Morris & Co

click photo to enlarge
I spend my life ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich."
William Morris (1834-1896), English designer, artist, writer and socialist

If you fancy a bit of linen featuring an original William Morris print, or perhaps a rug or wallpaper with his distinctive patterns and colours, say, "Chrysanthemum Minor" or "The Strawberry Thief", Liberty's of London will be delighted to sell it to you. So too will a number of up-market stores throughout Britain, because Morris' designs are still sought after by the discerning (and well-heeled). Should you doubt that the copies you have purchased are faithfully modelled on the originals you can pop into the Victoria & Albert Museum and view examples from the time of first manufacture, or look at The Green Dining Room (1866-68) that he fitted out for the museum. As the quote at the head of this piece suggests, Morris regretted that the art he created could only be afforded by people of means. His designs that are sold today continue to be expensive unless you buy the coasters, mugs, bookmarks and the like, that have appropriated his patterns and displayed them in ways that he never intended.

However, if you don't live in London, there is a way to see some of Morris & Co.'s work without it costing the earth - visit a church. From 1861 Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co (called Morris & Co from 1875) designed stained glass for houses and churches right through until their demise in the 1930s. The quality of the firm's output in this field declined after the founder's death, and was at its peak when Edward Burne-Jones worked for the company. Though not the biggest supplier of coloured glass to churches Morris' firm was undoubtedly the best, and examples are not difficult to come by. I have posted one of my favourite pieces from Brampton in Cumbria previously, and today's example is also to be found that county, this time in the church of St Paul, Irton. It depicts St Agnes (with the lamb) and St Catherine of Alexandria. The figures are beautifully drawn by Burne Jones, unmistakably his work in the Pre-Raphaelite style, and, whilst not as delicately coloured as some of his windows, nonetheless they are a pleasure to look at and an example that surpasses most of the stained glass of that period.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 43mm (86mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.5
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Sunset thoughts

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"The sky is the daily bread of the imagination."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. poet and essayist

I've said elsewhere in this blog that sunsets are undoubtedly one of the most photographed subjects. But it's not just photographers who are seduced by the blaze of fire in the sky at the end of the day: poets and painters frequently press the sunset into service as metaphor. When, in 1839, Turner painted his picture of the old warship, "The Fighting Temeraire," being towed by a steam tug to be broken up at the end of its life, he depicted the scene against a fiery sunset to emphasise that its days were ended. Shakespeare uses the sunset in a similar way in these lines, "In me thou see'st the twilight of such day, As after sunset fadeth in the west; Which by and by black night doth take away".

The challenge for the photographer, the painter and the poet is to use this well-worn idea of the sunset as representing an end, in a fresh and revealing way. And, as far as photography goes, that is a major aim in photographing any subject. The past 170 years have seen so many photographers capture most subjects in myriad ways that it's a real challenge to present a shot that steps outside a genre, and a way of seeing, that hasn't been done before.

Today's photograph makes no claims in that department. It's a shot of the sky after the sun has set. A particularly lovely combination of clouds and colours caused me to take yet another sunset image. The one thing I very consciously did in my capture was to move so the trees at the bottom right became silhouettes on the horizon. Their insignificance, when seen in this way, seemed to magnify the majesty of this very conventional subject.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 29mm (58mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Picturesque Derwent Water

click photo to enlarge

No one in the seventeenth century would have felt that a hot sunny day was best enjoyed outdoors. Nor would they have surveyed Derwent Water and its surrounding hills and mountains of the Lake District and described the scene as beautiful. In those times the heat of the sun was to be avoided. Charles II, who was raised in France (and so knew the heat of a continental summer) said that "he liked...that country best, which might be enjoyed the most hours of the day, and the most days of the year, which he was sure was to be done in England more than in any country whatsoever." Rugged landscape in the seventeenth century was "the blasted heath", "the waste", a place to be avoided, and not to be compared with the beauty of the cultivated lowlands.

The eighteenth century continued to hold the same views about hot sunshine, but, slowly the attitude towards mountainous and wild landscape changed. Anthony Ashley Cooper, John Dennis and Joseph Addison wrote about the agreeable, fearful pleasures that arose in crossing the Alps. Edmund Burke's philosophy took up this theme. The rise of the Picturesque was part of Romanticism's reaction against the quickening pace of science's uncovering of the mysteries of the natural world, and it gave a more formal structure to this way of looking at the world. It viewed the emotions stirred by untamed nature as instinctive, sublime, worthy, and as something to be actively sought. Writers, musicians and the visual arts fed on these new sensibilities. Highly influential was Thomas Gilpin's, "Observations of the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770", published in 1782. It urged people to stop dismissing the rugged landscape of the British Isles, and admire it according to the ideals he proposed. The ripples from Gilpin and the Picturesque spread through English painting, landscape gardening, poetry, and out into Europe and the United States.

Had he been born a hundred years earlier William Wordsworth would never have sat by the waterfall above Derwent Water and listened to the "roar that stuns the tremulous cliffs of high Lodor", or thought of moving to live at Grasmere, still less sought his inspiration in Lakeland's crags and peaks, or spent his last years at Rydal Mount. It was writers like Wordsworth and his friend, Coleridge, and painters like Richard Wilson, Cozens (father and son) and Francis Towne who also deserve our thanks for opening our eyes to the beauties of scenes like that shown in today's photograph.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (28mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On