Who Was William De Morgan?
William Frend De Morgan (1839-1917) was an English ceramic artist, tile designer, painter, novelist, and lifelong friend of William Morris and, in the V&A's words, "one of the most important and exciting artists of the 19th century". De Morgan was born in London on November 16, 1839, and died in London on January 15, 1917, age 77. He was the son of the mathematician Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871, who served as professor of mathematics at University College London and is famous for "De Morgan's Laws" in mathematical logic) and Sophia Elizabeth Frend (a social reformer and spiritualist). He attended the Royal Academy schools of fine art from 1859 and met William Morris around 1863, becoming a lifelong friend and creative collaborator. De Morgan is best known for his revival of Islamic-style lustre glazes on ceramic tiles and vessels (with characteristic bright colors and decorative animal and floral motifs), for his designs for William Morris's firm (he designed stained glass and furniture for the firm in the 1860s), for his Chelsea, Merton Abbey, and Sands End potteries, and for his later second career as a novelist after retiring from pottery in 1907. His wife Evelyn De Morgan (born Evelyn Pickering, 1855-1919) was a major Pre-Raphaelite painter.
William De Morgan. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
This guide covers who William De Morgan was, his early life and art training, his work with William Morris and Morris's firm, his ceramic pottery and tile work, his marriage to Evelyn Pickering, his later second career as a novelist, and his lasting influence on the Arts and Crafts Movement.
Who was William De Morgan?
William De Morgan was an English ceramic artist, tile designer, painter, and novelist born in London in 1839 and died in London in 1917. He was one of the most important figures in the British Arts and Crafts Movement, working alongside William Morris (his lifelong friend) and other major Arts and Crafts designers such as Edward Burne-Jones and Philip Webb.
De Morgan came from a notable scholarly family. His father was the mathematician Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871), who served as professor of mathematics at University College London from 1828 and is famous for "De Morgan's Laws" in mathematical logic (formalizing relationships between logical operations like and/or/not). His mother was Sophia Elizabeth Frend (1809-1892), the daughter of the mathematician and political radical William Frend. She was a writer herself, and a social reformer and spiritualist as well.
William De Morgan's career divided into two main phases. Ceramic and tile design came first, from the 1860s until his retirement from pottery in 1907, and novel writing came second, from 1906 until his death in 1917 (they overlapped by a year). Both were productive. The ceramics and tiles became major Arts and Crafts decorative work, and the novels included several Victorian-era bestsellers.
His ceramic work centered on tile design and on decorated vessels (vases, plates, dishes, bowls) using elaborate lustre glazes. Lustre is a metallic, iridescent glaze technique that had been used in ninth-century and later Islamic ceramics, and De Morgan revived that decorative tradition. The result was a distinctive body of work joining that technical tradition to characteristic Arts and Crafts pattern design.
Over his career the pottery moved between several London sites. The Chelsea studio (1872-1881) produced his early work. His middle-period work came from the Merton Abbey pottery (1882-1888), located alongside William Morris's Merton Abbey workshops in southwest London. The later work was made at the Sands End Pottery in Fulham, west London (1888-1907), with his business partner Halsey Ricardo and his ceramic decorators Fred and Charles Passenger.
His marriage to Evelyn Pickering in 1887 connected him to one of the leading Pre-Raphaelite painters of the late nineteenth century. As Evelyn De Morgan (born Evelyn Pickering, 1855-1919), she produced a substantial body of paintings drawing on Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Movement traditions. The De Morgan Foundation still preserves and exhibits the combined work of William and Evelyn De Morgan.
What was William De Morgan's early life?
William Frend De Morgan was born on November 16, 1839, in London. The family lived at various addresses in central London while he was growing up. It was a scholarly, intellectually rigorous household, and both parents were committed to serious intellectual work and to political and social reform.
His father Augustus De Morgan had been one of the founding professors of mathematics at the new University College London when it was established in 1828. He served there for decades and became a major figure in nineteenth-century mathematical logic. In 1866 Augustus resigned from University College, after disagreements about religious tests for faculty positions and the broader politics of the university.
Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan, his mother, was deeply involved in social reform. Women's education and antislavery were her causes, and in her later years spiritualism too. She also wrote books on social and religious topics. Between her reform work and Augustus's mathematical rigor, the household had strong intellectual and ethical commitments.
William De Morgan received a good private education in London. Art interested him early, rather than mathematics, and his parents supported his artistic ambitions despite the family's mathematical heritage. In 1859, at age twenty, he began at the Royal Academy schools of fine art, where he received formal training as a painter.
The decisive moment in De Morgan's career came around 1863, when he met William Morris through their shared London art circles. That friendship lasted the rest of their lives and shaped De Morgan's entire later career. He was drawn to Morris's Arts and Crafts principles and was soon contributing designs to Morris's firm.
In the 1860s his work for the firm was stained glass and furniture, and those designs contributed to its early production. Slowly, the collaboration pulled him away from painting and toward the decorative arts (and in the end toward the ceramic and tile design he would specialize in).
What was De Morgan's work with William Morris?
William De Morgan and William Morris were close friends from around 1863 until Morris's death in 1896. They were personally close and they worked together across many decades, which makes De Morgan one of the closest of Morris's collaborators.
De Morgan first worked with Morris in the 1860s, through the early version of Morris's firm. He designed stained glass windows for it (some of his stained glass designs survive in churches and public buildings) and contributed furniture designs. That early collaboration established his place in the Arts and Crafts circle.
From the early 1870s onward, De Morgan focused more and more on ceramic and tile design instead of stained glass and furniture. The ceramics still fit within Morris's wider enterprise. Morris's firm sold De Morgan tiles through its retail outlets and showed his ceramic work at its exhibitions, while De Morgan tiles decorated houses designed by Philip Webb (the architect of Red House for William Morris in 1859 and of many later Arts and Crafts country houses).
The Merton Abbey collaboration (1882-1888) was particularly close. William Morris had moved his major manufacturing operations to Merton Abbey in 1881, setting up a large workshop complex in southwest London where textiles and stained glass were made, along with tapestries and the firm's other products. De Morgan moved his pottery there for several years and shared the location with the firm's operations. Some of his most accomplished ceramic work dates from the Merton Abbey years.
Commercially, De Morgan's pottery was a separate business from Morris's firm, but the two shared customers and promoted each other extensively. Wealthy Victorian patrons who commissioned interiors from Morris's firm often ordered De Morgan tiles and ceramic dishes as well (decorative vessels, too) to complete the integrated Arts and Crafts scheme. Together they produced some of the most distinctive Victorian interior environments.
He also designed tile panels for major commissions, ocean liners among them. In the late 1880s and 1890s the P&O shipping company commissioned De Morgan tile panels for the interior decoration of its passenger ships. Elaborate decorative panels went into dining rooms and smoking rooms, and into other major public spaces on board.
None of this cooled the friendship, which continued through both men's lives. They visited each other's homes and traveled together, and they kept up a correspondence throughout. Morris's death in October 1896 was a major blow to De Morgan, who had counted on Morris's friendship and creative inspiration for over thirty years.
What was William De Morgan's pottery?
William De Morgan's pottery produced ceramic tiles, vases, dishes, bowls, plates, and other decorated ceramic objects across thirty-five years (1872-1907). It operated at three main locations over that period: Chelsea (1872-1881), then Merton Abbey (1882-1888), and finally Sands End in Fulham (1888-1907).
The first pottery, in Chelsea (1872-1881), was his studio at 30 Cheyne Row in Chelsea, west London. It began as small-scale experimentation and grew into a working business. Those Chelsea years are when De Morgan developed his characteristic tile designs and did his first work with lustre glazes.
In 1882 he moved the pottery to the Merton Abbey site, alongside William Morris's Merton Abbey workshops, and it stayed there until 1888. Some of his most accomplished tile work and decorated vessels came out of that period. It's also where he developed his lustre glaze technique to its highest level.
