Morris Muse: May Morris

 

Portrait by Dante Gabriel Rossetti May about 10

Mary "May" Morris (1862-1938)

May and mother Jane 

May Morris was truly her father William's design partner, designing and stitching the pieces sold in Morris & Company's decorating shop. She managed the textile department, creating her own prints in Morris style and continuing in his path after he was gone.

MORRIS & COMPANY DECORATORS

449 Oxford Street

The firm's showroom was situated here from 1877 to 1919.

Description of what you might find at the shop

Woman at work seemingly pleased with the results

After her father died in 1896 May went out on her own, primarily as a needlework teacher for the influential Royal School of Art Needlework. She published a book and magazine articles on technique and design.

And impressed that end-of-the-century arbiter of 

taste Oscar Wilde.

Portrait of Oscar in a crazy quilt

Quilts from the Morris Muse prints:

Almost Maybe from LouannaMaryQuiltDesign

Click here to buy the pattern:

https://www.facebook.com/louannamaryquiltdesign

I gave friend Denniele Bohannon yardage from this line several weeks ago. She used the gray colorway to create a terrific pattern in her signature style emphasizing secondary patterns. Becky Collis long-arm quilted it. Denniele says it's done with templates and has no Y seams.

A SAMPLER QUILT

Moda asked Wendy Sheppard to give us an updated sampler

for Morris Muse.

"Oh Happy Day" uses a Fat Quarter Bundle

for a 76" square quilt.

Patchwork was not an interest of the Morrises who counted on embroidery as THE textile decorating technique.

William Morris began embroidering as a  young man trying to

capture the appearance of old tapestries. He worked with many

women over the years to perfect the look he wanted.

Daughter May was his chief artist.

From the Victoria & Albert Museum Site

Pattern for Morris-style Embroidery

Flower Pot

Father and daughter designed this popular piece together when she was young. The Victoria and Albert Museum has an example that May embroidered in the 1890s..

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O88437/flowerpot-embroidered-picture-morris-william/

Linda Parry showed a detail of one version.

Meg Andrews once had this in her inventory.

Several examples of the Flower Pot by various hands have

survived. Pattern and finished panels must have sold well at the shop.

Pattern for a 12" block

One side is the same as the other---just flipped.

Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago

Embroidered panels often were incorporated into fire screens which one could buy finished at the showroom.

See more interpretations of the Flower Pot design.

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2014/03/morris-flowerpot-design.html

May on the left with Jane (Jenny) Morris (1861-1935)

May's older sister Jennie was afflicted by a case of grand mal epilepsy becoming more handicapped over her life due to seizures and medication. Her mother Jane noted in 1901 the she was "so much slower in speaking and apparently in thinking than she was a year ago." To her mother every seizure was "as if a dagger were thrust into me." Jennie died in an institution in her mid seventies.

May and her father were quite active in socialist politics as was her husband Henry Halliday Sparling, who worked for Morris..

Collection of the Cheltenham Gallery & Museum

May next to her husband with the bearded 

George Bernard Shaw drawing their attention.

The Homestead and the Forest

Kelmscott Manor Collection

May and Jane must have had plans when they embroidered

 this crib quilt designed by May before her wedding.

Detail of The Homestead and the Forest. 

Mottoes and quotes of various types are embroidered in the borders, among them:

"Love me; Love my dog."

May and Henry were engaged for four years before their 1890 marriage and married for seven. Romantics like to think her true love was the elusive Shaw who indeed was living with them when husband Henry moved out in 1897. The following year Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townsend despite his oft-stated position against marriage.

Mary Francis Vivian Lobb (1878 – 1939) 

During World War I May met Mary Lobb who soon moved into Kelmscott Manor to live with May the rest of her life. May left Mary rights to live in the house after her death in 1938. Mary Lobb died the following year.

May and Mary at Kelmscott Manor

Read More: 

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2025/10/lynn-hulse-may-morris-and-broderie-perse.html

Embroidery patterns

Lynn Hulse, May Morris designs: “The very soul and essence of beautiful embroidery”, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 2025

Victoria and Albert Museum article on Morris embroidery:

https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/willam-morris-textiles?srsltid=AfmBOoovlPBSDCmWxieaenEVzHws8b503hhnC27sO6mS19qRaMixJ1dO

Details of the embroidery at The Unbroken Thread:

https://www.theunbrokenthread.com/blog/2017/11/08/may-morris-art-life-exhibition/?