The ancient county of Kent in Wessex (the central part of England) is rich in historical monuments. There are many places that attract the attention of tourists. But "Red House" door William Morris- a real Mecca for traveling aesthetes. He, like no other building in England, embodied the spiritual and artistic quest of the "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood" - an association of masters of the brush, which stood at the origins of Art Nouveau.

When Morris passed away, the attending physician was asked about the cause of death. "One man cannot do the work of ten," he replied. Morris has worked throughout his life in a wide variety of fields. Now it is difficult to imagine a book on the history of English public thought, literature, painting, architecture, applied arts and book publishing, which would not mention the name of Morris. With the versatility of his interests, he resembled the people of the Renaissance.

A nobleman by birth, Morris loved manual labor and considered it as the highest degree of pleasure for a creative person. He did not distinguish between mental and physical work, weaving carpets, carving wood, making paint himself, designing furniture, putting a lot of ingenuity and taste into everything. Unusual warmth and energy emanate from the works of his hands. Birds of paradise, tropical fruits, exotic trees and flowers - in the drawings on the fabric, the master embodied the images of an ideal garden city. It was this upholstery with large juicy lemons that adorned Winston Churchill's favorite chair. The Prime Minister did not part with Morris's masterpiece even during trips across the ocean and considered him his talisman.

"I would not want to leave this world," Morris said shortly before his death. "He met me surprisingly cordially." It was true. William was born in 1834 into the family of a prosperous businessman. He learned to read very early and studied at school without difficulty, and at his leisure "swallowed" the novels of Walter Scott or rode in toy armor through the forest adjoining the house, on a pony donated by his parents. Subsequently, Morris became England's foremost expert on medieval manuscripts and a great connoisseur of the art of that era.

At the age of 19, William entered the university and plunged headlong into the turbulent atmosphere of scientific, artistic and social controversy. The unrest of the Chartists has just died down. The well-fed, self-satisfied, calm world of Victorian England seemed unshakable. This sanctimonious, puritanical, prim period of the triumph of the bourgeoisie was recalled without sympathy by many people of art. "Bourgeois, all around, only bourgeois with their glorification arrived, with their faith in their own infallibility, with their tastes in literature, art, architecture ..." - Morris would later write.

Young William considered himself obliged to fight against the manifestations of the bourgeoisie. He suffocated in the realm of bad taste. He was disgusted by talk about the benefits and benefits. At first, the student was attracted by the so-called Oxford movement, which was initiated back in the 30s. 19th century was the theologian John Henry Newman. The beauty and spirituality of Catholic rites seemed to the supporters of this movement a way to free themselves from the principle of selfish interest that dominated bourgeois society. At one time, Morris was even going to donate all his money to the foundation of the monastery. However, the fascination with Anglo-Catholicism soon faded. He increasingly felt like a man of art.

Morris' university friend Edward Burne-Jones had already decided to become an artist. And William himself discovered his poetic talent and became interested in the history of architecture. He and Burne-Jones now dreamed of founding a kind of brotherhood in the medieval manner and starting a "crusade" against society. This "crusade" was conceived by the young men as a struggle for the purity of religion and art. At the same time, Morris became interested in the "feudal socialism" of Thomas Carlyle, a popular historian and publicist in those years, who cleverly and evilly criticized the system of concepts of the English bourgeois and called for a return to the medieval organization of society.

The panacea for all troubles seemed to Morris art, capable of turning a person’s thoughts to the pre-bourgeois past. Medievalism - a return to the Middle Ages - had many supporters in 19th century England. He paid tribute to the young Disraeli, later Prime Minister of England. Medievalism was based on the theories of the largest art critic of that time, John Ruskin, who helped shape the aesthetic ideals of Morris. The hopes of the aristocrats to regain their position lost after the industrial revolution and the anti-bourgeois attitude of the democratic intelligentsia often flowed into the single mainstream of medievalism in those years.

It was not difficult for Morris to find a circle of like-minded people, reminiscent of a brotherhood of defenders of beauty and spirituality. A similar circle existed since 1848 and was called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It was an association of young artists that laid the foundation for many modernist currents in Europe. Passions did not subside around the creativity of its members. Ruskin ardently supported the Pre-Raphaelites, while the academics did not stop their attacks. Morris also decided to come out in defense of Pre-Raphaelism, and for this purpose he published for some time at his own expense a small "Oxford and Cambridge Journal". Then he himself joined the brotherhood.

The young Pre-Raphaelite artists were a little mystic, a little bohemian. At one time, most members of the circle were fond of one or another radical current, but rather soon they moved away and devoted themselves to the creation of non-academic, i.e., "non-bourgeois" art and the development of their own ideal of beauty, echoing the Middle Ages. Morris entered a kind of obedience to the head of this circle - the artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He dreamed of painting like Rossetti, living like Rossetti.

