William De Morgan
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William de Morgan (1839 - 1917) was Britain's most talented pottery and tile designer. A life-long friend of William Morris, he designed tiles, stained glass and furniture for Morris & Co.from 1863 - 1872. His tiles are often based on medieval designs or Persian patterns, and he experimented with innovative glazes and firing techniques. Galleons and fish were popular motifs, as were "fantastical" birds and other animals. Many of de Morgan's tile designs were planned to create intricate patterns when several tiles were laid together. Recollections of Willian De Morgan praise him both for his personal warmth and the indomitable energy with which he pursued his kaleidescopic career as designer, potter, inventor and novelist.
Born in 1839 in Chester, the son of a mathematician and his highly educated wife, de Morgan was always supported in his desire to become an artist. At the age of twenty he entered the Royal Academy schools, but he was swiftly disillusioned with the establishment; then he met Morris, and through him the Pre-Raphaelite circle. Soon de Morgan began experimenting with stained glass, ventured into pottery in 1863, and by 1872 had shifted his interest wholly to ceramics.
In 1872 de Morgan set up a pottery works in Chelsea where he stayed through 1881 -- his most fruitful decade as an art potter. The arts and crafts ideology he was exposed to through Morris' close friendship, and his own insistent curiousity, led de Morgan to begin to explore every technical aspect of his craft. He soon rejected the use of blank commercial tiles, preferring to make his own biscuit, which he admired for its irregularities and better resistance to moisture. That streak of inventiveness led him to spend hours designing a new duplex bicycle gear and also lured him into complex studies of the chemistry of glazes, methods of firing, and pattern transfer.
De Morgan was particularly drawn to Eastern tiles. Around 1873 - 1874 he made a striking breakthrough by rediscovering the technique of lustre ware (characterized by a reflective, metallic surface) found in Hispano-Moresque pottery and Italian majolica. Nor was his interest in the East limited to glazing techniques, but it permeated his notions of design and color, as well. As early as 1875, he began to work in earnest with a "Persian" palette: dark blue, turquoise, manganese purple, green, Indian red, and lemon yellow, Study of the motifs of what he refer to as "Persian" ware (and we know today as fifteenth-and-sixteenth century Isnik ware), profoundly influenced his unmistakeable style, in which fantastic creatures eatwined with rhythmic geometric motifs float under luminous glazes.
Collections of de Morgan's work exist in many museums, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the William Morris Gallery in London, a substantial and representative collection in Birmingham, and a small but well-chosen collection along with much other pottery at Norwich.