Topsy: William Morris (review)

Topsy: William Morris produced by Boxwood Productions. VHS color video, 57 min. Available from Films for the Humanities and Sciences: (tel.) 800-257-5126 (in U.S.A.); or <www.films.com>.

William Morris was one of the most far-reaching figures in design history, in terms of 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 mop of unkempt, curly hair that earned him the moniker "Topsy," which was based on the name of the orphan slave girl in the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.

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, the video uses vintage photographs, drawings, literary excerpts, interviews with scholars and, of particular value, filmed sojourns to the actual sites that were central to Morris' 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. There is also discussion of his 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.

Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens
2022 X Avenue, Dysart, IA 52224-9767, U.S.A.
E-mail: <ballast@netins.net>.

Roy R. Behrens is a professor of art at the University of Northern Iowa, where he teaches graphic design, illustration and design history. He is editor of Ballast Quarterly Review, art director of the North American Review, contributing editor of Print, and he serves on the board of advisors for Gestalt Theory. His published books include Life of Fiction (with Jerome Klinkowitz), Art and Camouflage, Design in the Visual Arts and Illustration as an Art. E-mail: <ballast@netins.net>.

(Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 16, No. 1, Autumn 2000.)

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