The Beauty of Life : William Morris & the Art of Design

William Morris was a man of tremendous energies, his accomplishments astonishing in their range and depth.

He became successively a poet, embroiderer, pattern designer, calligrapher, dyer, weaver, translator, architectural preservationist, socialist and book publisher and printer.

As the head of the internationally successful Morris & Company, he devoted himself to the decorative arts.

In his 1880 lecture "The Beauty of Life", Morris defined art and beauty together as integral to life itself.

This book looks at the achievements of William Morris and his firm, drawing on material from the Huntington Library and Arts Collections in California.

It contains studies of Morris the man, the firm he founded, its designs for stained glass and interior decoration, and Morris's adventures in fine printing, as well as an essay on his successor at Morris & Company, J.H.

Dearle. It also explores attitudes to and the design legacy of Morris and his firm in the late 19th and 20th centuries on both sides of the Atlantic.