William Morris and his Palace of Art with Tessa Wild

Join the BIID for an evening lecture all about William Morris’s Palace of Art, Red House in Kent with expert curator and author Tess Wild

Red House in Kent was the only house William Morris ever commissioned and owned. The house stands as the physical embodiment of his exuberant spirit, youthful ambition, romantic medievalism, and great sense of possibility.

For five highly industrious and creatively charged years from 1860–5, it resounded with the ‘jovial campaign’ of decorating and furnishing and creating a garden to meet his emergent taste for rich colour, figurative compositions and complex pattern making.

Recent research has revealed lost wall paintings, tantalising fragments of polychromatic patterns and a wealth of evidence about the furnishings, contents, the overarching theme of the interior schemes and a much richer knowledge of the interrelationship of house and garden.

In this talk, Tessa Wild, independent curator, and writer, will explore the creation of Red House, significant discoveries, and its role as a point of inspiration and testing ground for the founding and first commissions of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (later Morris & Co.).