Product watch: Emery Walker’s House from Morris & Co.

Collaborator, comrade, friend and neighbour – Sir Emery Walker was all these things and more to the now-iconic designer, William Morris. This collection centres on Walker’s abode, 7 Hammersmith Terrace, where a rich variety of original Morris & Co. furnishings still ornament rooms today. Rediscovering designs long out of production and incredible handmade artefacts from the house, this collaboration celebrates 7 Hammersmith Terrace as one of the last great vestiges of the Arts & Crafts movement.

Recognising the loving and creative relationship between the families of William Morris and Sir Emery Walker, the collection offers something fresh and reawakened for every lover of interiors. With one of the highest numbers of new and re-introduced Morris & Co. designs of any collection this century, this release marks a moment to be celebrated by William Morris fans across the world. Every measure has been taken to maintain the high craft standards first established by William Morris, with hand-finished touches along with the highest standard of woven and printed qualities. Where designs reference those in Emery Walker’s House, the original colourway is usually offered.

A new addition to the Morris & Co. range, Emery’s Willow features unmistakable bubble-like shapes as a backdrop, introducing an element of play to this 1874 design. The willow tree, with its delicately entwining branches and curling leaves, is a motif William Morris returned to throughout his creative life.

In the bedroom of Emery Walker’s House lies a most incredible object, now interpreted by the Morris & Co. design studio; a crewel embroidered coverlet. Created by May Morris, daughter of William Morris, for Emery’s wife, Mary, during the last bedridden years of her life, it exemplifies May’s astonishing needlework abilities. The May’s Coverlet addition to the collection is made using hand-guided embroidery on a 100 per cent linen base cloth to carefully replicate the fine stitching pattern by May Morris.

Image credit: Sanderson Design Group

The final bloom in the Morris bouquet, Rambling Rose depicts that iconic stalwart of forest walks and cottage gardens alike, the English rose. Climbing, twisting and turning, this thorned rose’s beguiling labyrinthine structure betrays the rose’s symbolisation of earthly love and purity. A rarer feature in his wallpapers, the rose was a motif William Morris repeatedly turned to in tapestry as well as in poetry.

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Main image credit: Sanderson Design Group