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William Morris (1834-1896), a versatile and talented craftsman, designer, artist, poet, novelist, and printer, drew on the past to create what he hoped would be a better future. Combining business acumen with extraordinary creativity, he inaugurated enterprises that set the standards for design and workmanship in the production of fabrics, wallpaper, carpets, stained glass, and books. Drawing inspiration from a wide variety of historical sources, Morris designed objects that revived motifs, materials, and techniques long in disuse in the highly industrialized world of Victorian England.
The Sanford and Helen Berger collection of William Morris includes extensive archives of Morris and Company, hereinafter referred to as Morris & Co. The Bergers acquired the archive, including designs, finished objects, samples, tools, photographs, and business records, from the descendants of John Henry Dearle, Morris' successor, in 1968. The Huntington acquired the Berger collection in 1999. The collection – one of the world's premier assemblages of 19th-century Arts and Crafts material – consists of stained glass, furniture, ceramics, artwork, textiles, manuscripts and correspondence, and printed books. Subjects represented in the archive include 19th and 20th-century British Pre-Raphaelites, fine printing, architects, illustrators, the Arts and Crafts movement, and private presses – Morris' Kelmscott Press, and Emery Walker and T.J. Cobden-Sanderson's Doves Press. The Berger collection complemented Morris material already held by The Huntington, including many Kelmscott Press publications and more than 2,000 literary manuscripts, documents, and letters by Morris and members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
The Huntington's Morris collections are housed in both the Library and the Art Museum. While the Art Museum stewards the Arts and Crafts objects, the Library stewards the manuscripts, correspondence, and papers of William Morris, along with the books produced by the Kelmscott Press and related ephemera.