Lucy and Kate Faulkner: Decorative Artists: A tribute by Emma Ferry

The Faulkner sisters, Lucy (1839-1910) and Kate (1841-98), moved from Birmingham to No. 35 Queen Square, Bloomsbury with their widowed mother and two surviving brothers in 1861. Their elder brother, Charles Joseph Faulkner (1833-91) befriended William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones while an undergraduate at Oxford. Later he  joined in their business venture as a founder member of ‘the Firm’ of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., based at No. 26 Queen Square. The Faulkner family were intimately connected with the Morris Circle.  They were regular visitors to Morris’s Red House, and later, the Morrises would be their neighbours in Queen Square.   Charles Faulkner’s lasting friendship with Morris has been well-documented, and through their brother, Lucy and Kate Faulkner became involved with the activities of ‘the Firm’. It is likely, but sadly impossible to prove, that the sisters may have attended classes at the ‘Female School of Art’ based at 43 Queen Square, which was only a few houses away from the Faulkner family home. Whatever their artistic training, both women eventually practised as professional craftswomen and examples of their work for Morris and other manufacturers survive in many museum collections.

During the 1860s, in common with the other women of the Morris circle, both Lucy and Kate Faulkner produced embroideries for ‘the Firm’ including the hangings for John Ruskin’s house designed by Burne-Jones in 1864. Based on Chaucer’s Legende of Goode Wimmen (c.1387) the embroidery sketches now at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, depicted heroines from classical antiquity.  This was a favourite theme of Burne-Jones, which had been originally designed as a series of twelve decorative tile panels in 1862 [Fig 1].

Initially, the Firm produced hand-painted tiles in the basement at the Red Lion Square premises, where they were fired in the same kiln used for making stained glass. In his biography of Morris, Aymer Vallance (1897) explained that using plain white tiles imported from Holland, ‘Morris, Faulkner and others set about experimenting with various glazes, enamels &c., until the desired result was obtained’. Once the techniques had been mastered ‘the production of hand-painted tiles continued to be from thenceforward one of the regular crafts of the firm’.

It was in the production of hand-painted tiles that Lucy Faulkner came to play a significant role, undertaking this branch of the work in place of her brother and Morris and producing a series of twelve panels called The Labours of the Months and several fairy tale narrative tile panels designed by Edward Burne-Jones.  These include Cinderella, now at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, Beauty and the Beast which is displayed at the William Morris Gallery and Sleeping Beauty, which is on show in the British Galleries at the V&A Museum [Fig. 2].

Fig 2. Sleeping Beauty c. 1862-65
Designed by Edward Burne-Jones and painted by Lucy Faulkner
Earthenware tile panel 76.2 x 120.6cm
© V&A Museum

Decorating the tile panels was carried out both at Morris’s workshop at 26 Queen Square and, according to May Morris (1836), ‘partly by the Faulkners in their own home lower down the square’.  However, this activity seems to have stopped following the marriage of Lucy Faulkner to Harvey Orrinsmith (1830-1904) on 8^th January 1870 at the Church of St. George the Martyr in Queen Square.  

Harvey Orrinsmith (1830-1904) was master bookbinder and leading wood-engraver who with W. J Linton ran the engraving firm ‘Smith and Linton’ in Hatton Garden. It was at the office of ‘Messrs. Smith and Linton’s’ that Lucy Faulkner learned the technique of wood engraving. The artist-designer Walter Crane (1845-1915), also a Bloomsbury resident at this time, was apprenticed to Linton from 1858 until 1862. In his autobiography, An Artist’s Reminiscences (1907), Crane recalled his training at the office of Smith and Linton, describing Harvey Orrin Smith, as ‘a man of considerable energy’ and ‘an excellent friend to me’. However, Crane make no mention of a female pupil in the office, which suggests Lucy Faulkner’s training at Smith and Linton began after Crane left the office in 1862. 

Lucy Faulkner engraved at least one of the wood blocks for William Morris’s Earthly Paradise in 1865. Titled ‘Cupid leaving Psyche’, the illustration was designed by Burne-Jones, drawn onto the woodblock by Morris and then, according to a handwritten inscription on the back of the block, cut by Lucy Faulkner [Fig 3]. This unused trial is now displayed with other surviving examples of her work at the William Morris Gallery, whose curators have always attempted to represent her historical significance as a decorative artist. 

