'Anarchy
& Beauty' is a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London
which explores the life and ideas of the great Victorian artist, writer and
visionary thinker William Morris. Through portraits, personal items and
fascinating objects, many of which are on public display for the first time,
this major exhibition illustrates Morris’s concept of ‘art for the people’ and
highlights the achievements of those that he inspired.
Morris
believed you should have nothing in your house that you do not know to be
useful, or believe to be beautiful. The
exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery includes a host of
unusually well-crafted practical objects such as an erotic garden roller
designed by Eric Gill and the sandals belonging to his protégé, Edward
Carpenter (loaned by Sheffield Archives), which are said to have inspired a sandal-wearing
craze among left-wing intellectuals.
The
exhibition, which runs to 11 January 2015, is curated by Morris’ biographer
Fiona MacCarthy. It displays the work of
Arts and Crafts practitioners inspired by Morris and ‘simple life’ philosophers
such as Carpenter and Gill, also showing how Morris’s radical ideals developed
through to the Garden City movement and from the Festival of Britain onwards to
young post-war designers such as Terence Conran who took up Morris’s original
campaign for making good design available to everyone.
National Portrait Gallery: http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/anarchy-beauty-william-morris-and-his-legacy-1860-1960/home.php
The Edward Carpenter collection at Sheffield Archives: https://www.sheffield.gov.uk/libraries/archives-and-local-studies/collections/edward-carpenter-collection.html
Pictured: Edward Carpenter in sandals, 1905 (Sheffield Archives: Carp/8/31)
