Si je puis*

* If I can -

William Morris's motto, seen below in a stained glass window 
at Red House, the home he had designed for him 
by Philip Webb, when he was only 26.

'The beautifullest place on earth,' said Edward Burne-Jones.

It was set in the middle of a Kentish orchard, 

sited so that apples fell in at the windows 

as they stood open on hot autumn nights.

The only items that Morris would buy for the house 
were Persian carpets and Delft china, 
so it became the focus of intense communal effort by Webb, 

who designed tables, chairs, cupboards, shelves, candlesticks, 

fireirons, catches and hinges;

Morris and his wife Jane, who embroidered hangings, 
frescoed ceilings, hand painted tiles, 
painted cupboard doors and stained glass, 
(but not the birds -

Webb had to do those for him);

 and Rossetti and Burne-Jones who supplied stained glass and paintings.

Rossetti said that it was,
'more a poem than a house, but admirable to live in too.'
In truth it was too hot in the west-facing kitchen in summer, 
and too cold with its north facing aspect in winter -
not helped by the inadequate size of the coal cellar.


Sadly, the house was only home for six years.
The plan to build two more wings 
to accommodate the Burne-Jones family
never materialised and financial problems meant 
that he had to sell in 1865 for £1800 - 
well short of the £4000 that it had cost to build.
He never visited the Red House again.

Despite the unhappiness occasioned by 
his wife Jane's long affair with Rossetti
I prefer to think of the early happy times
 when he would drive three miles through the
rose-hung lanes of woody Kent, 
in the wagonette designed by Webb, 
to collect his friends from the station
for a weekend of house decorating, 
bowls in the garden, hide and seek 
and singing round the piano.

His 'can do' attitude to life should be an inspiration
and instead of my usual lament 'tempus fugit',
it might be as well to adopt the more galvanising
' ars longa, vita brevis' in future.