Lucy Faulkner’s skill in the art of wood engraving is best illustrated by a commission from the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1820-81), who asked her to re-work the woodblock of his title page illustration for a second edition of Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market and Other Poems (1865). With skill and ‘a good deal of trouble’, Lucy Faulkner was able to re-cut the block to alter the chin of the sleeping woman to the right [Fig 4] for which she was paid the sum of £2.  Rossetti wrote to the publisher Macmillan asking him to pay Miss Faulkner for her work, noting ‘She is a professional engraver, & I could not have thought of going to her unless with the idea that she would accept payment’.

Fig 4. Comparison of the title pages to the first and second editions; note the alteration to the chin of the woman on the right.

After their marriage, the Orrinsmiths stayed in Bloomsbury but moved to Great Russell Street, where their eldest daughter, Mabel Kate was born in 1871. By the time their second daughter, Ruth Charlie Orrinsmith (1873-1954) was born two years later, however, the Orrinsmiths had moved out to Beckenham.  It was here that Lucy Orrinsmith produced her best-known work, a volume in Macmillan’s Art at Home Series titled The Drawing Room, which was published in 1877. Writing as ‘Mrs Orrinsmith’, this little book, one in a series of twelve, advises its readers on the decoration and furnishing of the most important room in the Victorian home and, unsurprisingly, promotes with work of Morris & Co., throughout!

After the untimely death of their eldest daughter, who died of diphtheria in December 1880, the Orrinsmiths moved from Beckenham to ‘Sunnybank’, in Christ Church Road, Hampstead; a house that Lucy described as ‘our rather out-of-the-way cottage’ and where their only son, Edward, was born in 1881. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s Mrs Orrinsmith continued to design and make decorative objects.  In 1888, both she and her husband contributed designs to the first exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, held at the New Gallery in Regent Street, which was organised under the presidency of Walter Crane. The catalogue records that ‘Mrs Orrinsmith’ exhibited a book cover for James Burn & Company, and at the second exhibition the following year, ‘Mrs Orrinsmith’ exhibited a design for a mural brass.  In 1893, Gleeson White, editor of The Studio, published a book-cover design by Lucy Orrinsmith in Practical Designing (1893).   A full-page illustration of this design, a repeating motif of acorns and oak leaves, accompanied a chapter ‘On the Preparation of Designs for Book Bindings’ written by her husband.

Widowed in 1904, Lucy Orrinsmith remained in Hampstead until her death in 1910. In contrast, her younger sister, Kate, who did not marry, lived with (and cared for) her mother and brothers in their Queen Square home until her death in 1898. She remained close friends with the Morris and Burne-Jones families.  As Georgina Burne-Jones recalled  

Both sisters shared Faulkner’s own skill of hand, and one of them [Kate], as it proved, was but waiting time and opportunity to develop a power of beautiful ornamental design: friendship with them was a foregone conclusion, and between Kate Faulkner and me there grew up a lifelong intimacy: both Morris and Edward loved her also.

Described by her friend the architect Philip Webb as ‘that excellentissimus of workwomen’, Kate continued to practise as a professional artist, giving her occupation as ‘Fine Art Worker’ in the Census of 1871 and as a ‘Decorative Artist’ in both 1881 and 1891. Working primarily for Morris & Co., she created designs for many decorative objects including ceramic tiles, furnishing fabrics, wallpapers, and carpets. 

Kate also produced several wallpaper designs for Jeffrey & Co., during the 1880s and may have decorated ceramics for Doulton’s.  She is, however, best known for her exquisite gesso-work, decorating several Broadwood pianos to designs by Edward Burne-Jones, most famously the Ionides Piano (1883), which was exhibited at the First Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society Exhibition in 1888. Now on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum, this beautiful object formed part of Morris & Co.’s refurbishment of the home of Alexander Ionides at No. 1 Holland Park. 

While Kate’s gesso-work for Broadwood has been the subject of some discussion, both in the 19^th century and more recently, her fascinating career including her membership of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society from 1893, still requires and deserves further scholarly research. At present, Linda Parry’s final assessment of Kate Faulkner’s work suggests a talent that never reached its full potential.

Kate felt her own responsibilities lay in the care of her mother and brother (whom she nursed for three years before his death in 1891). […] It is interesting to conjecture that Kate Faulkner’s own career would have developed further and more of her attractive designs would be available today had she allowed herself more freedom.

Producing a range of decorative objects and designs for Morris & Co., and other leading manufacturers, Lucy and Kate Faulkner worked at the very centre of the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain. Given that much of it was carried out at their home in Queen Square, it is fitting that they should be remembered among the other 19th century women in Bloomsbury.

