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Morris’s carpet designs have been discussed in terms of naturalism and abstraction but rather than focusing on this polarity Arscott will consider Morris’s intimations of action. Morris associated action with the pictorial and considered it to be one of the great resources of oriental carpet design. This talk will consider the knot in terms of the substance of the pile and the interlace of the design. The significance of the knot for Victorian mathematics will also be touched upon. Arscott will discuss ways in which action may be indicated even where figures are absent, and will make reference to Riegl's discussion of cloud band motifs in carpets. This paper seeks to establish the ways in which ornament can function as a mode of the pictorial in an Arts and Crafts context.

 

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History of Art

Nineteenth-Century Forum

University of Michigan Museum of Art

Institute for the Humanities

International Institute

Rackham Graduate School