May Morris in Focus: An Online Talk by Fiona Rose
Towards the end of her life, May Morris wrote with characteristic clarity and defiance: “I’m a remarkable woman, always was, though none of you seem to think so.” For over a century, history largely proved her point. Overshadowed by her father, William Morris, May Morris (1862–1938) was long treated as a footnote to the Arts & Crafts movement rather than one of its most accomplished and principled figures. On 27 February 2026 at 6pm, the Gordon Russell Design Museum in Worcestershire will host an online talk, The Life & Work of May Morris: “A Remarkable Woman”, led by lecturer and historian Fiona Rose, offering a timely opportunity to look again at May Morris’s extraordinary life and work.
May Morris working on an embroidery frame. Image:
© William Morris Gallery, London Borough of Waltham Forest
Born in 1862 above the family’s premises at 26 Queen Square, London, May grew up immersed in design, literature and making. She followed her mother Jane Morris into embroidery, studying textiles at what would later become the Royal College of Art, and quickly distinguished herself as a designer of remarkable technical confidence. By the age of just twenty-three she was appointed Head of Embroidery at Morris & Co., managing commissions for domestic interiors and ecclesiastical settings while developing her own visual language. Designs such as Honeysuckle and Horn Poppy entered the firm’s repertoire, sometimes mistakenly credited to her father, an error May would later quietly correct.
May Morris, Bed-Hangings (Two Curtains), 1917, or earlier. Embroiderers: May Morris and Mary J. Newill. Image: Cranbrook Art Museum collection.
May’s embroideries exemplify the Arts & Crafts ideal of the designer-maker: organic, flowing compositions drawn from gardens, hedgerows and medieval sources, worked with expressive restraint. She believed deeply that embroidery was an art form in its own right, writing in Decorative Needlework (1893) that design was “the very soul and essence of beautiful embroidery.” Her work drew inspiration from illuminated manuscripts, historic English needlework, and the floral traditions of Turkey and Iran, translated into furnishings intended for everyday life rather than museum display.
Honeysuckle Wallpaper Design, May Morris, 1883. © William Morris Gallery, London Borough of Waltham Forest
Beyond her own practice, May was a committed feminist and socialist. Excluded from male-only institutions such as the Art Workers’ Guild, she founded the Women’s Guild of Arts in 1907 to support women practitioners and foster professional solidarity. In later life, she also undertook the monumental task of editing the 24 volumes of her father’s collected works, ensuring his legacy even as her own faded from view.
Decorative Needlework, 1893, May Morris. Published by Joseph Hughes & Co., London. Image: © William Morris Gallery, London Borough of Waltham Forest
Fiona Rose’s talk brings the human story back into focus, situating May Morris not only as William Morris’s daughter, but as a pioneering artist, organiser and thinker in her own right. Rose has been lecturing on William Morris, May Morris and their circle since 2010, and is known for her engaging, human-centred approach to art history. She is a former Trustee of The William Morris Society and a peer reviewer for the Journal of William Morris Studies.
Seen through this lens, May Morris emerges not as a supporting figure, but as a central voice within the Arts & Crafts movement — one whose work and convictions continue to resonate today.
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Further Information:
The Life & Work of May Morris: “A Remarkable Woman”, by Fiona Rose, takes place on 27 February 2026 at 6pm.
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Image Credits:
Lead: May Morris, Cushion cover, circa 1890. Designed by May Morris and stitched by Dame Alice Mary Godman. Courtesy of RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island.
All further images as credited in photo captions.