It feels worse.

It feels slightly sordid.

I don't know.

I feel like I'm on a...

Big William?

Let's go with that.

Does that sound better, I guess?

Yeah, yeah.

I think many people would recognise a William Morris print.

Yeah.

I don't think they're going to recognize a photo of him.

No.

He's not got one of those distinctive Victorian faces.

Who was William Morris?

You know, where was he educated?

How did he get his start?

Okay, so he was basically, as we've already discussed, the guy when it comes to the arts and crafts movement.

And he's born in 1834 in Walthamstowe

to a wealthy middle-class family.

His dad is a broker in the city of London.

His mom comes from a bourgeois family in Worcester.

He's comfortably fancy, and his childhood was punctuated by his father's death, so not all great.

But other than that, some pretty good times.

He read a lot and had a nice time.

He would wander through the woods at his family's house called Woodford Hall, which was in Essex.

And he also spent time in the nearby woods of Epping Forest.

And my favorite fact is that he had a miniature suit of armor, medieval suit of armor, made for him.

And he used to wander through Epping Forest on his pony in the suit of armor.

Love that for him.

My personal dream would love that for me.

And his childhood home in Waltham Stowe is now the the Willie Moore's Gallery.

Yes, beautiful, beautiful, very beautiful.

It's great exhibitions as well.

Yeah, very good place to visit.

Yeah, so good.

And

as a personality, I mean, he's a prodigious brain.

He's another classic polymath.

Yes.

He had so much going on.

I mean, he was an architect, a designer, a practitioner of several self-taught crafts.

He taught himself how to paint, how to make furniture, how to make tapestries.

He was also a really acclaimed and talented writer, a poet, a translator.

He was actually offered a largely honorary, but still very impressive professorship of poetry at Oxford, but he turned it down.

Sure, we've all been there.

We've all been there.

You just got too much to do.

I know.

I understand.

Too busy.

He was such a machine.

He was just constantly giving lectures and constantly writing about his beliefs.

He was a socialist eventually, kind of later in his life.

And it meant that by the end of his life in 1896, he saw all of his ideas kind of grow, flourish, and become this arts and crafts movement throughout Britain.

He wasn't without anger.

He once broke down a door with his foot.

But he, I don't want to paint a too positive or too negative a picture of him.

Everybody's a complicated person, but he seems like he had, speaking of vibes, great vibes.

Great vibes, yeah.

He also has quite high standards when it comes to other people.

There's a quote that he says: if a chap can't compose an epic poem while he's weaving a tapestry, he'd better shut up.

He'll never do any good at all.

I feel, I mean, that's that's two skills I can't do.

So that is also

his friend, unfortunately.

That is how all women should test for a boyfriend for a partner.

If they can't epic poem and weave at the same time, red flags out, red flag.

I mean, Carrie Ed, what are the two things that the modern gentle person should be able to do simultaneously?

Be able to pay their rent and text someone back on time.

I think the word back to the basics.

Those sound very difficult.

I guess we've got only one of those at a time.

Oh, well, for a lot of guys, that seems quite hard.

So he's setting high standards for others, but he's setting them for himself too.

William Morris is an interesting fella.

And much like the Bloomsbury group that we spoke about in our 100th episode, the Arts and Crafts Movement, again, is a bunch of university pals going, hey, I'm a bit posh and fancy like you, and we are all friends at the beginning.

It's such lights.

It's such lights, guys.

It's pretty wholesome because he just kind of lucked into being friends with all these people, kind of.

So in 1852, he goes to Oxford, he's at Exeter College, and he really soon meets Edward Byrne-Jones, who is another ends up, you've heard of this guy, right?

Big arts and crafts figure as well.

They're in the same college in the same year.

They live together, and they actually both are training to be priests.

But by the end of their education, they're like, nah, nah, I'm leaving the church.

Like, I'm going to be an artist.

Doesn't he do architecture as well?

He, after his degree, trains with an architecture firm.

So he's a trainee architect after university.

And between his time in Oxford and his time as a trainee architect, he is kind of surrounded by all these people who share his ideals and his ethos.

And so Edward Burne-Jones is there.

And then he marries Georgiana MacDonald.

Edward does.

And then when they get married, Georgiana Burne-Jones joins the social circle.

There's also the architect Philip Webb.

There's also the pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Have you heard of him?

Is that a name that people know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's one of the

famous.

We found that.

He's one of the hot sexy men of the 19th century.

Oh, I love.

I don't know if his impact is as felt in the U.S., so I'm still like,

what's the vibe?

He's definitely up there as

a boy.

A boy Rossetti.

Okay, perf.

We love that.

So I don't even need to go into him.

Burn Jones.

But I would like to.

How do I carry on?

I think it's a good one.

No, it's great.

Burne-Jones was his apprentice.

And so then Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Morris become like a tight trio, having a great time.

Then there's also the embroidery artist and model, Jane Burden.

Jane Burden is the daughter of a stableman, and she is quote-unquote discovered at the theater in Oxford by Rossetti and Burne-Jones.

