GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



The coal-tar dyes had wrought havoc with what I may call the 

 palette, of the textile artist and Morris, wishing to return to the 

 disused vegetable dyes, carried his researches back even to the 

 age of Pliny, and many old Herbals notably Gerarde's, to which 

 I have elsewhere referred, and which was a favourite of his boy- 

 hood gave him substantial help. 



Morris's first experiments with the dye vats were all made with 

 his own hand, with the help of an errand boy from his glass-painting 

 workshop. Want of space in London soon compelled him to 

 continue his experimental efforts for a time at Leek in Derbyshire 

 but neither carpet nor silk-weaving could be carried on on any 

 considerable scale, until he was able later to set up dye-works of 

 his own at Merton Abbey. His greatest difficulty was experienced 

 in his attempt to revive the almost lost art of Indigo dyeing, and 

 Prussian Blue had taken its place in the manufacture of textiles, 

 long before the introduction of aniline dyes. This was because 

 success in the preparation of indigo was so exceedingly uncertain ; 

 if the exact moment when fermentation has reached a certain point 

 be missed, the vat becomes useless, and as it is said that scientific 

 tests cannot be employed, the dyer, in order to judge when that 

 moment has arrived, has only experience, and his own keen sense 

 of smell, to guide him. Even after the first processes have suc- 

 ceededj the yarn must not be allowed, in the act of dipping, to 

 come in contact with the air. In an essay on dyeing, Morris himself 

 says " that the setting of the blue vat is a ticklish job, and re- 

 quires, I should say, more experience than any other dyeing pro- 

 cess," but to a man of Morris's temperament this difficulty became 

 only an incentive to further effort and we are told that at the 

 time his hands were always " unwashably blue." 



But not alone dyeing, but everything else that was done or 

 made in his workshops, he had first learnt to do himself. After a 

 visit to the Low Countries as early as 1856, he had adopted or 

 modified for his personal use, John Van Eyck's motto 1 ' Als ich 

 kanne" ' If I can" and in an early prose romance in which 

 he half-consciously describes himself, he says, " I could soon find 

 out whether a thing were possible or not to me ; then if it were 

 not, I threw it away for ever, never thought of it again, no regret, 

 no longing for that ; it was past and over to me ; but if it were 

 possible, and I made up my mind to do it, then and there I began 



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