Forty of the Victorian master's most famous designs for wallpapers, chintzes, velveteens, tapestries, tiles, carpets, and more. Reproduced from original color plates of The Art of William Morris.
A collection of 22 needlepoint projects which are based on William Morris's designs. The projects include rugs, cushions and chair seats and are worked in tent stitch for canvas. The accompanying colour charts enable the reader to follow the instructions with ease.
William Morris is one of the greatest and best-known British designers. This new introduction to his work puts his ideas into a modern context, showing how his designs can be used not only in traditional interiors but also in contemporary settings. Morris created highly distinctive designs for wallpapers and textiles, many of which are still enjoying enormous popularity today. Through his company, Morris & Co, he contributed to the transformation of interior design at the end of the 19th century and gave expression to the ideas of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The highly accessible text looks at pattern and colour, as well as sources of inspiration such as nature, literature and legend. It also offers a fascinating insight into his working practices which were so different from those of many of his Victorian contemporaries. His desire to make beautiful things was at the core of his enterprise and his subtle colour schemes and evocative designs, many of which are still in production, have a timeless appeal. Through specially commissioned photographs showing rooms using his designs in a wide variety of settings, and details of individual textile and wallpaper designs, the book provides a wealth of ideas and inspiration for contemporary home owners.
Chief exponent of the Arts and Crafts movement in Victorian England, renowned artist and craftsman William Morris (1834–96) created a host of stunning patterns for wallpaper, fabrics, tapestries, floor coverings, and other decorative projects. Many of these designs took nature as their theme. Now Carolyn Relei has skillfully rendered 100 of Morris's best designs for this superb collection of stained glass motifs. Among the 100 black-and-white designs depicted here are lush florals and vines, exotic birds amid magnificent displays of garden flowers, a charming bouquet of daffodils, and many more. Artfully displayed in circular, oval, and rectangular frames, these splendid classics — all easily adaptable as templates — will appeal to artists and artisans who admire the work of one of the Victorian era's most influential craftsmen.
A twentieth anniversary edition of the classic, featuring new material by the author. Anna Pavord's internationally bestselling sensation, The Tulip, is the story of a flower that has driven men mad. Greed, desire, anguish, and devotion have all played their part in the development of the tulip into a worldwide phenomenon. Today, the United States alone imports three thousand million tulip bulbs each year. No other flower has ever carried so much consequence; it charts political upheavals, illuminates social behavior, mirrors economic booms and busts, plots the ebb and flow of religious persecution. Why did the tulip dominate so many lives through so many centuries in so many countries? Anna Pavord, a self-confessed tulipomaniac, spent six years looking for answers, roaming through Asia, India, and the Ottoman Empire to tell how a humble wildflower of the Asian steppes made its way to Turkey and from there took the whole of Western Europe by storm. Sumptuously illustrated from a wide range of sources, this irresistible volume has become a bible, a unique source book, a universal gift book, and a joy to all who possess it. This beautifully redesigned edition features a new Preface by the author, a completely revised listing of the best varieties of this incomparable flower to choose for your garden, and a reorganized listing of tulip species, to reflect the latest thinking by taxonomists.
A long time ago, you could only find them on the slopes of remote mountain ranges in Asia, but today they are the very symbol of modern genetics, a species unrivalled for the variety of colors and forms that breeders can create: tulips. In this book, Celia Fisher traces the story of this important and highly popular plant, from its mountain beginnings to its prevalence in the gardens of Mughal, Persian, and Ottoman potentates; from its migration across the Silk Road to its explosive cultivation in the modern European world. Fisher looks at how tulips’ intensely saturated color has made them an important species for botanists and gardeners. Initially rare in sixteenth century Netherlands, tulips sparked such frenzy among aristocratic collectors that they caused the first economic bubble and collapse. Exploring the ways cultivators have created one hybrid after another—in an astonishing range of colors and shapes—Fisher also shows how tulips have inspired art and literature throughout the centuries, from Ottoman Turkey to the paintings of the Dutch Masters, from Alexandre Dumas’s novel The Black Tulip to contemporary artist David Cheung painting them atop pages of the Financial Times. Stunningly illustrated, this book offers a unique cultural history of one of our most important flowers.