The Emery Walker Trust and The William Morris Society have joined forces to commission new BIDBI bags to promote their Arts & Crafts house museums.
Both heritage sites have recently been restored and received funding to work together on joint projects to make their small sites more sustainable for the future. The tote bags, which have their distinctive new black and red logos on each side, reflect this closer connection and references the friendship and working collaboration between William Morris and Emery Walker who lived nearby along the river Thames at Hammersmith.
Emery Walker’s House at 7 Hammersmith Terrace, London, was the home of one of the key members of The Arts & Crafts Movement, a close friend of William Morris and father of the Private Press movement.
The bags can be bought there when it opens for three tours a day at 11am, 1pm and 3pm on Thursdays and Saturdays. One hour guided tours can be pre-booked online at emerywalker.org.uk.
The William Morris Society museum, which also has a small shop (see last picture below) now stocking these bags. It is free to visit and open from 2-5pm on the same days – Thursdays and Saturdays. So if you are visiting Emery Walker’s House, do swing by there too as it is only 10 minute and picturesque walk along the river.
The Society’s small museum is in the coach house and basement rooms of Kelmscott House where William Morris lived from 1878 until his death in 1896.
The Society holds events and exhibitions of work by Morris and those inspired by him in the coach house, and the room itself has a special history as Morris started to weave his first carpets here, and when he became active in politics, it became the meeting place for the Hammersmith branch of the Socialist League.
The Society’s basement rooms have a Morrisian reference library, showcase changing displays from their collection as well as Morris’s original Albion printing press used in the production of the Kelmscott Press Chaucer, Morris’s last great creation, for which he sought advice from his friend Emery Walker.
The collection contains a number of Kelmscott Press titles and working proofs as well as the only a comprehensive collection of Morris & Co wallpapers, watercolour designs, and a selection of textiles, ranging from a Hammersmith rug and woven hangings to printed cottons, silks and embroideries.
You can find out more at williammorrissociety.org. And you can read about the design process creating the Emery Walker’s House logo, encapsulating an Arts & Crafts aesthetic and Walker’s work as a typographer in this blogwritten by its designer, Simon Loxley.
The bags cost £10 and are available from both The William Morris Society and Emery Walker’s House shops and online from The William Morris Society shop.
