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Topsy: William Morris
Boxwood Productions.
57 minutes; Available from Films for the Humanities and Sciences at
800-257-5126 or www.films.com.
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens, Department of Art, University of Northern
Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA 50613-0362, U.S.A. E-mail: ballast@netins.net
William Morris was one of the most far-reaching figures in design
history-by his work as well as his waistline. He was, as Max Beerbohm
once quipped, "a wonderful all-round man, but the act of walking round
him always tired me." It was his ample girth and his mop of unkempt
curly hair that earned him the moniker "Topsy," which was based on the
name of the orphan slave girl in Uncle Tom's Cabin, who, when asked
where she thought she had come from, replied, "I 'spect I grow'd."
Written and narrated (with delightful hand gestures) by British art
historian Douglas Skeggs, this film biography of the father of the Arts
and Crafts Movement is simply superb, or, as Morris might say, it's a
"stunner." In a voice that engages as well as informs, it uses vintage
photographs, drawings, literary excerpts, interviews with scholars, and,
of particular value, filmed sojourns to the actual sites that were
central to his life, among them Oxford University, Red House, Kelmscott
Manor, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Within those contexts, the
astonishing breadth of his work is discussed in such design-related
categories as embroidery, furniture, stained glass, wallpapers, murals,
wood engravings, illumination, calligraphy, textiles, typography, and
printed books; as well as more than 90 books of prose and poetry; and
his work as a social reformer. Nothing is omitted, not even his
uncontrollable amnesiac rages, and the affairs of his strange and
unfortunate wife, who, as he painfully knew, was the lover of his old
friend and business partner, the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel
Rossetti. (Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol.
16, No. 1, Autumn 2000.)
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