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William Morris has entered into the history of art during the second half of the 19th century, not only as an artist-ornamentalist, but also as the preacher of a new aesthetics. Morris believed that subject matters concerning the interior should represent art synthesis and should be rationally functional by using the specific properties of a material, and wished to aid the introduction of art into the houses of every person. With this objective William Morris in 1861 opened the firm «Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.», later simplified to Morris & Co. in which household goods such as furniture and fabrics were made, including wall-papers, ceramics, glass, stained-glass windows, carpets and runners. The firm enlisted gifted artists who entered into association known as “the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood” including Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, Phillip Webb and Walter Crane.

Through the activity of the firm Morris & Co. Morris proved to be a talented artist-?rnamentalist. Researcher Edward Cullinan, in his article, “Wallpapers of Morris”, writes the following, “He has addressed the creation of ornamental wall-papers, ceramics and fabrics, and he accomplished it extremely inventively and individually. He became the main supporter of “small” arts, instead of a minor expert in the field of fine arts – in the sphere of painting .”

William Morris by using an innovative style solves the problem of interrelation of an ornament with a material and a subject surface, and the unity of motives of the nature and laws of ornamental construction. His ornaments do not only create an artistic image of subject matters, but are also a demonstration of morphogenesis, an organic part of a design. The products which left the company Morris & Co. became collectors works and assisted in raising the status of arts and crafts of the XIX century. In them the ornamental structure is definitely connected with the design of subject matters. Sometimes this communication with a design passes to a higher level when the ornament forms a part of the subject matter, thus keeping the decorative function.

The Firm Morris & Co. made simple and fitting products using a form which gave an aspiration to revive beauty within material. An ornamental decor which was not free from the touch of stylization in the spirit of samples of Medieval and Eastern Art, interpreted forms and the energy derived from vegetation and fauna. William Morris, with the creation of subject matters both decoratively and in applied art, reveals and emphasizes that art means the nature and the import of a material, and he develops the connection of design and decor for works in practice. In the creation of subject matters in daily use, in the opinion of Morris, high class experts, being both handicraftsmen and creators of art at the same time, by not dividing art on “high” and “applied” principles, should participate. William Morris assisted in the introduction of art criteria in the manufacture of mass consumer goods. He aspired to overcome the division between so-called “pure art” and what might be called a household object. In Morris’ decorative effect we can see the basic means of updating art as a whole. Decorative effect for Morris is first of all ornamentalism. He developed new ornaments in which coiling, whimsically intertwining lines became a distinctive feature of his style that rendered a further dramatic effect on the formation of a “floral” and modernist style.

The studying of nature and art heritage of the past and its decorative features has allowed Morris to create his own ornamental style - arbitrarily- graphic and linear, which he uses to motivate his images. In the creation of ornaments, as a rule, vegetation motifs were less frequent than the zoomorphic images of birds. All his ornaments had certain measure of reserve, with the stylization having a visual similarity to natural prototypes. Ornamental motifs provided the artist a degree of transformation from which natural images are easily recognized.

The principle of the arbitrarily-graphic result of Morris’ ornaments was developed on the basis of a set measure of reserve which defines interpretation by the artist of the basic structural elements of an ornament. Morris’ stylization of vegetative forms has given its ornaments organic art integrity, not only within the whole ornamental system, but also in the context of the subject matters of the furniture, fabrics, ceramics and interior. “Apparently from his numerous beautiful wall-papers and textile draperies he was the talented designer of a vegetative ornament, but he always considered that the completed form of the specific pattern executed in the material for which it is intended was unique, thus never necessitating the need to show preliminary sketches or working sketches”, W. Crane in his research “William Morris to Whistler” states that Morris’ ornamental works testify to the extraordinary latitude of talent of the artist. His ornaments are executed in many materials and mediums; in ceramics, in embroidery, a heeltap, in paper, in weaving, a tree. The arbitrarily- graphic principle of ornaments Morris developed because of the type of art, - as the artist considered, - should more likely be associative, than simulating. Here it is impossible to duplicate nature from all that is around us. Apparently, his ornaments show not only “a small fraction of the nature which they themselves represent, but also the whole that fraction” a quote from F. Clark in his research, “Morris William”. Morris stylized natural forms with a certain measure of reserve, for example, a daisy, an artichoke dragonhead, a tulip, a lily, but he avoided limiting non eye catching forms. Thus, by keeping recognition of an image, it informs it wider semantic value by connecting a varied circle of aesthetic associations. In accenting a method of supply of picture rapport, William Morris declares distinctive properties in ornamental handwriting, expressed by the raised decorative effect of a composition, and in interpretation of vegetative forms as arbitrarily-ornamental patterns.

The structural elements used by William Morris during creation of an arbitrarily-graphic principle, are traditional elements of art and ornament; they include a line, a composition and colour. However their art judgment and aesthetic interpretation is directly connected with understanding of the ornament within Morris, in which he finds a measure of free interface to the active natural form and submission to its ornamental plan, with the inevitable message of an idea of abstraction. It is important to pay special attention to the fact that William Morris in his ornamental work develops principles of decorative reserve, based on interpretation of natural forms. In the treatment of vegetative motives he emphasizes their natural structure, brings into focus their internal structure, thus giving to the ornamental forms a greater decorative effect.

William Morris in the creation of ornaments leaned towards the two-dimensional nature of a plane. His works are one of the best and proper examples of design. Within his works the pattern never crosses the borders of the specific character, finding neither excessive three dimensionality nor abstract symbolics. In his ornaments there are no illusory effects of volume and space and motives are developed arbitrarily, flatly and decoratively. The compositional treatment of the ornamental motives of Morris reveal structuring of natural forms. For this purpose the artist applied the principle of graphic reserve. Lowering detailed botanical characteristics from their natural form, he expressed, hidden from direct supervision, not only structural features, but also displayed, for example, conditions of growth and movement.

The linear principle in the expertise of Morris contributes to revealing the decorative possibilities of a line and its participation in the image structure of an ornament. It is applied because the compositional decision on some ornaments is based on the equality of a line and its background. This was displayed in the elegant vegetative stylizations of forms. The principles laid out by William Morris, were so important for the modernist style, that later Victor Orta would say: “ I will leave a stalk, and the leaves I will throw out ”, emphasizing the special role in art of the modernist style.

Graphic quality, which was always inherent in his ornaments, is connected by “the geometry of a pattern, which - as considered by Morris, - relieves us of a feeling of restless persistence which can be present in an ornament otherwise” – Henderson. Ph. in “William Morris. His Life, work and friends.” (London). Sometimes linearity is organized in the works of Morris through geometrical clarity, Gothic Rigidity and clearness of details. The lines practically dominate in all his ornaments.

In respect of the occasioning of a line as the important expressive means in an ornament, William Morris said the following: “The Certain form outlined by a precise border, is absolutely necessary for the quality for any ornament … Naturalness of growth is necessary for any pattern, natural progress should be seen in an implied sense and amongst repeating patterns, the most noble - where one grows from another visibly and is inevitable... Even if the line has terminated, it should look as if it could grow beyond all bounds if it have continued”. Such principle of the continuity of the curved line, including, stylization of natural forms and their plain treatment have been laid out in William Morris’s ornamental art and have developed further in the work of artists of a mature modernist style.