Morris spent five, highly industrious and creatively charged years living at Red House. He worked collaboratively to decorate the house with his closest friends including the Pre-Raphaelite artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), Elizabeth Siddal (1829-1862) and Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898). The resulting decorations were inspired by a rich palette of illuminated manuscripts, medieval glass, textiles and wall paintings that were instrumental in Morris’s formation as an artist and designer.
Loss and survival
Today, more than 150 years after the Morrises resided at Red House, the taste of a succession of owners and the ravages of time have left their mark on the interior. Much of the rich colour and texture which were originally such an intrinsic part of its character have been lost.
There are, however, exquisitive survivals, including a series of tempera wall paintings by Edward Burne-Jones as well as newly discovered decorative schemes that had long been obscured from view by later layers of paint and wallpaper.
What did Red House look like during Morris's time there? It now takes a considerable effort of the imagination to visualise the interior of 1860–5. Thanks to letters, recollections, drawings and studies, as well as architectural paint analysis, it has been possible to identify an overarching decorative sceheme envisaged for the principal rooms of the house.
The drawing room: a paean to love
The theme of love in its many different guises is inherent throughout the house. Morris saw his love for his wife Jane mirrored in medieval poetry and he sought to make the drawing room a paean to the constancy of love as expressed in medieval romances.
In the summer of 1860, the William and Jane Morris decorated the ceiling of the drawing room with a repeating pattern of stylised flower heads on wavy stems, set within a frame of horizontal and vertical bands and repeating geometric fanshaped motifs in shades of brown, yellow and red. On the walls were horizontal painted bands of a salmon-orange, a warm blue-green and dark red. Stylised plants with petals of a brighter red, and white and yellow stems and leaves were repeated to give the impression of an embroidered hanging.
It was in this room that Morris's friend and fellow artist Edward Burne-Jones created a series of dazzling wall paintings depicting scenes from the anonymous, 15th-century poem 'Sir Degrevaunt'.
Sir Degrevaunt, an Arthurian romance
Morris and Burne-Jones had developed a mutual passion for 'Sir Degrevaunt' whilst studying at Oxford. In the poem, Sir Degrevaunt is a knight of the Round Table who falls in love with Melidor, the daughter of an Earl with whom Degrevaunt is feuding. Degrevaunt works to win Melidor’s affection; after a series of conflicts and challenges, he is ultimately allowed to marry Melidor in an elaborately described ceremony.
The final verses of this Arthurian romance - the Wedding Ceremony, the Wedding Procession and the Wedding Feast - were painted by Burne-Jones at eye-level in the drawing room.