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Boxwood Productions.
57 minutes; Available from Films for the Humanities and Sciences at 800-257-5126 or www.films.com.
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA 50613-0362, U.S.A. E-mail: ballast@netins.net


William Morris was one of the most far-reaching figures in design history-by his work as well as his waistline. He was, as Max Beerbohm once quipped, "a wonderful all-round man, but the act of walking round him always tired me." It was his ample girth and his mop of unkempt curly hair that earned him the moniker "Topsy," which was based on the name of the orphan slave girl in Uncle Tom's Cabin, who, when asked where she thought she had come from, replied, "I 'spect I grow'd." Written and narrated (with delightful hand gestures) by British art historian Douglas Skeggs, this film biography of the father of the Arts and Crafts Movement is simply superb, or, as Morris might say, it's a "stunner." In a voice that engages as well as informs, it uses vintage photographs, drawings, literary excerpts, interviews with scholars, and, of particular value, filmed sojourns to the actual sites that were central to his life, among them Oxford University, Red House, Kelmscott Manor, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Within those contexts, the astonishing breadth of his work is discussed in such design-related categories as embroidery, furniture, stained glass, wallpapers, murals, wood engravings, illumination, calligraphy, textiles, typography, and printed books; as well as more than 90 books of prose and poetry; and his work as a social reformer. Nothing is omitted, not even his uncontrollable amnesiac rages, and the affairs of his strange and unfortunate wife, who, as he painfully knew, was the lover of his old friend and business partner, the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. (Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 16, No. 1, Autumn 2000.)