Morris Quarter

Every year, Freddie Yauner undertakes an “homage to William Morris from 1st January to 24th March (Morris’s birthday), where he attempts to ‘become’ William Morris whilst making new works.”

It’s an art project. He calls it his “Morris Quarter” — three months spent living under the guise and driven by the ethics of William Morris — which reminds me of a scene in Nathan Barley where a trendy magazine editor has an “Ape Hour.”

I do like the idea of trying to “become” someone else though, of living in homage so thoroughly. It offers a sort of escape. Escape the self, escape even this century, by living in a semi-delusional state for personal pleasure and for the common good.

“I begin my Morris quarter by rereading [Morris’] 1890 novel News from Nowhere,” he tells the Guardian, 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 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.

Eccentricity is good. In this case, it offers Yauner a self-made and good-humoured escape hatch into a life of collective-minded creativity.

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