Two pieces of Victorian engineering

I visited the Eiffel Tower recently. It was my first visit. I was staggered by this wonderful piece of 19th century engineering. The design is truly iconic but strangely was deeply unpopular when first erected. However its status is beyond question. Over 200 million people have visited since it was opened in 1889. Closer to home there is an engineering triumph of the period equally as impressive as M Eiffel construction and its birthplace was Oakamoor.

In the Victorian period Thomas Bolton’s of Oakamoor manufactured submarine telegraph cables. During the 1850s they were involved in several schemes but the greatest engineering challenge was to lay a transatlantic cable. The Atlantic Telegraph Company was formed to lay a cable from North America to Europe by 1862. And Bolton’s who were contracted to quickly produce the copper cable needed.

The first cable was produced at Oakamoor works in 1856. Over 108 tons of copper was used to produce 20,000 miles of cable within 5 months. It was eventually laid and connected and a message between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan of the US was transmitted on 17 August 1858.  However technical difficulties such as poor conductivity led to only intermittent use.

Undaunted, Bolton’s continued to perfect there manufacturing techniques. In September 1863 a new order for 200 tons of copper wire was placed for a second Atlantic cable. Brunel’s Great Eastern ship was hired to lay the cable and on 27 July 1866 the laying was completed.

Almost immediately, the cable opened for business but only the rich could afford it -- the initial rates were a startling 10 shillings a letter at a time that a monthly wage for a labourer was a few £s

As with the overland cables, undersea cables were laid rapidly. Within 20 years there were 107,000 miles of undersea cables linking in the first global communication. The original cables stopped working in the 1870s but by this time four other cables were laid. It is interesting to note that even though later cables could carry large numbers of signals at the same time, it was not until the 1960s that the first communication satellites offered a serious alternative to the cable the development of which owes something to the workers of Oakamoor

Banking Crisis 1873

The present economic turmoil has led people to look at previous economic crashes with particular interest shown in the depression of the 1930s. In reality what has to go back to the late 19th century to denote a recession as deep and long as this one. The Banking Panic of 1873, which began  the world wide Great Depression that lasted 20 years, bears many similarities with the present economic crisis and it was a North Staffordshire born man- Henry Clews- was deeply involved in the drama

 The son of a Cobridge potter he arrived in America in 1853 and started out as a clerk in a firm of wool importers. After few years, he tried to become a stockbroker but his efforts to gain admittance to Wall Street’s inner circle were snubbed until 1857

Clews became responsible for the marketing of the US debt during the Civil War. The reward for the political advice that he gave General Ulysses S Grant during his presidential campaigns was the conventional one: He was offered a role in Government. However he too was engulfed in the Panic of 1873

 The roots of the Bank fright were based on an expansion of credit; land speculation and lack of controls rather like today

The panic here started on a Thursday, Sept. 18th, when a major bank collapsed the result of speculation in an ill-conceived railway development. The bank suspended payment on the notes it had issued akin to declaring bankruptcy. The announcement was devastating to American finance houses.

The following Sunday President Grant came to New York, spending the day in consultation with, Henry Clews and other prominent business men to effect a solution. Businessmen flocked to the Fifth Avenue Hotel declaring that unless the government came to the rescue nothing could save the country from ruin. Of the country's 364 railroads, 89 went bankrupt following the crash. A total of 18,000 businesses failed. Unemployment reached 14% by 1876. Construction work halted, wages were cut, and real estate values and corporate profits vanished. One of the casualties of the crash was Clew’s own bank
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Clews bounced back in just four years. By 1877, he had paid his debts and formed Henry Clews & Co, eventually taking over the entire space of the Mills Building opposite the stock exchange, an edifice that still exists today. From then on, Clews prospered as an investment banker and came to be known, like Warren Buffett is known today, as ‘The Sage of Wall Street.

Shame

Someone told me about an incident from over a hundred years ago that happened at the Powis Arms in Wetley Rocks. The publican had been carrying out an affair and the women of the community had decided to subject the miscreant to “rough music” a type of community humiliation. Pots and kettles were beaten and catcalls were directed against the man to shame him. A similar incident crops up in Lark Rise to Candleford.  The ceremony might also include the riding of the victim upon a pole or a donkey; masking and dancing ... mime or street drama upon a car or platform; the miming of a ritual hunt; or the parading and burning of effigies; or, indeed, various combinations of all these. But the purpose of “rough music” was to inflict upon people shame for violating the standards of the community

Whatever happened to the notion of shame? The reason I ask is that an incident in the recent election is seared into my memory. I attempted to give a leaflet to a man who rather rudely rebuffed me in a very superior way. I later found out that the man had been found guilty of a serious sexual crime. How could it be that such an individual should adapt such a haughty way with me given the nature of his crime? At one end of the scale there are people supposedly on incapacity benefits running marathons, and what a Councillor in Stoke who got returned for his ward regularly despite downloading child pornography. At the other end there are Members of the House of Lords who resume their seats after being imprisoned for fraud and Lord Archer who effortlessly moves from chokey to fundraising for the Tory Party- what is going on?  