Sands End came next. In 1888 De Morgan moved to a larger purpose-built facility at Sands End in Fulham, west London, where the pottery ran until 1907 in partnership with Halsey Ricardo (the architect and business partner, who also designed houses with De Morgan tile decoration). The ceramic decorators Fred and Charles Passenger worked there too, brothers who became the principal painters of De Morgan tiles and vessels at Sands End. The pottery produced work at a larger commercial scale than the earlier locations had.
Technically, his ceramics combined revived Islamic lustre glaze methods with characteristic Arts and Crafts pattern design. To recover the lustre technique, De Morgan studied historical Islamic ceramics, Persian and Iznik pieces especially, and Spanish lustre too. He also looked at Italian lustreware and maiolica, which is a separate tradition. The process involves applying metallic compounds to fired ceramic and then firing again at a lower temperature in a reducing atmosphere. What you're left with is a thin metallic layer on the surface that gives iridescent color effects.
The patterns used characteristic Arts and Crafts motifs. Floral and natural-form patterns were drawn from English flora. His animals were often fantastic and decorative, and his birds ran from eagles and peacocks to fantastic birds, with fish and abstract decorative patterns as well. The motifs were often arranged in formal symmetrical compositions on tile panels and decorated vessels.
De Morgan's color palette emphasized rich blues and greens. Reds and golds appear as well, and turquoise. Strong color under a lustre glaze gave the ceramic surfaces unusual depth and visual interest, and his work is recognizable at a glance for its distinctive color and pattern combinations.
He retired from pottery in 1907 because of declining health and changing market conditions for hand-crafted Arts and Crafts ceramics. The Sands End Pottery closed when he retired, and the surviving inventory and equipment were dispersed.
What was De Morgan's marriage to Evelyn Pickering?
William De Morgan married Evelyn Pickering on March 3, 1887, when he was forty-seven and she was thirty-one. Evelyn Pickering (1855-1919) was a major Pre-Raphaelite painter in her own right, so the marriage connected two of the most important Arts and Crafts and Pre-Raphaelite figures of the late nineteenth century.
Her uncle was the painter John Roddam Spencer Stanhope (a major Pre-Raphaelite painter who lived in Florence). She had studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1873, as one of the first women admitted to the Slade, and had spent extended periods in Florence studying under her uncle Spencer Stanhope and looking closely at Italian Renaissance art. Her painting style combined Pre-Raphaelite detail with Italian Renaissance composition and color.
The marriage was intellectually and creatively productive. The couple lived in London (at 127 Old Church Street, Chelsea, for many years) and at various other addresses. Evelyn kept painting throughout, building a substantial body of work alongside William's ceramics and, later, his novels.
They had no children. It was a companionate and supportive marriage, with each of them pursuing their own creative work within a shared household, and William De Morgan often acknowledged Evelyn's support for his second career as a novelist, which began in the 1900s.
Two of Evelyn De Morgan's most famous paintings, "Hope in the Prison of Despair" (1887) and "The Soul's Prison House" (1888), date from around the time of the wedding. "The Garden of Opportunity" followed in 1892 and "Flora" in 1894, then "The Storm Spirits" in 1900, among many others. Her paintings combine Pre-Raphaelite detail with strong symbolic and allegorical content, and she produced approximately 100 major paintings over her career.
The De Morgan Foundation, established in 1967, preserves and exhibits the combined work of William and Evelyn De Morgan. Its collection includes hundreds of paintings and ceramic tiles, along with vessels and personal papers from both of them.
Evelyn De Morgan outlived William by more than two years. William died on January 15, 1917, and Evelyn on May 2, 1919.
What was William De Morgan's second career as a novelist?
William De Morgan began a second career as a novelist in his late sixties, publishing his first novel "Joseph Vance" in 1906 (when he was sixty-six years old). It was a major commercial and critical success, and he kept writing until his death in 1917, producing seven novels in eleven years (a fair pace for a man who'd just spent thirty-five years running a pottery).
"Joseph Vance" (1906) remained his most successful novel. It's long, and the title character tells it himself, so it reads as a Victorian-style autobiography following London life across many decades of the nineteenth century. Readers admired the detailed observation and the sympathetic characters. Plenty of them found a Dickensian breadth and warmth in it, too. It sold extensively in Britain and in the United States, and late in his life it made De Morgan a major Victorian-style novelist.
