William Morris, cultural leadership, and the dynamics of taste

Business History Review

Volumn 85, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 245-271

  Harvey, Charles ^a   Press, Jon ^a   Maclean, Mairi ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79961043873     PISSN: 00076805     EISSN: 2044768X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007680511000377     Document Type: Article

References (140)

1. Jukka Gronow, "Taste and Fashion: The Social Function of Fashion and Style", Acta Sociologica 36(1993):89-100.
2. Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process (Oxford, 1994);
3. Douglas B. Holt, "Does Cultural Capital Structure American Consumption?" Journal of Consumer Research 25(1998):1-25;
4. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (London, 1970; originally published in 1899);
5. Jukka Gronow, The Sociology of Taste (London, 1997), 31-48.
6. Heinz-Dieter Mayer, "Taste Formation in Pluralistic Societies: The Role of Rhetorics and Institutions", International Sociology 15(2000):33-56.
7. Albert M. Muniz and Thomas C. O'Guinn, "Brand Community", Journal of Consumer Research 27(2001):412-32.
8. Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and John H. Plumb, The Birth of Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1982);
9. Thomas Richards, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle, 1851-1914 (Stanford, 1991);
10. Maxine Berg, A Nation of Shoppers: How Georgian Britain Discovered the Delights of Luxury (Oxford, 2005);
11. John Brewer and Frank Trentmann eds., Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges (Oxford, 2006).
12. Frank Trentmann, ed., The Making of the Consumer: Knowledge, Power and Identity in the Modern World (Oxford, 2006), 1-27;
13. Frank Trentmann, "The Modern Genealogy of the Consumer: Meanings, Identities and Political Synapses", in Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges, ed. John Brewer and Frank Trentmann (Oxford, 2006), 19-69.
14. Charles Harvey and Jon Press, "The Marketing of Art", Business History 28(1986):36-54;
15. Charles Harvey and Jon Press, William Morris: Design and Enterprise in Victorian Britain (Manchester, 1991);
16. Charles Harvey and Jon Press, "John Ruskin and the Ethical Foundations of Morris & Company", Journal of Business Ethics 14(1995):181-94;
17. Charles Harvey and Jon Press, Art, Enterprise and Ethics: Essays on the Life and Work of William Morris (London, 1996).
18. Charlotte Gere and Michael Whiteway, Nineteenth Century Design: From Pugin to Mackintosh (London, 1993);
19. Kathleen A. Lochnan, Douglas E. Schoenherr, and Carole Silver, eds., The Earthly Paradise (Toronto, 1993);
20. Fiona MacCarthy, William Morris: A Life for Our Time (London, 1994);
21. Victorian & Albert Museum, William Morris, 1834-1896 (London, 1996).
22. Gillian Naylor, The Arts and Crafts Movement: A Study of Its Sources, Ideals and Influence on Design Theory (Cambridge, Mass., 1980);
23. Peter Stansky, Redesigning the World: William Morris, the 1880s and the Arts and Crafts (Princeton, N. J., 1985);
24. Elizabeth dimming and Wendy Kaplan, The Arts and Crafts Movement (London, 1991).
25. Kurt Wolff, ed., The Sociology of Georg Simmel (New York, 1950);
26. Veblen, Leisure Class;
27. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London, 1984).
28. On the relation of Romanticism to consumption, see Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Oxford, 1987);
29. Morris B. Holbrook, "Romanticism and Sentimentality in Consumer Behavior: A Literary Approach to the Joys and Sorrows of Consumption", Research in Consumer Behavior 5(1991):105-80;
30. "Romanticism, Introspection and the Roots of Experiential Consumption: Morris the Epicurean", in Consumption and Marketing: Macro Dimensions, ed. Russell W. Belk, Nikhilesh Dholakia, and Alladi Venkatest (Cincinnati, Oh., 1995), 20-82.
31. Ben Fine, "Addressing the Consumer", in The Making of the Consumer: Knowledge, Power and Identity in the Modern World, ed. Frank Trentmann (Oxford, 2006), 291-311.
32. Bourdieu, Distinction, 97-256;
33. David Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago, 1997), 117-88.
34. Pierre Bourdieu, The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power (Oxford, 1996), 261-339;
35. Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (Oxford, 1996), 47-112.
