William De Morgan
The ceramicist in Morris's circle.
William De Morgan was a friend of Morris and made tiles and dishes with lustre and Persian-inspired colours. He rediscovered the shimmering lustre glaze and later became a successful novelist.
William De Morgan was born in London in 1839. His father, Augustus De Morgan, was a well-known mathematician, and his mother Sophia a committed reformer. He studied at the Royal Academy Schools and in the early 1860s met William Morris, who became his friend. He started with stained glass but soon turned to tiles and ceramics.
He opened his first workshop in Chelsea in 1872 and later moved to Merton Abbey near Morris's workshops and then to Fulham. He often bought blank wares from other factories and decorated them, but also made his own pieces. For a period he worked in partnership with the architect Halsey Ricardo. His tiles were used, among other places, in ships of the P&O line and in Leighton House in London.
De Morgan's great achievement was to rediscover lustre glaze, a metallic sheen known from medieval Spanish and Islamic ceramics but forgotten in Europe. He experimented for a long time with metal salts and reduction firing to achieve red and golden iridescence. He was also influenced by Turkish and Persian ceramics with their deep blues, turquoises and greens. His motifs are fantastical animals, fish, ships, birds and winding plants.
In 1887 he married the painter Evelyn Pickering. Because of his health the couple spent their winters in Florence, where Italian painters carried out decoration to his designs. The workshop seldom made a profit, and his wife supported it with her income. It closed in 1907.
At almost 65 De Morgan began writing novels. The first, Joseph Vance of 1906, was a great success, and he wrote several more. He died in 1917. Today he is regarded as one of England's foremost ceramicists, and his work is shown by the De Morgan Foundation and at the Victoria and Albert Museum.