The William Morris Society in the United States is pleased to announce that the 2023 Joseph R. Dunlap Memorial Fellowship has been awarded to Dr. Lindsay Wells (Postdoctoral Fellow, the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA) and the 2023 William Morris Society Award to Dr. Stefanie John (Lecturer and Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of English and American Studies, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany).
The Dunlap Fellowship will support Dr. Wells as she undertakes research for her book project Evergreen Empire: Plants, Power, and Race in Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Art. Her research will take her to two of the largest archives of nineteenth-century British nursery catalogs in the United States – the Massachusetts Horticultural Society Library in Wellesley, MA and the L.H. Bailey Hortorium Catalogue Collection at Cornell University – which she will analyze alongside Morris’s wallpaper, textile, and stained glass designs. This investigate will contribute to her discussion of how Morris and his contemporaries responded to the influx of new flowers from abroad during the nineteenth century, and how Morris in particular contributed to debates in the Victorian art world about whether or not foreign plants merited a place in British visual culture.
William Morris, ‘Woodpecker’ tapestry, 1885. William Morris Gallery.
The William Morris Society Award, meanwhile, will support Dr. John as she undertakes a UK study trip as part of her book project Decorative Materialities: Textile Objects in British Literature at the Fin de Siècle. Her research will focus on Morris’s “Verses for Pictures” from Poems by the Way, which were used on tapestries and embroideries and revolve around nature-inspired themes, and she will visit the British Library to view editions of Poems by the Way and the Victoria and Albert Museum and the William Morris Gallery to study tapestries which use or interplay with “Verses for Pictures.”
The William Morris Society in the United States is proud to support a variety of new work on William Morris and his circle every year through these awards and undergraduate essay and art prizes. Find out more about our fellowship and prize program here.