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 
he 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- 
ceeded, 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—‘ 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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