And she starts modeling for Rossetti, and then she starts modeling for Morris, and they actually end up getting married.

They marry in 1859.

Unfortunately for William Morris in this situation,

eight years after Jane and Morris get married and have two daughters and after Rossetti's wife Elizabeth Siddle unfortunately passes away very tragically, they start having an affair and Morris and Jane Morris and Rossetti all live together at Kelm Scott Manor, which is Morris's family home from 1871 to 1896.

Yeah, I mean you said unfortunately, but

there's a sort of argument here that William Morris is like, yeah, I mean, what are you going to do?

It's this open relationship.

What's happening with Williams?

There is a lot of discourse around it, and it seems like he wasn't clearly opposed.

It was in his house, but I think that he knew that Jane and Dante, they had a lot of chemistry.

And he was like, oh, how can I stand in the way of this thing?

Because it's not known if Jane, like, it's just, you know, you can imagine it's like, Morris, yeah, look, okay, the photo's nice.

He looks like a cool vibe, but we know Rossetti is fit.

So, like, what we're knowing is, like, he's like, oh, my really fit friend who's also really talented is like living in the house.

I'm probably not going to win this battle, essentially.

Yeah, it seems a little bit like he's just shrugging and being like, fine.

So,

Jane is making good and useful times with Rossetti.

Yes.

Well, also embroidering.

She really is.

And modelling.

She's doing it all with her very beautiful hair.

She's absolutely killing it.

I love that for her.

So Dante Gabriel Rossetti was in the family bed.

And also, Morris also invited in Edward Byrne-Jones and his wife Georgiana to come and move in with them as well.

I mean, is Morris a party?

Like, is he sawing a cult?

Like, this stuff is.

I'd go commune.

Commune is where I'd go, but, you know,

he'd very quickly become a cult.

He perhaps was just so extroverted.

Like, I really feel this.

If I could just live with four of my friends all the time, I would love that.

Maybe he was just like me.

House share.

It's very early in your career kind of vibes.

It's for sure.

Yeah.

And he was a full-on adult man by this point.

He was like, he was a rich, successful, educated adult man who was like, hey, all my buddies, come around with all your wives.

I just think maybe he was more aware.

I'm just saying

it feels like it wasn't an

uninformed decision.

No.

Well, Edward Burne-Jones and Georgiana, they actually turned the invitation down.

And Morris responded.

Oh, God, Williams asks us to live with him.

Oh, God, that's because Jane's steeping with Dante.

Georgiana's like, I'm not going there.

We've got a nice house.

Why do we have to go and move with them?

It's going to be so awkward at parties.

We have to say no.

I have to say no.

I don't want to sleep with Dante.

But maybe that's it.

Maybe Edmund was like, no,

we're not moving.

We're not.

No.

Moving again.

Maybe George Ella was like, yes, please.

I'd love to move in with you.

Where do I put my stuff?

In Dante's room?

William Morris wrote, when he got the knockback, he just wrote, I cried, but I've got over it now.

It was just

thinking about most things, I guess.

Okay, so we've got these talented friends who are collaborating artistically, collaborating romantically occasionally.

Not always successfully in the artistically.

There's a famous mural.

They're invited into Oxford's famous debating chamber,

and they're asked to do a mural, and they're going to do an Arthurian mural.

Of course, they are.

But they don't necessarily check the kind of textbook on how to do a mural.

Yeah.

So in 1857, I was going to say, Our boy.

Is he our boy?

He's one of our boys.

John Ruskin.

Our Ruskin.

One of our boys.

Commissions Our Other Boys, Rossetti, and then therefore William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.

There's so many boys in this.

Yeah,

boys.

So basically, Ruskin commissions Rossetti to do a mural.

Rossetti's like, come on through, Morris and Burne-Jones, join me.

And then they're also joined by a variety of other arts and crafts painters to do these murals of Arthurian legend.

Jane Burden is the model.

My favorite is that yesterday I was like looking up the Wikipedia article for this because I was curious about what they said.

And they call the artistic process, quote, notoriously chaotic.

Because Because we forget that, for the most part, not Rossetti, but these other folks were about 23 years old and just kind of having a nice time.

They're really talented painters, but they classic commune vibes.

You know, you get all your mates around, and then no one's paid the gas bill, and like no one knows whether, like, how to operate the internet properly.

So they're painting, and Morris ends up actually painting his mural really quickly, and they don't realize that you actually have to plaster a wall or at least create enough of an underpainting to paint on top of.

So they're painting, and then the bare bricks are visible basically immediately.

And it got restored in 1986.

Oh,

how's that?

So when you try so hard and you don't succeed, yeah.

They also, I mean, William and Jane, they build their family home in Bexley Heath in Kent.

It's called Red House.

Have you ever been, Carrie?

No, I haven't been to this one.

It's a nice one.

It's built in 1860, and Philip Webb, their old friend, designs it.

Yes.

But

they get the gang in.

Oh, it's so cute.