Morris's fascination with the aesthetic principles of Rossetti extended to the point that in 1859 he married his model Jane Barden, in whom, according to the general opinion of the members of the circle, the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of beauty was embodied.

Returning from their honeymoon, Morris and his friend, the architect Philip Speakman Webb, built a house in the town of Elton in Kent, which he gave the name "Red House" because of the color of the unlined brick walls and tiles. Not only the color of the house, but also the very manner of construction carried a protest against the generally accepted opinion in those years that the walls must be necessarily plastered and the roof covered with slate.

There are buildings famous for their unique architectural solutions. The names of great architects brought fame to others. "Red House" is a cast from the unique personality of its owner: the artist, poet, socialist and public figure William Morris, whose extraordinary creative energy would be enough for a dozen painters and artisans.

For five years, the owner and his friends decorated the interiors of the house. Furniture, carpets, curtains, stained-glass windows, bedspreads... Rossetti painted a triptych for Morris's office on the themes of Dante Alighieri's poems. The new approach to the home and its furnishings aroused great interest, first in the art world, and then among the wealthy inhabitants. It was in the Red House that Morris organized a workshop for the manufacture of decorative and applied arts. This association was called "Art and Craft" - "Art and Craft".

Morris and Webb create "new" from a well-forgotten old - a medieval English fortress house instead of a neat Victorian cottage on the lawn. Everything in it - from doors to dishes - is made by the hands of the owner and his like-minded friends. The L-shaped house was exceptionally comfortable for living, functional, as they say now. Depending on the purpose of the rooms, the windows had different shapes: long rectangular, small square and even round. Some of them had stained-glass windows. Ivy climbed the walls and climbed up to the ridge of the roof. A spire with a weather vane crowned a square turret with a hipped roof protruding from the general volume. There was a village well in the yard.

In 1865, in collaboration with other Pre-Raphaelites, he opened the firm "Morris and K." for the production of furniture and home decoration items, which was designed to change the tastes of the public. For the first two years, the firm had almost no clientele, and Morris had to content himself with decorating churches. However, since 1867, furniture, wallpaper, draperies, tapestries and other items produced by the company began to be in great demand. Morris style came into vogue. The struggle for "non-bourgeois" art brought unexpected results. The bourgeois enthusiastically bought up the products of the company, remaining, of course, the same bourgeois. But people who were not very wealthy could not afford these items.

Designing furniture, Morris focused on simple shapes. Just look at the oak table from the Red House. Its design is credited to Philip Webb and George Jack and dated to 1880-1890. Also very interesting is the black chair with a wicker seat, which was intended for people with the most modest income. The shape of this chair shows the influence of 18th century rustic furniture design. It was in the rustic interior, in the dwellings of workers and artisans, that Morris looked for the design motives that inspired him, devoid of pretentiousness, but possessing clarity of form. The rocking chair from the "Red House" is a typical example of the furniture of the so-called Quakers - a sect of Protestants who emigrated from England to the USA in 1774.

It would seem that, having become a successful businessman, Morris had to abandon socialist hobbies. However, the opposite happened. How many people of art, starting with a rebellion against the bourgeoisie, achieve recognition and part with the ideals of youth. Morris took his firm's success almost as a personal defeat. He gravitated more and more to ideas about changing the very public system. In the 70s. 19th century England is shaken by economic crises one after another. During these years, Morris gets acquainted with Marx's "Capital" and enthusiastically accepts the book, although he cannot overcome the economic part. When the Social Democratic Federation was created at the very beginning of 1883, the artist immediately became a member of it. However, he considered calls for an immediate revolution to be irresponsible. As a man of action, Morris is torn between bustling London and Red House in Kent.

Morris and "Art and Craft" are considered to be the forerunners of modernity and even constructivism. Morris style that replaced glitter Victorian era, preached the unity of the creative intelligentsia and the working masses, the rejection of the use of colonial raw materials and a return to their own, traditional sources of inspiration. Natural colors, soft natural colors, true English restraint and taste - that's what distinguishes the creations of Morris. He himself at the loom embodied his design solutions. Morris strove to follow the principle of the equivalence of the pattern and the background, which later passed into the Art Nouveau ornament. "Do not have anything in your house that would not be useful to you or would not seem beautiful" - that was the motto of the artist. Visitors poured into the "Red House" in a crowd. Charles Dickens also visited here, with whom the owner became friends. Morris went out to customers in a dirty apron, with paint-stained hands. He looked unusually colorful - short, very strong and broad-shouldered, unshaven, with long flowing hair.

Demand for the products of the Morris workshop pushes the artist to open a factory. It lasted until the end of the First World War, outliving the owner, who died in 1896. The fierce post-war competition led to the fact that the production was absorbed by the largest British company, Sanderson and Sons. True, by this time products in the style of Morrison had already won fame, and production in the traditions of "Art and Craft" was preserved.