Crafts Magazine August 1996
The wallpaper artist Katherine Morris knows she should have set up in business ten years ago. However, in her own words, "I lost my way and went into architecture". Today, printing delightful two-colour papers from her Covent Garden living room, she is safely back on track.
"I did an art foundation at Camberwell where I specialised in print-making and lino cutting," she remembers. "I should have carried on, but both my parents were architects, so I thought that was the way to earn a proper living." Ironically it was her father who provided her with an important link with craft history. "He taught at the Architectural Association and Peggy Angus's son-in-law was one of his students."
A gifted painter and tile designer, Peggy Angus's hand-printed wallpapers are arguably her greatest contribution to 20th-century decorative arts. Morris's father became a close family friend. She remembers, "We used to go to Peggy's cottage near the Sussex Downs. She was wonderful, very lively and often quite formidable. Hers was the William Morris brand of socialism - you want other people to have confidence in their own creativity."
Morris was struggling to train as an architect and bring up a young son, so it was arranged that she would help Angus at her Camden studio. "I printed up quite a few of her wallpaper commissions - for about £1 an hour! - and spent many inspirational hours listening to her views on artistic patronage."
After qualifying, Morris practised as an architect for five years, but became increasingly disillusioned. "So little seemed directly creative and I began to realise I was more interested in pure applied arts." At the end of the recession-hit eighties, over a third of architects were made redundant, For Morris it was a golden opportunity. "Peggy had just died and I felt that I could carry on a tradition - her tradition."
Using lino block and household emulsion, she began producing her own designs. Her two-tone papers - which range from abstracts such as Knotwork Panel to the classic English whimsy of Strawberry and Bramble - have a pleasing freshness and bite. Her cats are feral rather than sentimental, her squirrels red in tooth and claw.
She places integrity of image above a design signature. "Anything you look for - rose, plant or animal - has its own particular style and character. When I was doing the Scots Thistle paper, I looked at different ways the plant had been stylised. Rather than going for an exact replica, I amalgamated all the designs. I wanted an upright, prickly plant, not the kitsch emblem you get on shortbread tins."
Like Angus, Morris's designs are rooted in both the natural world and visual arts of the British Isles - from Celtic pattern, to medieval heraldry, to early herbals. All her plant and animal designs are meticulously researched. "The best hand-printed wallpapers have a true-to-nature feel, even if the drawings are stylised. Just look at William Morris's vines or acanthus leaves."
It can take her a whole day to cut a mould. Her blocks are always 28cm sq (half the width of the lining paper), as she finds this the best method for printing manually. Patterns can be relief or intaglio and background and foreground tones can be switched for variety. Her architectural training has helped, "It's the discipline of doing measured drawing - you're very aware of symmetry." Working with Dulux's vast range of emulsion paints, she can offer virtually any colour. "My paints are specially mixed by computer, because accuracy is so important for tone-on-tone design."
Katherine Morris is keen not to claim William Morris or Peggy Angus's talent for herself. William Morris's papers were so beautifully and perfectly registered. I'm happy to check my patterns by eye; any minor imperfections give that extra hand-made carm. In terms of means and level of production, what I'm doing is very different, but, yes, I do have the same basic philosophy."
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