15/11/2025
The wonderful May Morris.Some of her work can still be seen at Kelmscott Manor.
https://www.facebook.com/100076638743004/posts/856330290264921/
For 100 years, they called her "William Morris's daughter"—then someone finally looked at her embroidery and realized she might have been the genius all along.
Imagine being born into brilliance. Your father: William Morris, the titan of British design whose wallpapers and textiles defined an era. Your mother: Jane Morris, the hauntingly beautiful woman who modeled for Pre-Raphaelite painters and was herself a master embroiderer.
Growing up in that household, you'd think May Morris had it made.
Instead, she had something harder: something to prove.
Born in 1862, May learned to thread a needle before she could write her name. Her mother taught her the ancient art of embroidery, but May didn't just learn—she transformed it. While other Victorian women did decorative needlework to pass time, May saw embroidery as high art, as powerful and expressive as any painting.
By age 23, she wasn't just helping at her father's famous company, Morris & Co. She was running its entire embroidery department.
Let that sink in. Twenty-three years old, and she was managing one of the most influential design studios in Britain.
But May didn't just manage—she revolutionized.
Her designs were breathtaking: nature-inspired motifs that seemed to dance across fabric, blending medieval tradition with startling modernity. Flowers that looked like they might bloom right off the textile. Patterns that were both intricate and bold, delicate yet powerful—much like May herself.
She transformed a small workshop into a thriving enterprise, training a generation of women artisans and—here's the radical part—insisting they be paid fairly for their skilled labor. In Victorian England, where women's work was often dismissed as "hobby," May Morris demanded recognition and compensation for female craftsmanship.
She was building an empire of women artists before anyone called it feminism.
Beyond embroidery, May designed jewelry—pieces that captured the same meticulous attention to natural forms, the same refusal to choose between beauty and meaning. Every clasp, every setting, every stone placement was intentional, purposeful, alive.
And then her father died in 1896.
The art world mourned William Morris. May mourned too—but she also got to work. She spent years editing his collected works, preserving his legacy with the same precision she brought to her embroidery. She made sure the world would never forget William Morris.
The world, in turn, forgot May Morris.
For decades, art historians described her as "William's assistant." His daughter. His helper. The woman who preserved his legacy. They wrote entire books about Morris & Co. without mentioning that May had designed some of its most celebrated pieces.
The shadow of genius is a lonely place to live.
May never remarried after her brief marriage ended in heartbreak when her husband betrayed her. Instead, she poured everything into her art and into the women she mentored. She chose independence over convention, creativity over compromise. She refused to be small just because she'd been born in a great man's house.
For years, her name appeared only in footnotes.
But embroidery, it turns out, doesn't fade as easily as memory.
When scholars finally—finally—began examining Morris & Co. textiles more closely, they noticed something. The pieces from May's department weren't just good. They were exceptional. Different. More sophisticated in their ex*****on, more innovative in their design than even William's own work.
They'd been calling her the daughter of a genius.
They should have been calling her a genius who happened to have a famous father.
Today, May Morris's pieces command premium prices at auction. Museums display her embroidery alongside her father's designs—not as supplement, but as equal. Art historians now recognize her as a pioneering bridge between traditional craft and modern art, a woman who proved that needlework could be as revolutionary as any painting or sculpture.
May Morris died in 1938, never having received the recognition she deserved in her lifetime.
But her work—those intricate flowers, those bold patterns, those pieces of wearable art—they're still here. Still beautiful. Still speaking for the woman who created them.
She lived in a shadow for a hundred years.
Now, finally, she's stepping into the light.
And the view is magnificent.
