Women's Guild of Arts

http://janmarsh.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/may-morris-womens-guild-of-arts.html

AMONG the items once owned by artist Mary Sloane and recently given to the William Morris Society are 90 glass slides, made from photographs showing medieval jewellery, textiles and embroidery artefacts, works by members of the Women's Guild of Arts , and images of the Morris family and their houses.

May Morris was foun

der and chair of the WGA and her close friend Mary Anne Sloane was its hon.secretary. The exact origin of the items isn't clear - the donation includes WGA documents and some hitherto unknown portrait photos of May probably taken in the USA - but research is in progress.

The WMS is aiming to digitise the slides in order to use the images in a WGA display, and to make them available to researchers, in order to find out more about the extensive role of women in the Arts & Crafts movement. Digitisation costs £5 sterling per slide. To sponsor slides, please contact curator@williammorrissociety.org.uk

Oh, and another recent acquisition by the WMS is a brooch made by May - worked in gold and set with large teardrop amethysts, small green stones and what looks like an opal in the centre. May's jewellery work isn't as well known as her embroidery - the largest collection is in the V&A - so this is a very welcome addition to the Kelmscott House collection.

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Blunt visit to Kelmscott - diary entry

"With his wife [WM] showed himself uniformly kind but without tenderness treating her in a certain offhand way peculiarly his own. She was a loveable and noble woman, but he knew he had never touched her heart. Yet he was observant. What had taken place between her and Rossetti he knew and had forgiven. But he had not forgotten it. ..."

Blunt diary after staying at Kelmscott

La Belle Iseult ~ William Morris

This was Morris' only known easel work. Under the influence of Rossetti but with its own style. But look at the odd bronze pitcher, bottom right. Anyway recent analysis shows parts like the red sleeves were overpainted. Morris abandoned the painting, calling it 'a brute' and both Rossetti and Madox Brown had a go at it. But when it was given to Madox Brown's soon in 1874 it was described as unfinished. It was eventually returned to Jane. She allowed it to be exhibited at the 1897 Morris memorial but it was called 'Queen Guenevere'.

Cecil Sharp

I've shown this photograph before
© William Morris Gallery
Country Dancing Festival at Kelmscott (c.1913)

May and Jane (in the wheelchair)are obvious but the man standing on the extreme left, holding his straw hat is the great folk song collector Cecil Sharp, who collected a lot around Oxfordshire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Sharp

Edward Coley Burne-Jones - The Golden Stairs 1880

This painting is an example of Edward Burne-Jones’s interest in investigating a mood rather than telling a story. He deliberately made his pictures enigmatic and the meaning of this painting has provoked much debate. One view is that the eighteen women are spirits in an enchanted dream. The painting might also be purely decorative. The underlying idea, popularised in the 1870s by the critic Walter Pater, is that ‘all the arts aspire to the condition of music’. 

There are 18 women and May's face is 8th from the top, holding the violin. 

Other faces are modelled on Frances Graham, Laura Tennant, Mary Millais and Margaret Burne-Jones. Antonia Caiva, a professional model often used by Ned was used for their bodies.

The canvas is 9 feet high by 4 wide. First exhibited at the Grovesner Gallery, 1880.

Jenny and May Morris 1870

Jenny and May Morris 1870
George Howard
Kelmscott Manor

Sorry for the scan that book (Jane's Letters) is heavy!

The Collected Letters of Jane Morris

Review copy arrived today.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1843836769/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0700V2QZ15M14ZVCDV7S&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=317828027&pf_rd_i=468294