Again, very wholesome, light commune vibes.

All the friends and fam are there, and they are collaborating to decorate and furnish it.

So there are pre-Raphaelite-style wall paintings and stained glass, and it's Rossetti who's painting, as well as Elizabeth Siddle, his wife, Edward Bird-Jones, always there as well.

They're all contributing to these mural paintings and the furniture decoration.

And Philip Webb, hilariously, actually designs a gothic cart to collect guests from the train station to bring to the house.

Amazing.

I would like it for myself.

Yeah.

But they weren't there for that long, so they move in in 1860.

And by 1865, they move back to central London and they sell it by 1866 wow but like the commune vibes of it all get more extreme okay um in 1861 one of the friends this painter named ford maddox brown suggests that yeah you've heard of him right and all these big names he suggests that he william morris Burton Jones, Webb, Rossetti, and some other folks that they establish a design firm.

And they do.

And it's called Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company.

It doesn't roll off the tongue.

It does not.

But then by 1875, it's Morris and Company.

And that's what we still have today.

But what I love is that they simply called it the firm.

Oh, the firm.

The boys are in the firm.

You know, my guys in the firm.

Which I think is what people refer to as the royal family as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But like, normally when artists get together to form companies, you know, the Beatles, so the Apple, like, it doesn't always work out.

It's like with artists, normally that's the point.

They're really good at all the artistic creative stuff.

And then someone's like, have you payed the tax bill?

And they go, what's that?

So, like, but it survived and they it ran as a a business.

Is that right?

Yeah, they were all pretty good businessmen.

William Morris was a great businessman.

So they were in it for 14 years and then there was a restructuring and the other guys left and then it was William Morris as just him.

Wow.

That's when it became Morris and Company.

But yeah, they were kind of killing it.

They're doing all sorts of things.

They're not just putting up a mural.

They're not just hanging some lovely curtains.

They're doing stained glass windows.

They're doing everything.

And it's actually really successful and convenient for them that this is a time, it's the 1860s, when the Gothic revival has meant that there are churches popping up all over the place.

So there are new churches and old churches that are being restored and they are the people who are making all the stained glass for that.

And they're actually so successful, they're so skilled that at the 1862 International Exhibition, they were accused of touching up original medieval artwork.

It was their artwork.

They're just really good at what they do.

I know.

But then by the late 1860s, the interest in church work, the amount of churches that were being built had shrunk.

So things were kind of moving towards secular commissions.

But they were doing everything from furniture to embroideries, jewelry, carpets, woven textiles, tapestries, metal and glassware, and wall hangings.

Like if you wanted it, you could get it from them.

They were the IKEA of their day.

Except it was four guys who were also socialists.

Yes, and they had

the dishes.

Yeah, maybe they also made great meatballs.

I don't know.

You know, they were really mindful about their employees.

This was part of their effort to make this art as accessible as possible and to get everybody involved.

So they actually started hiring and training as apprentices boys from the industrial home for destitute boys on Euston Road in central London.

Yeah, it's basically to give them skills and opportunities that they wouldn't have otherwise.

And I think that is absolutely rad.

But it wasn't just boys.

I mean, women were involved in Morris and Company from the very beginning.

So decorative tiles were being painted by Lucy and Kate Faulkner, who were sisters of Charles Faulkner, who was one of the other members of the firm.

And then Georgiana Burne-Jones, she was involved in the tiles as well.

And like every woman in Morris's family was involved in the embroidery.

So his wife, Jane, embroidering, his sister-in-law, Elizabeth or Bessie Burden, embroidering, his two daughters, Mae and Jenny, embroidering.

It was a whole family affair.

They were involved.

His daughter's like, Dad, I was thinking about accountancy.

No!

Get your needles!

You're aunts and crafts.

Okay, sorry.

Luckily for him, one of them loved it.

Yeah, she was one of them.

I don't know as much about Jenny because she had epilepsy.

So she was just, you know, she was ill a lot of the time.

But Mae Morris, man, I'm going to spill some facts later.

And she was, she was a keen embroidery bean.

Amazing.

So the company flourishes.

And as you said, Carrie Abby, we're used to artists being useless at the basics.

They're like falling apart and some moneymen having to come in and be like, we'll sort it out, you idiots.

No, this goes really well.

They expanded to bigger premises near Wimbledon.

Is that about that?

Yeah.

Merton Abbey.

Okay.

Oh, yeah.

That's in 1881.

And so they're sort of pivoting to interior design.

They did a dining room at the VA, or what is now the VNA?

Yes, yes.

So they did the green dining room.

This was the first museum cafe in the world.

Is that the one that's still there now?

Yes.

Oh, it's just so beautiful.

Yeah, and it has all of these like images of nature and plants and fruits and the turning year, and it evokes this idea of old green England.

And that's exciting not only because we still have it today, but also because it shows that they were making efforts to be part of this movement of making art accessible to all.

Yeah, I'm going to be an agent provocateur here, Isabella, because as a historian,

I'm going to have to say one of the reasons the company flourishes is because of the Industrial Revolution.