After that the books came almost every year. "Alice-for-Short" appeared in 1907, the year he gave up pottery, and "Somehow Good" followed in 1908. Next were "It Never Can Happen Again" (1909) and "An Affair of Dishonour" (1910). "A Likely Story" came out in 1911, and the last on the list is "When Ghost Meets Ghost" (1914). Each one paired detailed Victorian-style narrative with serious psychological observation.
His novels are sometimes called late Victorian or Edwardian in style, even though they came out in the early twentieth century. His models explain it. He drew on Dickens and George Eliot, among other major Victorian novelists, for long, detailed narrative with extensive character development. We'd describe the result as Victorian novels that arrived a generation late, partly because De Morgan was himself a survivor of Victorian London, writing about a period he had lived through.
Evelyn De Morgan's strong support is what made the novel writing possible. She encouraged William to take up writing as the pottery was winding down. She also edited his manuscripts and saw them through the writing process, and he acknowledged her part in his second career often.
Money mattered, too. "Joseph Vance" earned substantial royalties, enough to support the De Morgan household and free William from financial worries about leaving pottery. The later novels kept earning substantial royalties through the 1910s.
Today the novels get much less attention than the ceramics. Most have fallen out of print, and "Joseph Vance" still comes up in some Victorian and Edwardian literary histories. Few major Arts and Crafts figures had a second career like this one, and that pairing of ceramic artist and novelist is part of what makes De Morgan unusual.
What did William De Morgan design?
William De Morgan designed ceramic tiles (his largest body of work, including individual tiles, tile panels, and complete decorative schemes), decorated vessels (vases, dishes, plates, bowls, jugs, and other decorated ceramic objects), stained glass (in his early Morris's firm period), furniture (also in his early Morris's firm period), and tile decoration for major architectural commissions (including ocean liners and country houses).
Tiles were the largest body of work. He designed thousands of individual tile patterns, plus many complete tile panels and decorative schemes, at sizes ranging from a single small decorative tile to panels covering entire walls. In late Victorian and Edwardian houses they went into fireplaces and bathrooms. You'd also find them in kitchens and hallways, and on other domestic surfaces.
The decorated vessels carried elaborate painted decoration in his lustre glaze technique. Some were vases or dishes, others plates or bowls or other ceramic objects, and each one was sold individually as a decorative art object. You could buy them from Morris's firm or through De Morgan's own retail. Other major Victorian decorative arts retailers carried them as well.
Architectural tile panels took the work to a bigger scale. The P&O shipping company had major panels made for its passenger ships. At Leighton House (the home and studio of the painter Frederic Leighton in Holland Park, London), De Morgan tile decoration appears extensively. Various country houses by Philip Webb and other Arts and Crafts architects got important panels too, and so did many other notable Victorian and Edwardian buildings.
Stained glass belongs to the 1860s, before his focus shifted to ceramics, when he designed it for Morris's firm. His designs appear in some of the firm's church and domestic stained glass installations from that period.
Furniture is harder to pin down. He designed it for Morris's firm in the same decade, but mainly by contributing to the firm's broader furniture program rather than producing identifiable individual pieces of his own. There's less of it than the stained glass, and less again than the later ceramic work.
If you only see one De Morgan installation, our pick is Leighton House at 12 Holland Park Road in Holland Park, London. It was the home and studio of the painter Frederic Leighton (1830-1896), built 1864-1866, and it contains some of the most extensive surviving De Morgan tile installations. Head for the famous Arab Hall (added 1877-1881), a domed octagonal room with elaborate Islamic-style tile decoration. There a major De Morgan tile installation sits alongside the original Islamic tiles Leighton had collected, so the revival and its sources share one room.
What is William De Morgan known for?
William De Morgan is known for his ceramic tile and pottery work in the British Arts and Crafts Movement, his revival of Islamic lustre glaze technique on ceramics, his lifelong friendship and creative collaboration with William Morris, his marriage to the Pre-Raphaelite painter Evelyn Pickering, his second career as a novelist (especially "Joseph Vance" of 1906), his designs for major Victorian architectural commissions (Leighton House, P&O ocean liners, country houses by Philip Webb), and his work as one of the British designers who applied Arts and Crafts principles in creating objects for the home.
