For more than a century, she has been little more than a footnote in William Morris\u2019s story, her work mistaken for his, her contribution to British decorative art largely overlooked.<\/p>\n
Yet, in her lifetime, Kate Faulkner was a pioneer: the first person after Morris to design wallpapers and fabrics for Morris & Co, and one of only four designers he ever trusted to do so. Several of the patterns she designed under her name for the company in the 1870s and 1880s are still sold today.<\/p>\n
Now, an exhibition<\/a> at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is seeking to restore Faulkner to her rightful place in art history.<\/p>\n A Call to Art: William Morris and the pre-Raphaelites is the first exhibition to celebrate Faulkner and her work as a designer, maker and workshop supervisor at Morris & Co.<\/p>\n It will put on public display, for the first time, a monumental 6.3 metre-wide oak and silvered-gesso altarpiece she was commissioned to make for Morris & Co in 1886, alongside her textile designs and wallpaper patterns which helped to make William Morris a household name.<\/p>\n Highlights include Faulkner\u2019s tile depicting Penelope, made around 1865. Photograph: Michael Jones\/The Fitzwilliam Museum, Image Library<\/p>\n Highlights include her tile depicting Penelope, the heroine of Greek mythology, which is based on a design by Edward Burne-Jones, and some of her painted ceramics, including decorative plates that were sold in the Morris & Co shop.<\/p>\n \u201cKate Faulkner was not simply working in William Morris\u2019s shadow \u2013 she was a key artist in her own right,\u201d said Karen Livingstone, senior curatorial adviser to the exhibition, which opens on 23 October. \u201cHer skill and creative contribution were fundamental to Morris & Co, and this exhibition and its new research reveal just how central her artistic voice was to the commercial success of William Morris.\u201d<\/p>\n Her 1879 Mallow wallpaper design<\/a> is still sold by Morris & Co<\/a>.<\/p>\n Other wallpaper manufacturers bought her designs and she earned an international reputation for her work, but her legacy has been overshadowed by Morris\u2019s since she died in 1898.<\/p>\n Livingstone is appealing for help from the public to trace the descendants of Faulkner\u2019s sister, Lucy Orrinsmith, whose granddaughter, Lesley Janet Hitch (nee Simmons), died in 1995. She hopes this will uncover a photograph or portrait of Faulkner, as none is known to exist. \u201cI\u2019ve tried really hard to trace her family and to find an image of her, and I have drawn a blank at every turn,\u201d said Livingstone, the author of Women Pioneers of the Arts and Crafts Movement. \u201cI would love to know where her family are so her legacy could be more expanded and revealed.\u201d<\/p>\n Faulkner would have been part of Morris\u2019s inner circle at Red House, his Arts and Crafts villa in Bexleyheath. Photograph: Bildarchiv Monheim GmbH\/Alamy<\/p>\n The overall aim of the exhibition, which runs until 3 May 2027, is to re-examine Morris and his inner circle \u2013 including the artists and designers Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Elizabeth Siddal and May Morris, the daughter of William and his wife, Jane.<\/p>\n One of Morris & Co\u2019s most successful areas of production was embroidery, which was managed by Jane Morris<\/a> and her sister, Elizabeth Burden, before May took over in 1885.<\/p>\n Faulkner embroidered figurative panels to William Morris\u2019s designs and helped with the design and production of carpets, as well as cutting woodblocks for engravings and painting tiles and designing patterns for textiles and wallpapers.<\/p>\n