Yeah.

Right?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, come on.

I mean, they're rejecting it.

They're adding a tapestry and weaving it.

I know I'm being annoying, but we have to be true about it.

The Industrial Revolution creates a middle class.

It creates wealth that you can have a house that you want a tapestry for.

Right.

So they're reacting against it and they're also benefiting from it.

Because by the 1860s and 70s, there is a lot more wealth than there was before.

So there's an increase in white-collar jobs.

There's improvements in state education.

That's what we were just talking about with those destitute boys.

By one estimate, the average income per head of household doubles between 1850 and 1900.

And the middle class triples in size.

So yeah, more people with more money meant that there was more interest in buying more objects.

How many times can I say the word more in a sentence?

But that is the vibe.

It's more is more.

Because Medieval times, I know they're like, oh man, do you remember the mid that they were so great?

Like, the only people who need tapestries are a church.

Everyone else is living in a hovel.

And it's like, oh, it's accessible for all.

They'd be like, we're peasants.

We really don't need this lovely chair.

Like, we just need something to sit on.

Now we're going to sleep.

We get up with the sun and we have to sort out these cows.

So really, they can only exist in bringing this medieval artisan skills back to a middle class that's happy to buy it.

100%.

So part of the thing is they have really, I think, very admirable admirable ideas and goals, but their process, this movement is not helping or affecting the people who are most hurt by the terrible working conditions of Victorian England.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's always the case, right?

You can have grand, lofty ambitions, but the economics are always going to underpin.

Does this work or not?

What's interesting about Morris, he's obviously self-taught, as we've heard, all these things he's picking up.

He's also getting other people to teach themselves.

He's inspiring others.

We know of an artist called William DeMorgan.

He teaches himself ceramics.

He has a minor mishap.

Do you want to guess what happens?

Does he blow up a kiln?

Yes, he does.

Oh, yeah.

It's every ceramics' nightmare.

But not even just the kiln, like his whole workshop.

Oh, yeah.

It's like his house is on fire.

He lives, though.

He survives.

And then he just moves.

He's like, see ya.

He moves to Cheney Walk.

Very fancy.

Love that for him.

And he...

then actually has success with his various experimentations and he becomes renowned for his stained glass windows and his tiles with Islamic decoration and his furniture.

And in 1882, the year after Morris and Company moves to Merton Abbey, he too moves to Merton Abbey for his business.

And, you know, Morris, I think, has the power to bring people in, not only like artistically and emotionally, but also physically.

Yeah, gentrifying area.

Just get all up into Merton Abbey and make it Britain's hottest spot.

I have no idea what Merton Abbey is, to be honest.

It's near Wimbledon.

I don't know what it is.

It used to be like a historic calico area, but it meant that he, william morris had created a world where other craftsmen were all working together to furnish big houses and churches he's the beyoncé of the arts and crafts movement if he does a country album everybody thinks hey maybe we can all add this influence to our genre yeah he's a beautifully said he is the beyonce yeah i think he would love to know that he is the beyonc

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There's another artist we should mention, actually, actually, because just because she's slightly different in that she went outside.

Gertrude Jekyll.

Gertrude Jekyll.

Who

did interior, but she also did gardens.

Yeah, she's most well known for her garden design, but she also was doing all sorts of interiors, including designing embroidery and doing the embroidery herself.

And she had a great name.

Gertrude Jekyll.

It's a great name.

Yeah,

there's quite a lot of good names in these years.

But she really encapsulates this arts and crafts interest in blending together outdoor space and indoor space.

They wanted these arts and crafts homes to have conversations between gardens and the interior.

The thing that I find quite interesting is the arts and crafts ethos moves beyond Morris's control.

And that happens, right?

We happen, you see that in music, you see that in comedy.

They start a cult, you can't keep hold of it, before you know it, they're starting their own cult.

But we get a sense of an arts and crafts movement out of England, into Scotland, into Wales, into Ireland, maybe internationally.

I don't know.

Yeah, yeah.

There is the movement takes,

kind of goes across the Atlantic and hits the U.S.

as well via things like journals and lectures from people who are in the movement.

It was going to the U.S.

after World War I.

It was going to Japan.

It had implications, it kind of had ripples everywhere.

And it brought up all of this desire to preserve handicrafts generally.

So there were all of these movements within Britain that were founded in this period to keep craftsmanship alive.

There was the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, which I already mentioned, in 1887.

There was the Art Workers Guild in 1884, and they were a debating society where people just sat and debated about the principles of art and design.

Yes, basically.

Very, very hardcore.

I'm there.

Sign me up.

I would not be there because debate makes me stressed because I hate confrontation, but you can go for me.

You can tell me about it after.

