morris - the red house

Red House -- one of the most important 19th century English homes and the experimental paintbox of the pioneers of the arts and crafts movement -- opens to the public this week after 140 years in private ownership. Described by painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti as "more a poem than a house," the realized utopian vision of Victorian writer, designer and political activist William Morris is a spectacular reflection of the ideals of a man who insisted that homes should contain nothing that isn't beautiful.

Supported by a brotherhood of heritage-minded organizations, the UK's National Trust splashed out £2 million in January 2003 to purchase the turreted South East London residence, now incongruously surrounded by nondescript suburban developments. The Trust is working hard to return the red-brick, red-tiled building and its magnificent walled garden to their original 1859 look, but it's a work in progress that's expected to take at least two years.

The organic restoration is something Morris would have appreciated. He commissioned Red House when he was just 25-years-old as a home for himself and his young bride, Jane Burden, the Pre-Raphaelite uber-muse who appears in dozens of dreamy Victorian paintings. While architect Philip Webb designed the lay-out, Morris gave his artistic friends free-reign on the interiors. Experimenting with a romantic ideal of medievalism, Morris, Webb, Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones conceived a radically new country house that was both cosy and highly decorative.

Creating zigzag patterned doors, curlicue stained-glass windows and rustic built-in furniture with heroic painted panels, the young designers developed skills they later used to found Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co., one of the most influential design firms of the late 19th century, whose wallpaper patterns are still popular today. And even though Morris lived in his dream home for just five years -- business pressures meant he had to sell it quickly -- it was the only house he ever built for himself and he he always regarded it as his favourite residence.

Designed in an L-shape to fit in with the orchards that surrounded the site, Morris's team envisioned steep, multi-level overhanging roofs and a wide variety of round, arched and hooded windows. At a time when stucco was de rigeur, the use of bricks and roof tiles was unconventional, and the bold attempt to fully integrate the house with its garden raised eyebrows in polite society.

The garden's striking well, a solid brick-and-beam construction that echoes the house with its own tiled roof, looks like a fanciful Victorian folly but is believed to have worked during Morris's time.