Pop-Up craft shops are all the rage in Bermondsey these days and there was a buzz and a clamour at the latest variant which opened at Boutcher Primary School for one night only. Parents were eagerly buying up their children’s handiwork in a school hall filled with colourful bags, T shirts, baby grows, greetings cards and gift-wrap. Each product influenced by the work of our foremost Victorian designer, artist, writer, activist, social reformer and big-bearded Essex boy William Morris, writes Henry Raven.
Well over a century has passed since Morris’s bright star went out but his legacy remains undimmed with continuing interest in his detailed, colourful creations inspired by the Essex countryside of his childhood.
Granddaddy of the Arts and Crafts movement, his company Morris & Co. has a connection to Liberty’s department store that remains to this day. Staying on message as ever, Head teacher Eilidh Verhoeven was even sporting a dress from H&M’s recent William Morris collection.
The Morris Pop-Up was the culmination of a term-long collaboration between Boutcher School and local artist and teacher Ed Gray who was very enthusiastic about the success of the project.
‘The pupils have worked so hard,’ he began. ‘We first visited the Morris Gallery in Walthamstow and then sketched natural forms such as leaves and flowers from the parks of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe, which we worked into designs for our products before printing by hand from linocuts… Morris was a wonderful socially-minded man, ahead of his time, a true campaigner for living wages and environmentalism and so I created a project for Boutcher that used Morris’s words and deeds as much as his business acumen.’
Mr. Morris was very much in evidence in the stunning bags and T shirts produced by the children and all emblazoned with slogans picked from Morris’s own statements on nature, beauty, art, life, equality and education.
Year 5 teacher Lorna Clifford revealed, ‘Without question, the project has been a highlight of the term. Children spoke with excitement each week about the new learning and skills they had gained and I was delighted with the overall outcome of the prints they produced.’
In the true sense of equality Kah Lay, a representative from Year 5 Boutcher & Co., has the final words, ‘I most enjoyed the printing stage of the project, as it was so fun seeing your design on a bag. It feels fantastic to use our own bags that we designed.’
The perfect match of utility, beauty and education then – William Morris has certainly left his stamp on Boutcher Primary School.
