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William Morris, Cultural Leadership, and the Dynamics of Taste

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2011

Charles Harvey ,
Jon Press  and
Mairi Maclean
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Abstract

This examination of the social processes that inform cultural production asks how tastes are formed, transmitted, embedded, and reproduced across generations. These questions are explored through a study of William Morris, his working methods and products, and their impact on the decorative arts in Victorian Britain and beyond. Through the exercise of cultural leadership, Morris gave physical expression to the ideals and sentiments of Romanticism, and this in turn gave rise to a community of taste reaching across class boundaries and generations. Morrisian products and designs, through the agency of his disciples, became institutionally embedded, emblematic of refinement and good taste. A process model of taste formation is deployed to explore the economic and social dynamics at work in the Morris case and more generally.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 85 , Issue 2 , Summer 2011 , pp. 245 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2011

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