There was the Fine Needlework Association, which was an organization founded around the same time to give employment to I really hope the Fine Needlework Association and what was the other one you said the aesthetics like met on the street and and it was like der da da da

with their like needle

science got like knitting needles and they're like there were so many like embroidery societies there was like the royal embroidery society there was the royal school of needlework like it's there's the fine needlework association but these people i mean i like the fine needlework association but they're no royal needlework association like their work is fine but luckily for everybody involved they were all like filling one tiny little niche yeah so like the fine needlework association was specifically to give employment to invalid girls and women or like girls and and women who couldn't leave the home.

And they were producing a lot of smocks, which I find interesting because so smocks are like embroidered, you know, you know, what a smock is, right?

Like it's about farm labor and it's about comfortable like work wear at the farm.

But smocks were really popular in this period in terms of creating this idea of like rural English life.

So it's disabled girls and women making these symbols of an idealized English rural life.

Fascinating.

People in a city are wearing to hark back to a world that doesn't exist anymore.

There's also also another amazing name.

We've had some amazing names.

We've already had Thomas Cobton Sanderson who gave us the phrase the arts and crafts movement but now I have to present to you Miss Eglintine Jeb.

Wow.

Seems like a name you got in like a name generator.

I think you know what?

Why are there no Eglintines anymore?

Bring back Eggie.

So Mrs.

Eglintine Jebb is the Eggie Jeb.

Eggie Jeb.

She sets up the Home Arts and Industries Association.

And they're doing like largely great stuff as well.

So they're also set, like with that, the Home Arts and Industries Association, they are setting up handicraft classes in cities and villages.

They're supporting local schools.

They're alleviating seasonal unemployment and unemployment is a nice word that I just made up, unemployment.

And they're basically trying to keep people out of the pub.

Wow.

So largely admirable, slightly in-your-face moralistic vibes going on.

In the Victorian times, was there anyone not

having a moral in-your-face vibe?

Yeah, well, so that's very well said because all of these organizations are basically founded for two reasons.

One of them is this Victorian philanthropy.

So they're trying to help the poor, they're trying to help the underserved in a moralistic way.

And then they're also trying to preserve these handicraft skills that they're scared industrialization will destroy.

We should turn to your specialism.

Needlework.

Other than your previous West Side story, needle stabbing in the streets and a fight.

Needlework is something that is also part of the movement, but in some ways is a specialist skill that they're trying to revive.

Is that fair?

Oh, yes, because this is a time where everybody is understandably kind of freaking out about embroidery.

In about 1830 or just before, around that period, comes on the scene an art form called Berlin Wool Work.

It's basically, we would call it needlepoint.

And they are producing really cheap canvases, really cheap, brightly colored wool threads because...

synthetic dyes are now a thing and lots of cheap paper patterns and then all of a sudden everybody could embroider for really cheap.

And it was really easy because they only encouraged the use of two stitches: cross stitch and tent stitch.

And so people.

Please, those are my valid stitches.

We don't need blanket, okay?

This thing

can go see.

Yeah, no.

Cross and tent only.

You were born to be doing Berlin wool work.

And it was taking over everything everywhere.

It's what everybody was producing: slippers, valances, bed covers, purses, everything in between.

But people were really scared that the popularity of Berlin woolwork would mean that every other traditional embroidery technique would be lost.

Oh, my goodness.

So a lot of arts and crafts embroidery was kind of coming out of that move away from Berlin woolwork to create really naturalistic.

Just like someone produced painted by numbers and made it easy, and everyone was like, you want to forget how to paint.

Or I guess like AI.

AI.

And everyone's like, you're going to forget how to paint.

It's the AI of the 19th century for sure.

That's it.

We also have some art to show you a piece of needlework.

Special treat.

Oh, my goodness.

Do you want to pass it along, along, Isabella?

This piece of needlework, an embroidery?

What are we talking about here, Isabella?

Yes, so this is a framed embroidery that would hang on a wall.

It was made at the Royal School of Art Needlework, which is now called the Royal School of Needlework.

That was founded in 1872 by Lady Victoria Welby, and it was basically founded to revive the beautiful and practically lost art of embroidery and to provide suitable employment for gentlewomen who, through loss of fortune or other reverses, are obliged to earn their own livelihood.

And that's quotes from her, but basically, the daughters of professionals like lawyers, business people, or doctors who needed to earn a living before they got married.

And they were creating needlework for exhibition, commission, display, sale, and they were creating embroidery for loads of arts and crafts homes.

Carrie, would you like to describe the embroidery for us?

So it's kind of a pale, peachy pink.

It's giving quite a lot of 80s wedding vibes.

It would definitely be on a placemat in the 80s.

Yeah, this is very, this is very sort of rivals, Julie Cooper rivals territory, isn't it?

Yeah, but it's very beautiful.

And this is the thing about embroidery.

As I was saying, my mother-in-law did a textile degree and was an amazing, amazing textile artist.

And if you know how hard it is,

and how much time it takes.

And how much time it takes.

But it can be easy to look at something and go, oh, right, yeah, pink flowers.

And they're both.

But this must have taken hours.

It's so beautiful.

And it looks like it's painted.

It's stunning.

So we get the kind of broadening out of the movement, the ethos, beyond the arts and crafts movement of William Morris's control.

