May Morris was one of the most influential women in 20th-century art history, and I’m willing to bet that you’ve never even heard her name.
So let’s talk about her.
Because once you learn more about her skill in business and the career she built for herself…. You’ll want to copy it.
The Arts and Crafts Movement is famous, in part, because of her.
In the late 1800s, a designer named William Morris started a movement.
He believed that everyday objects, things like wallpaper and furniture and textiles, should be beautiful. That the mass-production of the Industrial Revolution was leading to a decline in true beauty and craftsmanship, that the goods factories were churning out were soulless, cheap, and exploitative.
It caught on.
The Arts and Crafts movement became one of the most influential design philosophies in history. I might even argue that we’re seeing it come back even stronger now, especially with AI.
And so on the back of the Arts and Crafts movement’s popularity, William Morris became a household name.
His daughter May did not.
But by 23, she was running his entire embroidery department. She’d lead it for an entire decade, and then go on to accomplish something that would be genuinely hard to pull off even today:
May Morris built a massive and multi-faceted creative business. From scratch.
She sold her own work, exhibited in galleries, did commissions, published books and magazine articles, taught at art schools around the country, and even gave lectures internationally.
She lobbied for better labor rights for factory workers and craftspeople.
And, when she noticed there were no professional organizations that allowed women, she built one herself.
In 1907.
So why has history largely overlooked such a remarkable woman?
Despite all of May Morris’s talent, many of her designs were incorrectly attributed to her father.
“I’m a remarkable woman – always was, though none of you ever seemed to think so.”
That’s May Morris, two years before her death in 1938.
The misattributed designs include the honeysuckle wallpaper I shared earlier (which also, for anyone curious, can be found in child-labor-activist Jane Addams’ bedroom at the Hull House in Chicago).
Even after she left the family company, and May Morris’s long list of professional achievements grew larger and larger, she had to constantly fight against the oppressive and patriarchal attitudes towards women held by society in the period.
Toward the end of her life, May increasingly devoted herself to her father’s legacy rather than her own, publishing a massive 24-volume collection of his work. A part of why William Morris is so famous and well known, even today, is because of her.
Whenever I learn about a figure like May Morris, I become even more grateful to live in our current era.
Obviously, as a woman, pitching me on living in just about any other era of history would be a pretty tough sell. Being able to shape my own life, have my own money, choose who I marry (or whether I marry at all), is just a pretty sweet deal.
And I think the same of our opportunities in business, too.
Does posting on social media kinda suck?
Of course.
But does that make it any less true that this is STILL the best period EVER in the history of humanity to try and make a career as an independent artist?
No.
In so many ways, May Morris had a career most creatives could only ever dream of having.
She didn’t just make and sell her own work.
No no no. May was an absolute genius at diversifying her revenue.
She sold embroidery kits, took commissions, published books, taught at art schools, and lectured all over the world.
She was a fucking badass, guys.
And she did ALL of that as a woman in the late 19th and early 20th century. Before women could have their own bank accounts or even vote.
If she could achieve all of that then, what could you achieve now, with all of the resources we have available?
Seriously.
Think about what you have:
- A phone with a camera small enough to live in your pocket
- The internet, which gives you the ability to post on a platform that broadcasts your work to the entire world. For free.
- And a payment system that lets a stranger from across the world send you money. In seconds.
I just want to acknowledge that you have a lot more going for you than you might think.
All my love,
