\paperw4995 \margr0\margl0 \plain \fs20 \f1 English painter, writer, and designer.\par
Though a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the English writer and designer William
Morris immediately distinguished himself from other exponents of the movement by his greater social engagement, in which his aims were political as well as artistic. The inspiration he drew from the Middle Ages and the legends of King Arthur in the only
painting that can be reliably attributed to him (\i Queen Guinevere\i0 , 1858, London, Tate Gallery) and in his poetry was matched by his desire to use technical and stylistic bases from that world as well. In MorrisÆs view, artists had to turn their at
tention to the applied arts in an effort to bring about a comprehensive renewal of aesthetics.\par
In 1861 William Morris founded Morris, Marshall & Faulkner, a firm that produced wallpaper, furnishing fabrics, and stained glass. Rossetti, Brown, and Bu
rne-Jones were also involved in the venture. In these years Morris built a home for himself, the Red House, in collaboration with the architect Philip Webb: in a sober version of the style known as the Gothic Revival, the building was a genuine manifesto
of his architectural and decorative theories.\par
Through his firm and the exhibitions staged by the Arts & Crafts Society from 1888 onward, Morris popularized his decorative designs throughout Great Britain and the Continent. Dominated by the floral a
rabesque, the designs were derived from the Pre-Raphaelites and from a fictitious vision of the Middle Ages, and they had an important influence on the development of art nouveau. Morris drew on the same models for his renovation of the art of printing,
founding the Kelmscott Press at Merton Abbey in 1890 for the production of refined hand-printed editions.