It gets into Edinburgh Social Union in 1885.

It's in Ireland about the 1890s.

It's really gone beyond his control, but in a good way, right?

It's not, you know, he's not trying to hold it.

Yeah, it's kind of morphed into its own thing.

Yeah, which is amazing.

There's one question I suppose we should address is that although there's the sort of democratic element of recruiting the boys from the School for the Destitute and trying to bring women in, all of the artists we've met so far...

Are men!

Well, no, we've had Gertrude Cool, but I'd say they're of a certain class.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

We'll get into the women in a second.

Okay.

They shop at Waitrose, I think.

It's very white male middle class.

Yeah, a little bit.

Yeah.

So I'm just, I'm wondering if they walked the walk as well as talking the talk when it came to genuinely changing who could be an artist and who could buy this stuff.

Is it middle class people for middle class people?

I think they walked the walk as well as they could.

And it did end up being middle class people making stuff for middle class people simply because of what was feasible and what was, yeah, what the logistics were.

But I think they wanted something bigger.

It did have a radical

philosophy that wanted to change the landscape of industrial production and make art available to the masses.

But when it comes down to it, craftsmanship, this really high-quality handicraft that they were advocating for, it takes time and therefore it takes money.

So, not everybody could afford that finely crafted stuff.

And yes, you're right, the practitioners, the people involved were usually from the middle class.

What it did do was open up some job opportunities for some people from the lower classes, and it did get people thinking about what a life beyond capitalism and mechanization could look like.

But yeah, the movement did not, by and large, change the lives of people who really needed their lives changed in Victorian England.

But we can't forget that William Morris was a socialist with really, you know, he had strong ideals and he did want a better life for all.

And that kind of radical thinking is fairly present throughout the movement.

But it's interesting, he also introduced production line into his technique.

And

we would normally say Henry Ford.

and there are real contradictions to him like he was at one point the director of a copper mine in devon um that his dad had bought shares in and that is currently a topic of of conversation and discourse in the scholarship and so he wasn't without flaws i mean humans are contradictory and he was too i think the movement had really good ideas but the world of capitalism in which they found themselves meant that they couldn't really free themselves from that system there is something that Mary Seton Watts does that I think is genuinely commendable.

Carrie Ad, she was recruited to do a Compton Mortuary Chapel commission and she decided she would recruit local people.

Yeah, she recruited 71 local people for the project and she trained them in skills like ceramics and actually they left that project with so many skills that they set up their own Compton Potters Art Guild.

Wow.

So there were real moments of attempting to spread the knowledge.

I I mean, the Destitute Boys School is one of those things as well, where even though they couldn't enact a national system of like bringing the art to the people, there were moves being made on a small scale.

So a heart in the right place, I think, Carrie Edge.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it depends how much you make of your ethos being like,

this is for everyone, guys.

Also, how much is that copper mine worth?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I actually need a new house.

The copper mine house is the situation.

If we just do it art, we could sell it for double the price.

Yeah, fine.

So I agree with you.

They're born and working in a system which will not allow them to be free.

But it's interesting that that's also what they marketed themselves for.

It's very reminiscent of like modern-day wealthy hipsters or just wealthy left-wing people generally who are aiming for a better world, but they have more access to that better world than anybody else.

Yeah, it's classic gentrification as well.

Yeah.

They move into an area that is destitute and has been ignored.

They live there cheaply and then they destroy the area for people who've lived there for generations because it becomes a cool area where the artists are and then the house prices go up and then like no one can afford to live there anymore.

And women in the movement, were they given equal weighting?

Were they given equal respect, stature?

I mean we've heard lots of names but they're often the wives of or daughters of famous men.

Yeah, I would say sometimes this was an opportunity for women to be more present than in other art movements for sure.

And there is actually a lot of exciting scholarship that's coming out about the women of the arts and crafts movement that is happening right now.

So if I talked about all of the women, I would be here all day, but I'll give you some quick names.

There was the stained glass designer Mary Lowndes.

There was the metal worker Charlotte Newman, painter and enameler Edith B.

Dawson, and Mae Morris.

She was not only an embroiderer, but she was a textile historian and a designer.

And she actually took over the management of Morris and Company's embroidery department when she was 23.

Wow.

Iconic.

But sexism was definitely still present.

So the membership to the Art Workers Guild was only open to men.

There had not been a female member of the Royal Academy between 1819 and 1922.

So that's all of the years of the arts and crafts movement.

And Mae Morris and people like her were pretty sick of all of that.

So in 1907, she founded the Women's Guild of Arts.

I should say that generally This art movement and the fact that it puts craft on the same level as art means that there is more room for women because it's oftentimes women who are doing those crafts.

But a lot of the art and craft that is being produced in this period is still pretty gendered.

So it's mostly women who are doing the embroidery.

It's mostly men who are doing the furniture.

But that kind of Ruskin-esque idea of an artist being involved in every step of the process helps as well.