The ceramics come first. De Morgan produced one of the most distinctive bodies of Victorian decorative ceramics. That mix of revived Islamic lustre and characteristic Arts and Crafts pattern is why his tiles and decorated vessels are instantly recognizable, and why they've been admired continuously ever since.
In the history of the movement he stands among its most important figures, in the same company as William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Philip Webb belongs there too, among others. His ceramics supplied the decorative elements that completed integrated Arts and Crafts interiors. In a Webb-designed house, for instance, the rooms might be hung with Morris wallpapers and Morris textiles while De Morgan tiles went around the fireplaces. Rooms like that are some of the most complete Arts and Crafts environments.
His lustre revival was an achievement in its own right. Studying the Islamic ceramic tradition (Persian and Iznik pieces above all, plus Spanish ones) next to Italian lustreware, and then bringing the technique back, was serious scholarly work as well as practical work. It went on to influence the broader revival of historical ceramic techniques in nineteenth and twentieth-century studio pottery.
Then there are the books. His late-career fiction, "Joseph Vance" above all, is a remarkable example of a major Arts and Crafts figure succeeding at a second creative career in literature. The London in those novels feels lived in for a simple reason: the detailed observation of nineteenth-century life draws on De Morgan's own extensive experience of the period.
And he's remembered as half of a creative partnership. William and Evelyn are one of the most important couples in the British Arts and Crafts and Pre-Raphaelite circle, and the De Morgan Foundation continues to preserve their combined work and to support continuing scholarship on both William and Evelyn De Morgan.
What is De Morgan's Law?
De Morgan's Laws are a pair of logical rules in mathematical logic, formulated by William De Morgan's father Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871). They describe how the logical operations "and" and "or" relate under negation. In modern notation: NOT (A AND B) is equivalent to (NOT A) OR (NOT B), and NOT (A OR B) is equivalent to (NOT A) AND (NOT B).
They're a fundamental part of mathematical logic. Boolean algebra uses them, and so does set theory. In digital electronics they describe how AND and OR gates relate through NOT gates. Introductory logic and mathematics courses teach them worldwide, and so do computer science courses.
Both men share a surname, which is where the confusion starts. The laws are named after Augustus De Morgan (the mathematician father) and not after William De Morgan (the ceramic artist son). Augustus was a professional mathematician at University College London, while William was a ceramic artist and novelist who took up a different career path despite his father's mathematical heritage.
In the history of mathematics, Augustus formulated the laws in the mid-nineteenth century as part of his work on mathematical logic. That work belongs to a broader nineteenth-century development. It led on to George Boole's algebra of logic and to Gottlob Frege's predicate calculus, and in time to the foundations of modern mathematical logic and computer science.
When did William De Morgan die?
William De Morgan died on January 15, 1917, in London, at age 77. He died at home, in Old Church Street, Chelsea. The cause was trench fever, though his health had been declining since his retirement from pottery in 1907 and through his decade of intensive novel writing.
He was buried in Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, near Woking, south of London. It's the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom (a major Victorian cemetery), and many prominent cultural figures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are buried there too.
His wife Evelyn De Morgan survived him by more than two years and kept painting until her own death on May 2, 1919. The De Morgan Foundation preserves what both of them made.
Since his death, his reputation has held up. William De Morgan has been continuously recognized as one of the leading Arts and Crafts ceramicists and tile designers. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds his ceramic work, and so does the William Morris Gallery. You'll also find it at the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery in Bedford and the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, as well as in the De Morgan Foundation's own collection. Tiles by De Morgan continue to turn up in restorations of Victorian Arts and Crafts houses and country houses across Britain.
The novels have fared worse. They're largely out of print now, though "Joseph Vance" is still discussed in some Victorian and Edwardian literary histories. We think that's a shame, since being both a ceramic artist and a novelist is exactly what makes De Morgan unusual among major Arts and Crafts figures.
William De Morgan questions
Who was William De Morgan?
