page_title: William De Morgan
section_title: Life and work
hierarchical_section_title: William De Morgan / Life and work
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Tegeltableau William de Morgan Engeland, Londen circa 1890 Willam de Morgan, Sand Ends pottery OKS 1975-13 Het tegeltableau met bloemenvaas is geinspireerd op voorbeelden uit het Midden-oosten. Willam de Morgan kopieerde deze niet, maar maakte een eigen interpretatie. English: England, London circa 1890 Willame the Morgan, Sand Ends pottery OKS 1975-13 The tile with flower vase is inspired by examples from the Middle East. Willam de Morgan do not copy this, but made his own interpretation.
context_page_description: William Frend De Morgan was an English potter, tile designer and novelist. A lifelong friend of William Morris, he designed tiles, stained glass and furniture for Morris & Co. from 1863 to 1872. His tiles are often based on medieval designs or Islamic 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.
context_section_description: Born in Gower Street, London, the son of the distinguished mathematician Augustus De Morgan and his highly educated wife Sophia Elizabeth Frend, De Morgan was 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, initially working in Fitzroy Square.  
  In 1872, De Morgan set up a pottery works in Chelsea where he stayed until 1881 — his most fruitful decade as an art potter. The arts and crafts ideology he was exposed to through his friendship with Morris and his own insistent curiosity, led De Morgan to begin to explore every technical aspect of his craft. His early efforts at making his own tiles during his Chelsea Period were of variable technical quality – often amateurish with firing defects and irregularities. In his early years, De Morgan made extensive use of blank commercial tiles. Hard and durable biscuit tiles of red clay were obtained from the Patent Architectural Pottery Co. in Poole. Dust pressed tiles of white earthenware were bought from Wedgwood, Mintons and other manufacturers but De Morgan believed these would not stand frost. He continued to use blank commercial dust-pressed tiles which were decorated in red lustre into his Fulham Period (1888–1907). However he developed a high-quality biscuit tile of his own, which he admired for its irregularities and better resistance to moisture. His inventive streak led him to spend hours designing a duplex bicycle gear and lured him into complex studies of the chemistry of glazes, methods of firing, and pattern transfer.
  De Morgan's decoration of pottery included chargers, rice dishes and vases. Some of these were made in his works, but many were bought as biscuit ware from Wedgwood and others and decorated by De Morgan's workers. Some were signed by his decorators including Charles Passenger, Fred Passenger, Joe Juster and Miss Babb.
  De Morgan was particularly drawn to Eastern tiles. Around 1873–1874, he made a striking breakthrough by rediscovering the technique of lustreware (marked by a reflective, metallic surface) found in Hispano-Moresque pottery and Italian maiolica. Nor was his interest in the East limited to glazing techniques, but it permeated his notions of design and colour 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 referred to as "Persian" ware (and what we know today as 15th and 16th-century İznik ware), profoundly influenced his unmistakable style, in which fantastic creatures entwined with rhythmic geometric motifs float under luminous glazes.
  The pottery works was beset by financial problems, despite repeated cash injections from his wife, the pre-Raphaelite painter Evelyn De Morgan (née Pickering), and a partnership with the architect Halsey Ricardo. This partnership was associated with a move for the factory from Merton Abbey to Fulham in 1888. During the Fulham period De Morgan mastered many of the technical aspects of his work that had previously been elusive, including complex lustres and deep, intense underglaze painting that did not run during firing. However, this did not guarantee financial success, and in 1907 William De Morgan left the pottery, which continued under the Passenger brothers, the leading painters at the works. "All my life I have been trying to make beautiful things," he said at the time, "and now that I can make them nobody wants them."
  William De Morgan turned his hand to writing novels, and became better known than he ever had been for his pottery. His first novel,  Joseph Vance, was published in 1906, and was an instant sensation in the United States as well as the United Kingdom. This was followed by An Affair of Dishonour, Alice-for-Short, and the two-volume It Nev
caption: William De Morgan (c. 1890), Sands Ends Pottery: a tile inspired by Middle East examples.
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