There was a time when public figures who had misbehaved, or simply made serious mistakes, went off quietly, and without complaint.

The Tory Cabinet Minister John Profumo, who resigned in 1963 over a scandal involving the prostitute Christine Keeler, devoted much of the rest of his life to good works in London’s East End

Today the only thing our society tells us to be ashamed of, it seems, is shame itself.

Do you remember Feb 1957?

 Earth tremors hit the area on Tuesday 12th February at 3.45 in the afternoon. The force of the quake caused the office of the Post and Times to rock and light fittings swung. A woman in Abbots Road was flung from her chair, passengers on a bus on Blackshaw Moor were shaken and perhaps Fred Bailey of Alder House, Endon experienced the luckiest escape when a 9-foot chimney stack collapsed at the back of the house. No one was injured although Keele University seismic unit recorded the movement of the earth. Students of the geology of the area would not have been surprised, as earth tremors in the area have been recorded since the 16th century. In September 1777 James Boswell the biographer of Doctor Johnson witnessed an earthquake when he stopped in Leek on the way to visit Johnson in Ashbourne. The intensity of the quake led to the congregation of St Edward’s Church running into the streets.

 Leek’s welcomed its only Hungarian refugee who began work as a textile technologist at the Churnet Works. The 38 year old man had escaped into Austria with his two small boys and his wife following the failure of the uprising against occupying Soviet forces the previous October. The Hungarians had suffered much repression since the end of the Second World War with 1 in 3 of the population falling foul of the authorities. The revolt against the Communist regime was bloodily crushed and many fled including the Leek man's family. A local Councillor Gilbert Tatton helped the unnamed man find work and he was looking to bring his family from London to Leek. He was lodging in Beggars Lane.

 The newspaper celebrated the work of the local rural postman. It focused on Fred Ward who was not only a joiner but also a school caretaker, wheelwight, painter and village postman in Meerbrook. Fred who had been doing the job for 24 years was a very fit 64-year-old. He had to be as delivering letters meant a 12-20 mile walk visiting 35 farms daily. Fred was a feature of the landscape and local farmers sang his praises. He carried out other tasks for the farmers, which were not part of his official duties such as passing on messages. One farmer thought that he deserved a medal for his efforts. Fred Ward seemed to be a model of public service, an integral part of the community. Post Office of 2013 take note.

 An intriguing lecture was given by Rev Daniel Rashid the vicar of Onecote at the Swan in Leek. The vicar was unusual, as he was a convert from Islam. He spoke on his former religion to the local Rotary Club giving an in depth analysis of the history of Islam and the role of the prophet Mohammed. We now live in an age of mutual suspicion between Islam and the West and its worth noting that in 1956 the British, French and Israel had been involved in conflict with a Muslim country Egypt. It is interesting why the Vicar abandoned his previous religion and the pressures he might have faced in doing so.

 Ridgways of Longton had a large advert in the Post and Times featuring the makes of motor bike they were selling. The names were a roll call of a great industry. Recall these names and weep at the fate of British manufacturing since the 1950s: - BSA, Triumph, Royal Enfield, Frances Barnett, Vincent, James and Douglas.

 On the subject of 50s icons one was appearing at the Majestic James Dean in “Rebel without a cause”. The film had already legendary status amongst teenagers and the newspaper recognised the mythical impact that the dead film star- he had died 18 months previously- had on the youth of the area

Miners

One piece of data that caught my eye in the report of the findings of the 2011 UK census was the state of the coal mining industry. The mining and quarrying industry as a whole employs 46,478 people, which is down 12,913 on 2001 figure.

The decline of the coal mining industry has been well documented but it comes as a shock to see the extent of the fall. The coal industry reached its peak in 1913, when 280 million tons were produced, of which 90 million were exported. The industry employed 1.3 million men and boys.

The Staffordshire Moorlands had worked coal seams in Cheadle, Biddulph and even at Quanford. Even the names of places speak of the  presence of mining in the area. I was driving toward Cheddleton and drove down Coalpit Lane, which followed down from Wetley Moor. Small coal pits existed around the moor.