It allows people like Mae Morris to not only be the maker, but also the designer and the thinker behind it.

Women were exhibiting and designing alongside men, and there are some interesting connections between this movement and the British fight for women's suffrage, which is pretty cool.

And then there are also some like fun little moments of gender equality.

Gender equality is a little treat.

So like Thomas James Cobden Sanderson, our boy who comes up with the name, he and his wife actually end up sharing their surname.

They like do the equal thing of making a joint surname Cobden Sanderson.

And it's like these, I don't know, a little rare act glimpse into how some people in this movement viewed the gender divide and how things should actually be.

Wow.

Okay.

This is positive.

They can stay.

Yes.

How does the arts and crafts movement finish?

I mean, do people just go, that's enough.

Thank you.

Time to to tidy up, guys.

Look at this mess.

Come on.

I've invented a critical time.

I've had a good time.

Yeah, we need to eat on this table.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, nothing changes things like war, I would say.

So, World War I comes in, and the aesthetic changes massively.

People don't have the need or desire for any of these, any of this fine craftsmanship anymore.

The war comes, and all of a sudden, it's modernism.

And deco and deco, and like what comes after it.

So, while the arts and crafts movement technically ends at World War I here in Britain, it does have ripples in other places.

So, the American movement goes and becomes its own thing with like architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

It's going to places like Hungary, Poland, and Finland where there's a real interest in traditional handicraft skills.

It starts in Japan at World War I and after.

So the implications are felt kind of far and wide.

And even though, yeah, the movement is definitely over, we are still in a world where we are kind of constantly seeing arts and crafts images.

So is it really over?

Is it?

No, I don't think it is I think we still as we've just said it's very apt for modern life yeah it fits it's it's back in fashion maybe it never left yeah maybe I just wasn't paying attention maybe it's the friends we made along the way

the nuance window

Time now for the nuance window.

This is where Carrie Ed and I recline in our drawing room in Red House with our embroidery samplers while Dr.

Isabella has two minutes to tell us something we need to know about the arts and craft movement that we haven't heard already, so my stopwatch is ready.

Take

me away.

Really?

Your stopwatch?

I'm scared.

Okay.

If you ever see a William Morris design, whether it be on wallpaper, an advent calendar, or a fridge magnet, chances are it's probably Morris's work called Strawberry Thief.

Not only is it Morris's most beloved pattern, it's also one of the most popular textile designs ever.

It's inspired everything from a novel to a video game.

You can find Strawberry Thief-covered products on the shelves of John Lewis, Waitrose, MS, Waterstones, and even Pets at Home, truly fulfilling Morris's desire to make his art accessible.

With Strawberry Thief, Morris captures the thrushes that he caught stealing fruit in his garden at Kelm Scott Manor.

Amidst multicolored flowers, scrolling vines, and frilly leaves are pairs of birds.

Those with yellow and pink wings have their mouths agape.

Are they shocked that they've been caught mid-tweet or mid-munch?

The birds with blue wings are the thieves in question, looking very satisfied with plump strawberries hanging from their beaks.

Morris felt that everyone should have access to beautiful surroundings, rest, and work that inspires satisfaction and pride, and he was deliberate about what sorts of products should be made from each of his designs.

In its original form back in 1883, Strawberry Thief was a printed cotton furnishing textile intended to be used for curtains, walls, or loose covers on furniture.

Morris printed it using the indigo discharge method, a many centuries-old technique primarily used in Asia that took an especially long time to produce.

Because of this, Strawberry Thief was one of the most expensive printed furnishings available from Morris and Company.

But the price didn't stop those little strawberry-stealing birds from becoming one of Morris' most commercially successful patterns.

Clearly, the commercial success of Strawberry Thief lives on.

140-ish years after the textile was produced, some things are different though.

That pattern isn't limited to furnishing fabrics, and it isn't expensive.

This is the case for other arts and crafts movement designs, too.

William Morris did intend his work to be widely available, but he was also strategic and specific about how and on what objects his designs should be used.

The aesthetics of the arts and crafts movement are more accessible to us now than ever before.

And I wonder what those artists and makers would think about the ubiquity of their designs adorning everything from dog beds to forks.

Beautiful.

Look at that.

Look at that.

Two minutes and two seconds.

Sweaty.

I'm sweaty now.

Wow.

It is so ubiquitous.

Everywhere.

That it's almost gone back round to being like a bit passe, dare I say?

Strawberry thief?

Like because it's on notebooks and pens and every gift shop in every National Trust property in the country has all the strawberry thief you can desire.

That would be my slightly snobby opinion.

But ironically, it's back to mass production again, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's the sort of memeification of the crop.

Yeah, but but to be fair to Renee Morris, it is a banging pattern.

It's a great self-defense.

And the first time I think you realize what it is, because I think we've all seen it and it do you know what I mean, and then I went the first time I was like, Oh, I see, that's his like he designed that, that's a thing, like rather than like it's just a a pat like who who you know, a pattern you see every day, I think you do go, Oh, that is a really good pattern.

