William Morris was an English artist and designer who co-founded Morris & Co in 1861. More than a century after his death, his influence on interior design remains powerful: revenues for Morris & Co reached GBP18m ($23m) in the year ending January 2025. Famous designs include "Strawberry Thief" and "Golden Lily".
Morris was bitterly opposed to mass production. In 1851, aged 17, he was taken by his mother to the Great Exhibition in London, a showcase of industrial technology and design. He refused to enter. Influenced by medieval art and literature, he believed goods should be made by hand with natural dyes such as weld and madder. He believed in "art made by the people, and for the people, as a happiness to the maker and the user".
Morris became a socialist, publishing an essay entitled "How I Became a Socialist" in 1894.
Despite his egalitarian principles, Morris's products were luxury goods. Two early commissions were for royal households: the "St James's" wallpaper was designed for Queen Victoria's throne room. In 1895 Tsar Nicholas II ordered 300 yards of "Garden Tulip" to redecorate the royal apartments of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg.
The Sanderson Design Group has owned Morris & Co since 1940. A trove of incomplete Morris sketches was acquired by the Huntington, a cultural institution, in 1999. In 2025 the firm launched 26 new designs based on these sketches. The William Morris Gallery in London hosted "Morris Mania", an exhibition celebrating his ubiquitous prints.
"If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry."