Morris & Co. vs Liberty & Co.: Two Victorian Design Houses

How Morris & Co. began and grew

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in 1853 Morris went to Exeter College at the University of Oxford, where he met Edward Jones, later the painter and designer Burne-Jones. The Britannica account also records that the writings of John Ruskin, particularly the chapter 'On the Nature of Gothic' in The Stones of Venice, came to Morris 'with the force of a revelation'. The Victoria and Albert Museum dates to 1855 the architectural tour of northern France on which the two men realised they were more committed to art than the Church.

Morris commissioned the architect Philip Webb, whom he had met at Street's office, to design and build Red House. The V&A notes that the house at Bexleyheath was so called because it was built of red brick when the fashion was for stucco villas. In April 1861 the firm was founded as Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company, with Ford Madox Brown, Rossetti, Webb and Burne-Jones among its other members, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Early work followed quickly. In 1861 Morris began painting a cabinet designed by Philip Webb for the 1862 International Exhibition. Within a few years the company secured commissions to decorate two rooms at St James's Palace and the West Dining Room of the South Kensington Museum. Morris's own connection with that museum continued: per the V&A, he became an examiner at its art school in 1876 and joined its Committee of Art Referees in 1884.

The V&A describes Morris as appalled by the crude ugliness of contemporary machine-age goods and focused on producing what it calls more 'honest' work. It also records that on a family trip to London in 1851, Morris, then aged 16, refused to enter the Great Exhibition. The rejection of industrialised decoration that shaped the firm is set against its starting point in our piece on the Great Exhibition of 1851 and what Morris rejected.

What the firm made and who made it

The firm's output was broad, and attribution matters throughout. The V&A records that Morris personally designed over 50 wallpapers during his career, yet even there the printing was contracted out, as with Jeffrey & Co., which manufactured and printed the wallpaper 'Sunflower' for him in 1879. Textiles, tapestry and tiles each involved other hands, from Thomas Wardle's dyeing works in Leek, Staffordshire, to John Henry Dearle, whom Morris appointed to manage production when tapestry weaving was established at Merton Abbey in 1881.

Morris also left clear instructions about how wallpaper should behave. As quoted by the V&A, in his essay The Lesser Arts (1877) he warned against 'sham-real boughs and flowers' and advised wallpaper designers 'to avoid falling into the trap of trying to make your paper look as if it were painted by hand'.

Where the sources disagree

Even a single-firm history has conflicts worth modelling, because this is exactly the discipline a two-firm comparison would demand. Three points in the record do not line up neatly.

The main source conflicts in the Morris & Co. record:

• When Morris met Burne-Jones. One account, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, dates the meeting to 1853 at Oxford; another leaves the timing general, saying only that visits to Belgium and northern France confirmed his love of medieval art. The dated version is the more specific and is used here.
• The 1855 tour. The architectural tour of northern France is dated to 1855 by the V&A and left undated in another account. The dated claim is retained, with the general account treated as consistent rather than contradictory.
• The firm's name in 1864. 'Daisy' is recorded by the V&A as issued in 1864 by 'Morris, Faulkner, Marshall & Co.', while the Encyclopaedia Britannica records the firm founded in April 1861 as 'Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company'. The order of the partners' names differs between the two records, so both are reported as given rather than silently corrected.

What a fair comparison would need

A trustworthy Morris & Co. versus Liberty & Co. account would need, for each firm: a founding date and founding structure, named designers and makers, dated products with their manufacturers, and records of major commissions. For Morris & Co. this page has all of those, from the April 1861 founding recorded by the Encyclopaedia Britannica to the named makers and commissions recorded by the V&A. For Liberty & Co. it has none, because no supplied institutional source covers that firm.

Morris's own writing used here, The Lesser Arts, says nothing about Liberty & Co., so no statement of his view of that firm can be made. No commercial or trading relationship between the two houses is documented in the material available. Until sources covering Liberty are added, any detailed comparison would rest on one documented side and one remembered one, and this page stops short of that.

Side-by-side comparison

The table gathers what this page can document for each firm. Where the source material is silent, the cell says so rather than filling the gap.