Barbara Brackman's MATERIAL CULTURE: Morris Muse: Elizabeth Burden

Sunday, June 28, 2026

Morris Muse: Elizabeth Burden

Angel with Cymbals

Embroidered by Elizabeth Burden (1841 – 1924)

(Perhaps a fitting portrait of the embroiderer)

Elizabeth (Bessie) Burden was another of the women embroidery artists, the Morris Muses who worked with designer William Morris.

Morris Muse fabrics in a pattern named Brunswick Star

by Ruth Finley and Comfort magazine. BlockBase+ #3805.

In the 1930s the Grandma Dexter pattern company called it

Rolling Stone, a good place to start with a pattern

for Muse Elizabeth Burden.

As William Morris's wife's sister Bessie seems to have played an unusual role in the needlework partnership, designing her own panels with an emphasis on human (& angelic figures) rather than floral abstractions.

Elizabeth and younger sister Jane Burden Morris were born in Oxfordshire, England into a lower strata of the hierarchy of class-conscious Britain---the working poor. Censuses list father Robert Burden as a servant and a groom for horses in Oxford. With wife Ann Maizey Burden he had four children, Mary Ann, William, Elizabeth and Jane. Only the youngest two lived into adulthood.

Oxford, Near St. Ebbes Church

Jane's unusual beauty caught the attention of

William Morris's set of young artists. She and Morris married in 1859.

In 1865 father Robert died. Apparently Bessie had been living with him (mother Ann who lived until 1871 is unaccounted for) and at his death Bessie moved in with her younger sister, husband and two girls. Six years later the extended family moved to Queen's Square where their home shared the space with the company's retail shop.

Like the other muses Bessie embroidered for the shop but few of her pieces---patterns, kits or finished textiles----have been identified.

26 Queen Square by Amédée Forestier

published in William Morris: His Homes & Haunts, 1909

Elizabeth Burden's style: Three panels with design attributed to both Morris and Edward Burne-Jones,

exhibited in 1888 at the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society.

Bessie was hired to teach embroidery at the Royal School of Needlework in 1873 when she was in her early thirties and moved out of the Morris home to Russell Square, perhaps because her sister's family had moved to a smaller residence.

The Royal School's exhibit at Philadelphia's Centennial Expo 1876

Two years later she was back teaching at the RSN in time to supervise the

school's display at America's centennial birthday fair, the

1876 Philadelphia Exhibition

Walter Crane is credited with design for this hanging

that is said to have been shown in Philadelphia. Embroiderer's

name unknown. Hanging's current whereabouts also unknown.

Candace Thurber Wheeler (1827–1923)

Embroidered furnishings designed by Bessie received a Certificate of Award, inspiring Americans by "sowing the seed" here for art embroidery, according to designer Candace Wheeler who organized New York's Society of Decorative Art based on the London model.

Bessie who relied upon this tapestry stitch was honored by

the school's renaming it the "Burden Stitch" in the RSN’s Handbook of Embroidery\

Lynn Hulsey, expert on Morris embroidery and Elizabeth Morris's biographer, has found comments that paint her as "a prickly professional who refused to compromise her standards, and who was less than adroit in managing her aristocratic employers" at the RSN: Director Lady Victoria Welby and the important Royal patron Princess Helena of Schleswig Holstein, Queen Victoria's daughter.

Lady Victoria Welby, Director of the Royal School

& Princess Helena, the major Royal Patron

Miss Burden and Mrs. Welby, as she was called at the school, disagreed about whether student work should be labeled as that of their teacher. Bessie had a point that that such a credit could make her look bad but she did not make her point well, writing a letter to her supervisor that resulted in the school firing her. The letter has not survived but Mrs. Welby sent a copy to the Princess who was rather indignant. No one could be more class conscious than a Princess and Helena was quite accurate in her analysis. Bessie was neither a lady nor an educated person.

"As to Miss Burden, I think her behaviour simply outrageous. I never read so cool or impertinent a letter. It shows she can have no ladylike feelings for no lady or decently educated person would have penned such a letter."

Miss Burden's skills, however, motivated the school to rehire her two years later despite her "behaving so badly," as RSN founder Madeline Wyndham recalled. "She is the only person who knows how to work the crewel work." And so Elizabeth resumed teaching. She did not stay long past the Philadelphia Exhibition and later in life moved on to Surrey, about 30 miles south of London, probably for a teaching position, where she died in 1924.

The letter episode was probably just one instance of her temperamental nature. Her brother-in-law

criticized her "troublesome & complicated accounts concerning designs, materials, & wages" while working for him. He'd earlier written a friend that living with her on Oxford Street was difficult:

"I have been a good deal in the house here - not alone, that would have been pretty well - but alone with poor Bessy. I must say it is a shame, she is quite harmless and even good, and one ought not to be irritated by her - but O my God what I have suffered from finding [her] always there at meals & the like!"