William Frend De Morgan (1839-1917) was an English ceramic artist, tile designer, painter, and novelist, one of the most important figures in the British Arts and Crafts Movement. His parents were the mathematician Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871) and Sophia Frend De Morgan. Around 1863 he met William Morris and became his lifelong friend and collaborator. His tiles and decorated vessels, made with the revived Islamic lustre glaze technique, came from potteries that moved from Chelsea to Merton Abbey and finally to Sands End in Fulham. Late in life he became a successful novelist with "Joseph Vance" (1906) and the novels that followed, and he retired from pottery in 1907.
What was William De Morgan famous for?
William De Morgan is famous for his ceramic tile and pottery work in the Arts and Crafts Movement, especially his revival of Islamic lustre glaze technique on ceramic tiles and vessels (with characteristic bright colors, animal and floral decoration), his lifelong collaboration with William Morris and Morris's firm, his tile designs for major architectural commissions (Leighton House, P&O ocean liners, country houses designed by Philip Webb), and his second career as a novelist (especially "Joseph Vance" of 1906, his commercial and critical success at age 66). If we had to pick just one of those, it would be the lustre tiles.
Who was Augustus De Morgan?
Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871) was William De Morgan's father, a mathematician who served as professor of mathematics at University College London from 1828. He's famous for "De Morgan's Laws" in mathematical logic (fundamental rules for how the logical operations AND and OR relate under negation) and also for his work on the history of mathematics and on probability theory. Don't mix him up with his son William De Morgan, a different person, who pursued ceramic art rather than mathematics.
What is De Morgan's Law?
De Morgan's Laws are a pair of logical rules formulated by the mathematician Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871, William De Morgan's father). They state that NOT (A AND B) is equivalent to (NOT A) OR (NOT B), and NOT (A OR B) is equivalent to (NOT A) AND (NOT B). If a door needs both a key and a code and you can't get in, you're missing at least one of them. They're fundamental to mathematical logic and set theory, and just as much to Boolean algebra and digital electronics, so students meet them worldwide in introductory courses in logic and mathematics (computer science too).
What did William De Morgan design?
William De Morgan designed ceramic tiles (his largest body of work, including individual tiles, tile panels, and complete decorative schemes), decorated vessels (vases, dishes, plates, bowls, jugs with elaborate lustre glaze decoration), stained glass for Morris's firm (in the 1860s), furniture for Morris's firm (also in the 1860s), and tile decoration for major architectural commissions (Leighton House, P&O ocean liners, country houses by Philip Webb, and many other major Victorian and Edwardian buildings). The tiles alone ran to thousands of individual patterns.
Who was William De Morgan's wife?
William De Morgan married Evelyn Pickering on March 3, 1887. Evelyn Pickering (1855-1919) was a major Pre-Raphaelite painter, and her uncle was the painter John Roddam Spencer Stanhope. At the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where she studied from 1873, she was one of the first women admitted, and her painting combined Pre-Raphaelite detail with Italian Renaissance composition. The couple had no children; the De Morgan Foundation preserves their combined artistic legacy.
What were De Morgan's potteries?
William De Morgan operated potteries at three main London locations: Chelsea (1872-1881, at his studio at 30 Cheyne Row in west London), Merton Abbey (1882-1888, alongside William Morris's Merton Abbey workshops in southwest London), and Sands End in Fulham (1888-1907, at a purpose-built larger facility in west London, in partnership with architect Halsey Ricardo and ceramic decorators Fred and Charles Passenger). Why did it all stop? He retired from pottery in 1907 because of declining health and changing market conditions.
How did William De Morgan apply Arts and Crafts principles?
William De Morgan applied Arts and Crafts principles by designing and producing ceramic tiles and decorated vessels for the home, using traditional handcraft techniques (especially the revived Islamic lustre glaze technique), drawing on historical decorative traditions (Islamic Persian and Spanish ceramics) while producing original modern Arts and Crafts work, and integrating his ceramic work with the broader Arts and Crafts decorative program led by William Morris. In practice, his tiles were the finishing layer of Morris's firm interiors, and of country house decorative schemes by Philip Webb and other Arts and Crafts architects.
