'Orange' a design for embroidery by Walter Crane

1875

Item

Medium: gouache/ watercolour/ body-colour on paper
Dimensions:

Crane, Walter (Mr): Walter Crane (15 August 1845-14 March 1915) was a prolific illustrator, designer and painter and part of the Arts and Crafts Movement. He was probably the most influential children’s book illustrator of his generation. As well as painting and illustrating he produced designs for ceramics (for Wedgewood, and nursery tiles for Maw & Co), wallpapers (Jeffry & Co.) as well as embroidery designs for the RSN. Crane’s wife Mary Frances Andrews was an embroiderer and the pair married in 1871, the same year Crane met William Morris who became a close friend. Crane later worked for Morris’s Kelmscott press. Mary Frances and Walter first lived in Rome and were part of the artistic scene there before moving back to Britain where they were both involved in the fashionable Holland Park social scene. Crane joined the Social Democratic Federation in 1884 and the Fabian Society in 1885 and provided a number of illustrations for socialist publications. He was a founding member of the Art Workers Guild and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, of which he was president until 1893, and again from 1896 until 1912, following the death of William Morris. In his autobiography (An Artists Reminiscences, p.164) he writes that as well as being on the advisory committee for the RSN, ‘along with William Morris, George Aitcheson […] and Fairfax Wade’ he contributed many designs 'for screens, panels, and other things, in which I introduced birds (notably peacocks), and other animals, and many of them are still worked I believe.' Although he is not visible in the minutes of the Artists Committee for the School it is probable that he did have a more informal role in advising the school.

'Orange' watercolour and body-colour (gouache) on paper, design for needlework by Walter Crane. The boarder shows the side, corner and bottom left of a design of twining naturalistic oranges and orange blossoms contained within a rust coloured pattern of semicircles and darts. The central section does not seem to be a complete mirror repeat and may be missing a small section where the leaf is cut off. The design is typical of Crane's flowing and elegant design work which helped define the illustrative style of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The forms while naturalistic and lively were flat and stylised enough to be translatable into needlework and had a clarity of line and colour that made them particularly effective in the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetics interiors that the Royal School of Art Needlework supplied furnishings for.

Some of the floral designs in this series were exhibited as part of the Royal School of Art Needlework (Later Royal School of Needlework) stand at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876 and later reproduced in the RSAN's 'Handbook of Needlework' 1880 as 'Designs for Table Borders'. It is likely these were the 'embroidered boarders; one or two composed by no less person than Walter Crane...easily within the compass of almost every woman' that Candace Wheeler (Candace Wheeler Yesterdays in a Busy Life. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1918, p. 212) was inspired by. Wheeler went on to found the Society of Decorative Art, The Woman's Exchange, and Associated Artists in America. This may also be the design used for an item that appears in the catalogue of works brought back from the Philadelphia Centennial and put on sale in 1876 at the schools showroom in South Kensington listed as 'Pair of Curtains. Green diagonal. Boarder of Oranges and Flowers. Designed by W. Crane Esq,' (RSN MS.136.10) The green diagonal probably references the main material used for the curtains.

Crane's simpler floral designs in the Handbook of Embroidery gained more praise from reviewers than his more complex design Elements, The Times described them as 'generally effective and in good tase' as opposed to Elements which were 'less desirable as examples for broad distribution, due to 'satyrs, serpents, peacocks, pomegranates, snails, grapes, toads, and cornucopia [...] fantastically pressed into service for occult decorative purposes'. (The Times, 11 September 1880, p11)

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