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...

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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.