William Morris

A designer, poet and craftsman who believed everyday things should be both useful and beautiful. Morris drew hundreds of patterns from English hedgerows and gardens — honeysuckle, willow, strawberry-stealing thrushes — and learned each craft himself, from dyeing with indigo to weaving and block printing. In his last years he founded the Kelmscott Press and made some of the most beautiful books ever printed. The pieces here are in the public domain, from museums that share their collections openly — The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art.