AS the daughter of William Morris, poet, painter, designer, printer, socialist campaigner, businessman, utopian and driving force of the Arts-and-Crafts Movement, May Morris still has not entirely escaped from his wide spreading shadow. Much of his poetry has not worn well and, after his death in 1896, his designs fell out of fashion, to be replaced by Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Since the relaunch of his wallpapers and fabrics by Sandersons and Liberty in the 1960s, however, his reputation has risen again and hers with it. Indeed, a similar string of labels can be attached to her—designer, art embroiderer, teacher, writer, political activist, historian, socialist and supporter of women’s advancement—and, since the 1980s, not only her contribution to her father’s success, but her own achievements, too, have been increasingly understood.
In 1861, a year before May’s birth, Morris had set up Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co to make ecclesiastical and domestic furnishings by traditional methods. From the start, May and her elder sister,