Conditions were dreadful for much of the time until nationalisation in the late 1940s, but an insight into what people had to put up with can be gauged by an account of a local Miner writing during a strike in 1892

“I have been a miner for 30 years. At 12 I was sent down the pit and did not see the light from one weekend to another. My wages started at 7d a day. The mines were owed by Mr Bateman who was very kind but paid low wages. There was no union and everyone was frightened of Mr Bateman and no one dared to ask for more. Many a time I have come home from work scarcely able to put one leg in front of another and milk and meal was all my widowed mother could afford. My father was killed when I was very young working in the 8-foot seam at Williamson’s.

Times have changed since then but if it were not for the Combination we would be back in those “ good old days”. We are blamed for trying to protect our wages, but no one says a word against the masters protecting their capital. We have a good a right to look after ourselves as anyone else. Some people think that the colliers are getting a great deal of money, but those making such fuss would not like to exchange work and wages with them”

1930s- the Gathering Storm

In 1934 the Bradford born writer and play write JB Priestley came to Stoke as he journeyed around researching a book that described Britain in the 1930s. He had seen the new industries that were opening up in the South of England and he was obviously aware of the huge textile mills of Yorkshire and Lancashire and now he was in the Potteries to document the area for posterity. He was not impressed by the physical geography of the area. The region was an unrelentingly grim one, an ugly work a day place. He could not find a City Centre only a collection of small towns full of mean houses in equally mean streets. What intrigued Priestley used to the gaunt vastness of the factories of the West Riding was the littleness of the factories and the major public buildings. It reminded him of Lilliput. The smoke belching out of the bottle kilns were in his opinion a monstrous intrusion on the landscape.

The Potteries were for him as a man himself from the provinces was that he found it insular, self-contained and within the newly created City Of Stoke on Trent there was little to raise the spirits.

However he was fascinated by the pottery industry as he saw as still essentially a craft industry with a contented workforce. It was still dominated by small family run companies. But one point that the Yorkshire man made was that a place like Stoke was “ no place to be idle in” “For a potter must either be in work or in misery”

Priestley ended his piece by hoping that “one day Stoke on Trent would emerge a real city, spacious and gay, high and white”

 Priestley was not the only well-known writer in the area in the 1930s. It was something of a vogue for writers to travel into the depressed industrial areas to judge for themselves the misery and poverty. In 1936 George Orwell the public school educated scion of colonial public servants came through North Staffordshire on his way to Lancashire. He had been commissioned to write a piece of extended reportage on the social conditions in the north of England. The research would eventually produce “The Road to Wigan Pier”. Orwell being an observant writer picked up material that he hoped to use latter in the book as he progressed northwards. He passed through the area on foot in February 1936. It was bitterly cold as he came through Hanley and Burslem. He noted in his journal that the streets were full of poorly dressed and desolate looking people. The shops looked meagre and were scantily provisioned.

 Orwell stayed a night at the Youth Hostel beside Rudyard Lake. The lake was frozen over and ice had formed into blocks which gave off a clanking sound as they collided into one another. Cigarette packets bobbed up and down amongst the ice floes and Orwell felt it was one of the most depressing images he had ever witnessed. The Youth Hostel was freezing and lit only by candles. It was so cold that he thawed his hands over a fire in the morning to get warm. He walked on towards Macclesfield arriving in Manchester penniless by the evening. He pawned his scarf and spent the night in a doss house before meeting people who put him in contact with people from Wigan.

Both men were drawn to Stoke as even then it was considered an area that had the history of being dominated by one industry and was finding it difficult in adapting to the new economic conditions of the time.

In October 1929, the collapse of the Stock Market in New York heralded the Great Depression. The ensuing American economic recession shook the world: World trade contracted prices fell and governments faced financial crisis as the supply of credit dried up. Many countries adopted an emergency response to the crisis by erecting trade barriers which worsened the crisis by further hindering global trade.

The effects on the industrial areas of Britain were immediate and devastating, as demand for British products collapsed. By the end of 1930, unemployment had more than doubled from 1 million to 2.5 million and exports had fallen in value by 50%. Government revenues contracted as national income fell while the cost of assisting the jobless rose. The industrial areas were hardest hit, along with the mining districts. London and the south-east of England were hurt least. The political centre of the country was therefore most remote from the impact of the recession..

In Stoke in the worst year of the recession 1932 30% of those employed in the pottery industry were unemployed. The situation did improve during the decade and by 1936 the proportion did fall by to 17%. The area remained depressed and unemployment remained an intractable problem. Lowering tariffs and imports from other parts of the world continued to put the Pottery industry under the greatest of pressure. The courage and stoicism of the Potters suffering from the Coalition Governments indifference was noted by the Daily News in August 1932

And never has the true kindness been manifested than today, sharply silhouetted as it is against the background of industrial gloom

Frankly the Potters admit that the land flowing with protectionist milk and honey is not theres. Long as it been promised them. Their fathers had waited in vain to posses it and found it a barren desert. Indeed under the Government some of the oasis that was already there’s has been despoiled by the enemy.
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Under such circumstances it was understandable that people might look to the political extremes and the 30s offered a number of choices to those looking at the edges of politics.. Oswald Mosley believed himself the man for the moment. The Leader of the British Union of  which were  also known as the Blackshirts from their clothing believed his time had arrived.

