Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/464

ÆT. 48] can only give prizes for the designs. I think it would be a very good thing to give prizes for the goods themselves." The dislocation between the two sides of the craftsman's education is still so great that this step is thought impossible.

This had been his own experience when he first tried to have carpets made from his own designs by the ordinary manufacturers. He began with the simplest kind, the so-called Kidderminster, a carpet of not more than three colours, in which the pattern is produced by the intersection at fixed points of webs interlaced by the passage of the shuttle through a double or triple-tiered warp. In the trial piece of carpet sent, the design was almost unrecognizable. A suspicion at first crossed his mind that he was being played with: and that the manufacturer, who had frankly said on seeing the design that it was too simple and would not do, had determined to justify his opinion by spoiling it in the manufacture. But this was not the case; he had acted in perfect good faith, and when Morris said to him, "But this is not my pattern," could only answer, "This is how your pattern comes out." Finally an interview was arranged with his "designer," the man who set out the pattern on point paper for the weavers. The root of all the trouble was then found out in five minutes: it was merely this, that the designer could not draw. The pattern was redrawn on point paper in Morris's own workshop, and the carpet (which has become an established pattern and is still the most successful of all the woven carpets produced from Morris's designs) was satisfactorily produced forthwith.

Of Morris's personal share in the firm's work in general decoration and the application of the materials produced by him to their specific purpose, some idea