36. Bonnie H. Erickson, "What Is Good Taste Good For?" Canadian Review of Anthropology and Sociology 28(1991):256.
37. Margaret M. Bubolz, "Family as Source, User and Builder of Social Capital", Journal of Socio-Economics 30(2001):129-31.
38. l7 Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (Oxford, 1993), 74-141.
39. Douglas E. Allen and Paul F. Anderson, "Consumption and Social Stratification: Bourdieu's Distinction", Advances in Consumer Research 21(1994):70-74.
40. Bourdieu, Distinction, 170;
41. Pierre Bourdieu, "On the Family as a Realized Category", Theory, Culture and Society 13(1996):26.
42. Bourdieu, Distinction, 171.
43. David Chaney, Lifestyles (London, 1996), 56-70.
44. Bourdieu, Distinction, 1-8, 257-396.
45. Wolff, ed., The Sociology of Georg Simmel; Vance Packard, The Status Seekers: An Exploration of Class Behaviour in America (London, 1960);
46. Veblen, Leisure Class.
47. Georg Simmel, "Fashion", International Quarterly 10(1904):137.
48. Brian S. Turner and June Edmunds, "The Distaste of Taste: Bourdieu, Cultural Capital and the Australian Postwar Elite", Journal of Consumer Culture 2(2002):231.
49. Bourdieu, Distinction, 226-56;
50. Bourdieu, Rules of Art, 141-73.
51. Bourdieu, Cultural Production, 259-66.
52. Gilles Deleuze, Difference et Répétition (Paris, 1969, 2nd ed. 1972), 7.
53. Grant McCracken, "Culture and Consumption: A Theoretical Account of the Structure and Movement of the Cultural Meaning of Goods", Journal of Consumer Research 13(1986):71-84;
54. Robert Batchelor, "On the Movement of Porcelains: Rethinking the Birth of Consumer Society as Interactions of Exchange Networks, 1600-1750", in Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges, ed. John Brewer and Frank Trentmann (Oxford, 2006), 95-121.
55. Peter Faulkner, Against the Age: An Introduction to William Morris (London, 1980).
56. Campbell, Romantic Ethic, 173-201.
57. Harvey and Press, William Morris, 38-42.
58. The Church of England alone spent more than £25 million between 1840 and 1874. U. K. Parliament, House of Commons Papers, Return Showing the Number of Churches (including Cathedrals) in Every Diocese in England, which had been Built or Restored at a Cost Exceeding £500 since the Year 1840 (London, 1876, vol. 58), 553-658;
59. F. Warre Cornish, The English Church in the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. (London, 1910), 1:110-17;
60. Basil Fulford Lowther Clarke, Church Builders of the Nineteenth Century: A Study of the Gothic Revival in England (London, 1939), 24-30;
61. @ Christopher Brooks and Andrew Saint, eds., The Victorian Church: Architecture and Society (Manchester, 1995). Nonconformists also invested extensively in building and restoration, and so did the Roman Catholic Church as it moved from emancipation to the reestablishment of an episcopal hierarchy:
62. James Cubitt, A Popular Handbook of Nonconformist Church Building (London, 1892);
63. Brian D. Little, Catholic Churches since 1623: A Study of Roman Catholic Churches in England and Wales from Penal Times to the Present Day (London, 1966);
64. Edward R. Norman, The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1984).
65. In all, the number of residential properties in England and Wales almost doubled between 1851 and 1901, from 3, 432, 000 to 6, 710, 000. Brian Mitchell and Phyllis Deane, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, U. K., 1971), 6, 239;
66. Christopher G. Powell, An Economic History of the British Building Industry, 1815-1979 (London, 1980);
67. Geoffrey Best, Mid-Victorian Britain, 1851-75 (London, 1971);
68. F. Michael L. Thompson, The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain, 1830-1900 (London, 1988), 166-96;
69. Roderick Floud, The People and the British Economy, 1830-1914 (Oxford, 1997), 59-61.
70. Richards, Commodity Culture, 17-72.
71. We estimate that by the 1870s there were between 4, 000 and 5, 000 country houses associated with large estates: Richard G. Wilson and Alan L. Mackley, "How Much did the English Country House Cost to Build, 1660-1880?" Economic History Review 52(1999):436-68;
72. Richard G. Wilson and Alan L. Mackley, Creating Paradise: The Building of the English Country House, 1160-1880 (London, 2000);
73. Thompson, Respectable Society, 152-63;
74. Jill Franklin, The Gentleman's Country House and its Plan, 1835-1914 (London, 1981), 1, 24-38.
75. This statement was made when giving evidence before the British Royal Commission on Technical Instruction, which reported in 1884. In answer to a question on the commercial importance of design, Morris replied that "beauty is a marketable quality, and... the better the work is all round, both as a work of art and in its technique, the more likely it is to find favour with the public." Parliamentary Papers, C3981, Second Report of the Royal Commissioners on Technical Instruction, Q1580 (London, 1884, vol. 3).
