Women of the Arts and Crafts Movement in Morris's Circle

A chapel for a community of women: the Clapham Common commission

The commission at the centre of this page is an altar table designed in 1897. The V&A identifies its designer as the architect Philip Webb (1831 to 1915), and records that it was made for the Rochester and Southwark Diocesan Deaconess Institution, a religious community and theological college for women at Clapham Common in London. The client was Isabella Gilmore, whom the museum identifies as the sister of the designer William Morris and as a Deaconess.

Webb was a close friend and associate of William Morris, so the commission placed Morris's own family and his oldest professional partnership inside an institution run by and for women. According to the V&A, Webb designed the chapel and all its fittings, which makes the altar table one part of a complete scheme rather than an isolated piece.

The V&A's attribution of the table to Philip Webb (Speakman) rests on a single institutional record, and the museum's account of the chapel scheme comes from the same source. No second source is supplied here to confirm or complicate it, so the attributions are given as the V&A states them.

May Morris and the embroidered altar cloth

Among the chapel fittings, one carries a second woman's name. According to the V&A, the altar cloth was embroidered by May Morris, William's daughter, and is held in the museum's collection as Museum no. T.379-1970. Her work placed her inside the same commission her aunt had commissioned and her father's friend had designed.

The V&A records that the altar cross, candlesticks, a cloth for the altar table and a lectern are also now in the museum's collection. Together with the table and the embroidered cloth, these objects preserve the chapel scheme as a group, which is why a single commission can document the work of several people at once.

What the altar cloth depicts, and when it was made, are not stated in the record supplied here. The attribution to May Morris is the part of the story the museum's entry establishes, and this page does not go beyond it.

What the object itself shows

The V&A describes the altar table as made of oak, joined and carved, with frame and panel construction and visible dowels. That description matters for readers of design history: it shows honest construction left visible rather than concealed, a quality associated with the making practices of Webb and his circle.

The object history is only partly documented in the record supplied. The V&A notes that the table, together with the associated lectern, were lent to the Furniture Department as a long-term loan on the understanding that they would become gifts once Gilmore House Ltd (the record is truncated at this point). The full terms of the loan and gift cannot be stated from the surviving excerpt.

The limits of the record

It is worth being clear about what the evidence here does not establish. No quotation from William Morris about women in his circle appears in the record, so this page cannot report what he thought on the subject. Isabella Gilmore's dates and other biographical details are not given in the source supplied, and neither are the subject or date of May Morris's altar cloth.

Only one institutional source is supplied, so no disputed points or differing attributions can be identified. Where the V&A's account rests on a single record, that has been flagged in the text. Anything beyond these limits would be guesswork, and this page leaves it out.