William Morgan Outstanding English ceramic artist. Country: Great Britain

William De Morgan - An Outstanding English Artist-Ceramist

William Friend De Morgan (1839-1917) was an outstanding English artist-ceramist and the son of the renowned mathematician Augustus De Morgan. He began his artistic education at the age of twenty, graduating from the School of Art at the Royal Academy. In the early 1860s, De Morgan became acquainted with William Morris and the artists of his circle.

William Morris, a talented theoretician and practitioner of decorative art, was one of the most prominent figures of the late 19th century. He initiated a movement to revive the decorative arts, believing that the industrial revolution was the main cause of the decline in art. In 1861, Morris founded a firm that brought together skilled craftsmen and some of the most famous English artists, such as F. Webb, E. Burne-Jones, and D.G. Rossetti. The Morris workshop produced furniture, upholstery fabrics, wallpapers, stained glass, ceramics, and wallpaper. Morris opposed the dominance of eclecticism, heavy embellishment, and excessive ornamentation, instead advocating for simplicity in form, purity of color, and elegantly stylized motifs inspired by the natural world.

De Morgan joined Morris's circle and soon moved away from painting to focus on creating stained glass and, around 1869, ventured into ceramics. At that time, ceramics, the ancient art form, was in a deep crisis despite its apparent prosperity. Over a century had passed since Europeans discovered the secret of porcelain production, the finest type of ceramics. In the 18th century, porcelain was considered a precious material, and its natural properties were highly valued and creatively explored. However, by the mid-19th century, porcelain had lost its novelty and became overly familiar. Its whiteness was obscured by gold plating or solid-colored coatings, and its delicacy and fragility were disguised by imitations of metal and wood. Most faience production imitated the works of the 18th century or aimed to imitate porcelain directly. Other forms of ceramics were either forgotten or existed only as antique replicas, such as the Italian companies working in the style of 16th-century maiolica. Dissatisfied with the contemporary "deformities" of porcelain, De Morgan turned to working with clay and became fascinated by the delicate iridescence and metallic reflections of Hispano-Moresque lustreware and the shimmering glazes of Iranian ceramics. Starting with his experimentation with glazes and firing techniques, De Morgan set up a ceramic kiln in the basement of his house on Fitzroy Square, London. However, his technological experiments ended in a fire, forcing him to find a more suitable location for his work. He settled in Chelsea, a quiet, old-fashioned suburb of London, in a house called "The Orange" and set up his kilns in the garden. Legend has it that in one of the neighboring houses, a century before, in the 1770s, J. Wedgwood and his assistants painted the famous "Frog Service," now housed in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

De Morgan not only experimented with clay compositions and glazes but also developed new methods for applying decoration. He designed his kilns, created drawings for tools, and delved into all the details of the ceramic production process. His hard work paid off quickly, as he began producing tiles, decorative dishes, and vases painted in a "Persian" color scheme dominated by shades of green and turquoise, featuring high-quality glazes. De Morgan's works, particularly those adorned with lustre, gained considerable renown. The secret of lustre had been lost in the mid-17th century. It was rediscovered in 1856 at an Italian ceramic factory in Doccia, near Florence. Several Italian masters visited Staffordshire, England's traditional ceramics center, to teach local potters the process, but the results were not significant. Among English artists and connoisseurs, it was often said that the "secret of lustre is a kind of philosopher's stone for ceramists." De Morgan's independent discovery of lustre and the high artistic merits of his pieces were considered the highest achievement in English ceramics, even mentioned in the British Encyclopedia. Morris and his family often visited De Morgan's house in Chelsea, strengthening their friendship. However, The Orange house became too small, and in 1882, De Morgan rented a plot of land in Merton Abbey, Surrey, where Morris's workshop had settled a year earlier. Six years later, due to deteriorating health, he relocated his factory to Fulham, next to Chelsea. From 1892 onwards, De Morgan spent his winters in Florence, Italy, due to his health condition. He organized a workshop there, where he created designs and models for ceramics, which were then sent to London. A significant part of De Morgan's ceramic production consisted of mosaic panels made from tiles used to decorate the interiors of houses and ships. For example, he created the "Geographical" series for six vessels: "Green Valleys of England," "London," "Storm," "China" (mountains and junks), and "India" (gray elephants and golden tigers). The luminous radiance of these compositions evoked associations with Iran and Central Asia.

De Morgan had a deep love for tile ceramics and a keen sense of its nature. He dreamed of using it extensively on the exterior walls of buildings. "It is clear that lustre and underglaze paintings can be used on all parts of buildings that catch the rays of the rising sun," the artist wrote. However, perhaps his most significant contributions to the field were his painted decorative vases and dishes. These objects featured simple, traditional forms for earthenware. The intricate patterns harmoniously covered the vessel's surface and were characterized by exquisite color schemes. Similar to Morris's wallpapers, De Morgan's compositions were composed of stylized motifs, but the artist predominantly focused on animal themes, creating impressive artistic images within these stylizations. A noble deer, depicted in dark silhouette against a patterned foliage background; a lizard cheerfully dancing on its tail; fish on coral branches, and so on. The artist had a special affinity for marine motifs, as he passionately loved the sea and romanticized the mysteries of the underwater world. Throughout his life, De Morgan drew inspiration from the inexhaustible source of beautiful ceramic art from the East, and later from Greece and Crete. However, he was by no means a copyist; his works testify to his vivid creative individuality, firmly rooted in a specific time period. Perhaps it was because he sensed the discrepancy between the visual language of his creations and the aspirations of the new century that De Morgan ceased his artistic activities in 1905 and devoted his final years to literature. He passed away on January 15, 1917, in London.