76. On family and social networking and its importance in American business history, see Pamela Walker Laird, Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), 44-48 and 81-85.
77. Papers relating to the redecoration of St. James's Palace, 1866, WORK 19/129, U. K. Public Record Office; James Edgar Sheppard, Memorials of St. James's Palace (London, 1894), 126, 370;
78. Charles Mitchell, "William Morris at St. James's Palace", Architectural Review 42(1947):37-39;
79. John Y. Le Bourgeois, "Morris & Company at St. James's Palace: A Sequel", Journal of the William Morris Society 3(1974):8.
80. Georgiana Mount-Temple, Memorials [of William Francis Cowper-Temple, Baron Mount-Temple] (London, 1890), 64-65.
81. Erickson, "What Is Good Taste Good For?" 255-78.
82. Diary of Rosalind Howard, J23/102/12, Castle Howard Archives, Yorkshire; Morris & Co. business papers, box isa/15b, William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow, London; Richard William Lethaby, Philip Webb and His Work (London, 1935), 88-89;
83. May Morris, William Morris: Artist, Designer, Socialist (Oxford, 1936), 57;
84. Linda Parry, William Morris Textiles (London, 1983), 137;
85. Victoria Surtees, The Artist and the Autocrat: George and Rosalind Howard, Earl and Countess of Carlisle (Wilton, 1988), 89;
86. Caroline Dakers, Clouds: The Biography of a House (New Haven, Conn., 1993), 43-44.
87. Jane Abdy and Christine Gere, The Souls (London, 1984), 82-101.
88. Mark Girouard, The Victorian Country House (New Haven, Conn., 1979), 80-81;
89. Dakers, Clouds, 63-64.
90. Morris & Co. business papers, box isa/15b, William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow, London; Lethaby, Philip Webb, 93-95;
91. Morris, William Morris, 58-59;
92. Diana Hopkinson, "A Passion for Building: The Barings at Membland", Country Life 29(1982):1736-40;
93. Parry, William Morris Textiles, 137-38;
94. Jan Reynolds, Birket Foster (London, 1984), 84-96;
95. Richard and Hilary Myers, William Morris Tiles: Tile Designs of Morris and his Fellow-Workers (Shepton Beauchamp, U. K., 1996), 27-32.
96. Mrs. Russell Barrington, Life of Walter Bagehot (London, 1914), 412.
97. Bourdieu, Distinction, 230-32.
98. Bourdieu, Cultural Production, 74-111;
99. Bourdieu, Rules of Art, 166-73.
100. On social identity and consumption, see Daniel Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Oxford, 1987). On emotional satisfactions
101. see Morris B. Holbrook and Elizabeth C. Hirschman, The Experiential Aspects of Consumption: Consumer Fantasies, Feelings and Fun", Journal of Consumer Research 9(1982):132-40.
102. Bourdieu, Distinction, 6.
103. Walter Bagehot to Eliza Bagehot, 20 Nov. 1872, in The Collected Works of Walter Bagehot, vol. 13: Letters, ed. Norman St. John Stevas (London, 1986), 640. For an original discussion of consuming as play
104. see Douglas B. Holt, "How Consumers Consume: A Typology of Consumption Practices", Journal of Consumer Research 22(1995):1-16.
105. Sir Arthur H. Hardinge, The Life of Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, 1831-1890, vol. 2 (London, 1925), 323-24.
106. 57' Paul J. DiMaggio, "Classification in Art", American Sociological Review 52(1987):443-46.
107. Erickson, "What is Good Taste Good For?" 275-76.
108. Craig Calhoun and LoTc Wacquant, "Social Science with a Conscience: Remembering Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)", Thesis Eleven 70(2002):7.
109. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge, U. K., 1990), 208.
110. Emma Lazarus, "A Day in Surrey with William Morris", Century Magazine 32(1886):390-94;
111. Henry Demarest Lloyd, "A Day with William Morris", in Mazzini and Other Essays, ed. Henry Demarest Lloyd (New York, 1910), 42-70.
112. Norman Kelvin, The Collected Letters of William Morris, vol. 2:1881-1884 (Princeton, N. J., 1987), 229.
113. George Wardle, The Morris Exhibit at the Foreign Fair (Boston, Mass., 1883), 20-21;
114. Harvey and Press, Art, Enterprise and Ethics, 132.
115. Edward P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (London, 1977).
116. William Morris, Hopes and Fears for Art (London, 1882). The volume has been reprinted on numerous occasions down to the present. It contains five essays: "The Lesser Arts", "The Art of the People", The Beauty of Life", "Making the Best of It", and The Prospects of Architecture in Civilization. " Each contributes to Morris's internationally and enduringly influential philosophy of the decorative arts.
117. Rhoda and Agnes Garrett, Suggestions for Home Decoration in Painting, Woodwork and Furniture (London, 1876), 7-8.
118. Lucy F. Orrinsmith, The Drawing Room (London, 1877), 1.
119. Adrian Forty, Objects of Desire: Design and Society, 1750-1980 (London, 1986), 111-12.
120. Moncure Conway, Travels in South Kensington (London, 1882), 199-210.
121. Charles Harvey and Jon Press, "The Ionides Family and 1 Holland Park", Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 18(1994):2-14. Lemere's photographs can be found in London in the collections of the National Monuments Record and the Victoria & Albert Museum. References to the Morris business were by no means confined to treatises on interior design, or to British publications. George du Maurier and Linley Sambourne satirized Morris interiors in Punch, but were themselves clients of the firm. The "Morris look" was entering into contemporary novels: one of the earliest was a sentimental American novel of 1872, Annie Hall Thomas's Maud Mahon, in which one of the characters advised a friend to "make your walls artistic without the aid of pictures" by turning to "Morris Papers."
122. Faulkner, Against the Age, 73. Enthusiastic endorsements also appeared in more serious American works like Harriet Prescott Spofford's Art Decoration Applied to Furniture (New York, 1877), 147.
123. Andrew B. Trigg, "Veblen, Bourdieu, and Conspicuous Consumption", Journal of Economic Issues 35(2001):113.
124. Paul J. DiMaggio, "Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth Century Boston, Part 1: The Creation of an Organizational Base for High Culture in America", Media, Culture and Society 4(1982):33-50;
125. Paul J. DiMaggio, "Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth Century Boston, Part 2: The Classification and Framing of American Art", Media, Culture and Society 4(1982):303-22.
126. Wendy Kaplan and Alan Crawford, The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America: Design for the Modern World, 1880-1920 (London, 2004).
127. Naylor, Arts and Crafts Movement; Stansky, Redesigning the World; dimming and Kaplan, Arts and Crafts Movement.
128. Stuart MacDonald, The History and Philosophy of Art Education (London, 1970), 292-93;
129. Godfrey Rubens, William Richard Lethaby: His Life and Work, 1857-1931 (London, 1986), 173-198.
130. Ray Watkinson, William Morris as Designer (London, 1967), 75.
131. Bourdieu, "On the Family", 285-312.
132. Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Cambridge, U. K., 1984), 16-28;
133. Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields", American Sociological Review 48(1983):47-60;
134. DiMaggio, "Classification in Art."
135. Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of Modem Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius, revised ed. (London, 2005), 12-57.
136. David Chaney, Lifestyles (London, 1996): 155-57.
137. Our argument is consistent with that of Colin Campbell, "Conspicuous Confusion? A Critique of Veblen's Theory of Conspicuous Consumption", Sociological Theory 13(1995):37-47.
138. This echoes the observations made with respect to Parisian fashion by Herbert Blumer, "Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Collective Selection", Sociological Quarterly 10(1969):275-91.
139. The erosion of personal agency in cultural theory is held by some to be at its most pronounced in the work of Pierre Bourdieu; see David Gartman, "Culture as Class Symbolization or Mass Reification? A Critique of Bourdieu's Distinction", American Journal of Sociology 97(1991):421-27
140. Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design, 12-33.