Experience: ‘I live as William Morris for three months a year’

I have spent the first three months of the past six years trying to become the 19th-century designer and activist William Morris. I grow my hair and beard to look like him, while immersing myself in his work.

On 24 March – his birthday – I dress as Morris and finish the quarter with some kind of absurd performance to highlight pressing social issues that he was concerned about, and that I want more people to focus on today.

I first came up with the idea in 2020, but I had been reading and thinking about Morris for nearly a decade.

Like Morris, I’m a middle-class artist and designer. And, also like him, I’m a compromised socialist. In 2020, after taking a five-year career break to look after my kids while my wife went back to work, I was 37 and feeling conflicted about returning to the art world. Throughout my life, I have wanted to create work with a social purpose. Yet the only way to make a decent living out of art is by operating in the high-end market.

Researching Morris inspired me. He dedicated most of his life to creating a socialist movement in the UK – but he also said he felt conflicted about “ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich”. He made objects using natural materials and gave craftspeople some autonomy, so his products always ended up too expensive for most people.

I was worried I would have the same experience when it came to making my own socially conscious art. But Morris gave me comfort. He was privileged like me, and yet he dedicated himself to the arts and to social purposes such as socialism. He provided a guide for me to get back into my artistic practice.

Each 1 January, I begin my Morris quarter by rereading his 1890 novel News from Nowhere. I read his other works, too, and try to build skill sets he had. I’ve had singing lessons to sing his socialist chants, made prints on his letter press in his house in Hammersmith, west London, and designed wallpaper based on the River Lea. Morris knew the river well and named one of his patterns after it. I’ve also made socialist flags in Leyton, east London, where his mum lived while Morris was at Oxford.

I’ve even attempted to write poetry. He was most famous in his lifetime for being a poet – he turned down the poet laureateship. I have also learned embroidery from my mother and taught it to my children. Morris taught his daughter, May, to embroider, and she became one of the greatest craftspeople in Britain.

I get some funny comments when I drop my kids off at school dressed as Morris. Otherwise, no one where I live – in Hackney, east London – ever gives me a second glance, as big beards and hair, and Victorian suits are trendy here.

My children think what I do is very funny, while my wife hates my beard and can’t wait for me to shave it off. But I intend to keep my Morris quarter going for ever.

Each year, my finale performance is different. This year, I created a digital plum orchard in Trafalgar Square, because Morris envisaged an actual orchard there in News from Nowhere. The novel is set in the year 2102, where everyone lives in an eco-utopia.

Another time, I went fishing for salmon in the Thames, dressed in a Victorian workwear suit like Morris, because there is a famous sketch of him fishing in the Thames by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In News from Nowhere, the river is healthy enough for salmon to live in, but there’s no chance of finding salmon there today. Last year, I gave one of his speeches and flew a red handmade socialist flag at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow for his birthday.

Sometimes it’s just me and my camera operator; other times, as many as 50 people have turned up.

I do it to amplify Morris as an individual, because I see him as a brilliant guide to the ridiculous times we live in. And I do it because we live in ridiculous times: it’s a ridiculous thing to do.

Becoming Morris has made me feel more confident about my position in the world – that it’s OK to be an artist with a social purpose, and in fact it’s more needed than ever. It gives me a feeling of solace and validity. It helps me carry on.

As told to Donna Ferguson

Do you have an experience to share? Email [email protected]