There is a a reason it's so successful.

He's so charming, isn't he?

Yeah, he's still very charming.

It's beautiful.

So, what do you know now?

Great.

Well, it's time now for the.

So, what do you know now?

This is our quickfire quiz for Carrie Add the Quiz Queen to see how much she has learned.

You are renowned in this show for

heroic achievements in quizzing.

But we've got 10 questions for you, Carrie Ad.

I'm going to answer William Morris to every single one of them.

You probably.

You almost Almost be right there.

That might work.

Let's see.

Okay, question one:

Who coined the term arts and crafts movement?

Oh, it wasn't John Ruskin, it was the other person with three names.

I'll give you a clue.

Cobden Sanderson.

Yes, very good.

Yeah, well done.

Yeah, Thomas Cobden Sanderson.

Very good.

Well remembered.

That was a hard one.

Well done.

Question two: What economic development was the arts and crafts movement reacting against?

Industrialization.

Yeah.

Question three: Can you name two other arts and crafts practitioners besides William Morris?

Edward Burne-Jones, Mae Morris.

Yeah, sure.

That's Tiny.

Dante Rezetti, yeah, Philip Webb, Jane Burne, yeah.

There's lots of people.

Question four, what went wrong with the Arthurian mural that Morris and his circle produced for the Oxford Union Debating Chamber?

They didn't put a primer on that, baby.

They didn't white paint it first.

It was just bare brick.

And then some lovely Arthuriana.

Question five, what was the name of the house designed for William and Jane Morris to live in by the architect Philip Webb?

That was red, that one?

Yeah, Red House.

Yeah, very household.

Question six: Where did Morris and Co.

hire a number of their employees from?

Which school?

Oh, the school in Euston.

Yep.

That one for destitute boys.

That's it, yeah, that's it.

The industrial school, industrial home for destitute boys.

There's a lot of names.

The Royal Industrial Needlework School for Boys and Girls Who Don't Have Families.

Question Seven.

What two crafts was Gertrude Jekyll a practitioner of?

Gardening and interior design.

Yeah, what particular type of embroidery?

It was embroidery.

Yeah, very good.

It was always embroidery.

Embroidery.

Question eight: What arts and crafts organisation was founded by Lady Victoria Welby in 1872 and is now looked after by a certain Dr.

Isabella?

The Royal Needlework Society, the Royal Society for Needlework, Royal School of Needlework,

everything.

If it's not a school, it's an institute, it's a guild, it's all of the workwork.

Trains, Guild School, Institute of Needlework and Ceramic

for Poor Boys of Houston.

Question nine: How did Mary Seton Watts put radical arts and crafts ideas into practice when commissioned to do the Compton Mortuary Chapel?

She got 71 local people

and they learned ceramics and started their own trades guilds.

And they didn't blow up their kilns.

Question 10.

What was it about the Art Workers Guild that did not enamour them to women?

It's such a funny phrase.

What was it about the Rest Guild?

So they didn't let women in?

Yeah.

Oh, right.

Yeah, yeah.

So they didn't let women in.

They did not let women in.

And they basically made them do embroidery.

And the Royal Academy didn't even let a woman in either.

Yeah, exactly.

There, yeah.

Carriead Lloyd, never in doubt.

10 out of 10.

Oh, I've been so annoyed if I'd lost that.

It was 10 out of 10, Carrie Ad.

Well done.

Thank you so much for coming in again.

And thank you, Dr.

Isabella.

Listener, if after today's episode you want more Carrie Ad Lloyd in your life, you can check our episodes on Mary Wollstonecraft.

Well, craft, arts and arts and women's Wollstonecraft.

Yeah, baby.

Got there in the end, sorry.

Or, of course, the George and Valentine's episode, where we talked about some surprisingly racy nudes being sent in the post.

Yep.

Drawings of eyes.

Drawings of eyes.

Drawings of eyes.

Fan work.

Yep.

And if you want to hear more about British artistic movements, why not listen to our 100th episode on the Bloomsbury Group, who were radical and also just...

incredibly randy.

And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review, share the show with your friends, subscribe to your dead to me on BBC Sound so you never miss an episode.

But I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests.

In History Corner, we had the incredible Dr.

Isabella Rosner from the Royal School of Needlework.

Thank you, Isabella.

Thank you so much for having me.

I've had the best time.

And in Comedy Corner, we had the cracking Caryad Lloyd.

Thank you, Karyad.

My arts and crafts are now fulfilled.

Thank you.

And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we re-upholster another neglected historical subject.

But for now, I'm off to go and teach myself ceramics and maybe blow up my house.

Bye!

This episode of You're Dead to Me was researched by John Norman Mason.

It was written by Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, Emma Nagos, and me.

The audio producer was Steve Hankey and our production coordinator was Ben Hollins.

It was produced by Emmy Rose Price Good Fellow, me and senior producer Emma Nagoos and our executive editor was James Cook.

You're Dead to Me is a BBC Studios audio production for BBC Radio 4.

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