Bibliography:

• Burne-Jones, G., Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, 2 volumes, London: Macmillan & Co., 1904Callen, A., Angel in the Studio: Women in the Arts and Crafts Movement 1870 – 1914, London: Astragal Books, 1979
• Crane, W., An Artist’s Reminiscences, London: Methuen & Co., 1907
• Ferry, E., ‘“The other Miss Faulkner”: Mrs Orrinsmith and the Art at Home Series’ , in The Journal of William Morris Studies, Vol. XXIII, No.3 summer 2011, pp. 47-64 
• Ferry, E., ‘Lucy Faulkner and the “ghastly grin”: Re-working the title page illustration to Goblin Market’, in The Journal of William Morris Studies, 18:1, winter 2008, pp. 65-84
• Haskins, H. V., ‘Now You See Them, Now You Don’t: The Critical Reception of Women’s Work at the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society 1888-1916. [PhD Thesis] Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2005
• Myers, R. & H., William Morris Tiles, Shepton Beauchamp: Richard Dennis, 1996
• Parry, L., William Morris Textiles, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd., 1983
• Parry, L., (ed.), William Morris, London: Philip Wilson Ltd., 1996
• Orrinsmith, Mrs L., The Drawing-Room, London: Macmillan & Co., 1877
• Vallance, A., William Morris: His Art, His Writings and His Public Life, London: George Bell & Sons, 1897

Dr Emma Ferry is a design historian who teaches at the University of Gloucestershire She has published several book chapters and articles on Macmillan’s Art at Home series (1876–83) and her research interests relate to Victorian design.

MINI BIOGRAPHIES

Kate Faulkner

Decorator and gilder.

16 October 1841 – 1898

Some Key Achievements and Interests

When ‘The Firm’ Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co was set up by her brother Charles, Peter Paul Marshall and William Morris she was hired, with her sister Lucy, as an amateur craftswoman. As their experience grew and skills developed, they eventually were employed as artists and paid.

Collaborated with other firms than The Firm eg Jeffrey & Co, wallpaper printers, and Stennett, furniture designers based at 23 Wilmot Street, Brunswick Square.

A skilled gesso painter, drew acclaim for her decoration of a grand piano designed by Burne Jones for Alexander Ionides exhibited at the first Arts & Crafts Exhibition in 1888.

Also skilled in wood engraving, embroidery and wallpaper and fabric design.

Issues

Women’s work was often overlooked or overshadowed by their male contemporaries.

Connection to Bloomsbury

Lived at 35 Queen Square, Bloomsbury.

Worked at The Firm’s workshop at 26 Queen Square and in their own home in Queen Square.

Female Networks

Women craftworkers.

Works eg

1879 Bramble (wallpaper)

1879 Mallow (wallpaper)

1883 Grand Piano made by John Broadwood and Sons, decorated by Kate with gold and silver gesso to sketches made by Burne-Jones

1885 Blossom (wallpaper)

Further Reading

Faulkner, Kate; Kate Faulkner – Wikipedia

Lucy Faulkner Orrinsmith

(Lucy Jane Faulkner) – after her marriage she sometimes signed her work LJF or LF)

Tile painter, engraver, designer.

16 November 1839  – 1910

Education

Some Key Achievements and Interests

When ‘The Firm’ Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co was set up by her brother Charles, Peter Paul Marshall and William Morris she was hired, with her sister Kate, as an amateur craftswoman. As their experience grew and skills developed, they eventually were employed as artists and paid.

Best known for tile painting of fairy tales and legends.

Became one of the first of the managers of The Firm.

Issues

Changed her name on marriage and some of her work was incorrectly attributed to her sister.

Connection to Bloomsbury

Lived at 35 Queen Square, Bloomsbury.

Worked at The Firm’s workshop at 26 Queen Square and in their own home in Queen Square.

Female Networks

Dinah Mulock Craik,Georgina Burne-Jones, Morris familyhttps://www.pascal-theatre.com/biographies/may-morris/ and craftswomen at The Firm.

Works

Tile paintings eg

1864-5 Sleeping Beauty.

1863-4 Beauty & The Beast.

Writing:

1877 The Drawing Room: Its Decorations and Furniture about drawing room decoration.

Further Reading

Ferry, Emma; ‘Lucy Faulkner and the ‘Ghastly Grin’ Reworking the title page illustration to Goblin Market; The Journal of William Morris Studies; 200520_6930 Ferry Publisher.pdf (ntu.ac.uk)

Ferry, Emma; ‘The other Miss Faulkner’: Lucy Orrinsmith and the ‘Art at Home Series’; Journal of William Morris Studies • Vol. 19 No. 2 p. 47-64 ‘The Other Miss Faulkner’: Lucy Orrinsmith and the ‘Art at Home Series’ (morrissociety.org)

Orrinsmith Lucy Faulkner, Lucy Faulkner Orrinsmith – Wikipedia