Mosley knew North Staffordshire well. He spent some of his child hood at Rolleston Hall near Uttoxeter. A First World War hero much was expected of Mosley whose dashing good looks and political connections marked him out as potential Prime Ministerial material. He was a man in a hurry and despised the existing political structure having been a Conservative MP and then joining Labour where he became a Birmingham MP entering the cabinet of the Labour Government in 1929. He was desperate to do something about unemployment and published the Mosley memorandum in 1930, which advocated public works and increased borrowing to finance the programme. The Labour Party leadership rejected it and Mosley resigned the Labour Party in disgust. By the early 1930s he was looking across to Italy and the fascist state of Mussolini as inspiration to start a new political party- the British Union of Fascists to tackle many of the social problems that beset Britain.

Stoke on Trent was one of his power bases. He was assisted in this by his first wife Lady Cynthia Mosley MP for Stoke in the late 1920s and adored by many local people for charm. The City became the location for an early meeting of the British Union of Fascists. An well-advertised meeting was held in the King’s Hall in Stoke in October 1932. On the night of the meeting a packed hall listened intently as Mosley explained the objects of the BUF. In Government he laid before the country a set of ideas to meet an emergency but the established parties would not accept them. These ideas ‘had now been developed into a permanent programme, and a political system and philosophy of life which he believed could save the future of this country’. Mosley was always a mesmerising speaker
The party did well and recruited many members in the early part of the decade. The first BUF branch headquarters in Stoke-on-Trent was at 84 Normacot Road, Longton, opened in October 1933. A second office in Stoke at 14 Glebe Rd followed.
There was little opposition to the BUF in Stoke in this early period. There was a very small Communist Party in the City were vociferously opposed to Mosley but the main political parties choose to ignore the BUF.
There were about 500 individual members and additional 500 supporters. It was successful at recruiting school children who were organised into a youth wing.
On the 25th March 1934 the BUF held two very successful public meetings in the Potteries. Mosley spoke at an evening meeting at the Kings Hall and earlier the Director of Research for the BUF William Joyce, later to be known as the executed traitor Lord Haw Haw, spoke at a packed meeting at Longton Town Hall. He was given an unbroken hearing as he explained Fascism. Joyce could be a very witty speaker as a confrontation at a meeting around that time proves. He was heckled by a middle aged woman who shouted “ You bastard” as Joyce rose to speak. His answer “ Not now mother” suggests a quickness of mind. Mosley spoke later that day to a 4,000 strong audience.

   According to the Sentinel journalist covering the event a larger venue would have been filled without difficulty.  Local people flocked to hear the fascist leader. The hall was filled long before the meeting was due to start, there being a large queue waiting early in the evening. Mosley was given an enthusiastic reception. The meeting passed orderly and uninterrupted throughout.
Membership and interest in the movement in the area was broken following the violence at a large public meeting at Olympia in London in June 1934. Nearly 1000 Stoke BUF members and supporters arrived in the capital in 60 buses. Many of them found themselves caught up in the riot in and around the hall as a group of around 4,000 anti fascists laid siege to the venue. One Stoke participant at the rally Albert John Buckley, aged 17 of 64 New Street, Hanley, sustained serious internal injuries when struck across the stomach with a flagpole in the melee.
The local BUF membership suffered a further attack when reports began to circulate that the  centres were hot beds of sexual activity.. A clean up was ordered and a senior member of the Blackshirts as the BUF was commonly known as arrived in Stoke to organise a purge of the local party. AK Chesterton- a relative of GK Chesterton the writer- was alarmed to find that the local centres had degenerated into a drinking club with separate bars labelled Officers and Blackshirts. He closed the clubs.
Mosley however continued to be a draw. On the Saturday evening of 10 November 1935 the fascist leader addressed yet another capacity 4,000 strong audience at the King’s Hall, Stoke. The local press reported that during his speech Mosley told the audience that Jews controlled the City of London which in turn dictated to whichever party was returned to Westminster and used it ruthlessly and relentlessly against Britain’s interest.
Meanwhile growing hostility to the BUF was evident in the streets of Stoke on Trent. A Remembrance Day wreath laying ceremony at the cenotaph in Kingsway was disrupted when local Blackshirts were subject to booing and jostling Incidentally my mother as a child recalls the disturbance as innocent passer-by were in danger of being caught up in the violence.. It was a similar experience when out door meetings held in  Market Sq, Hanley. sometimes required the police to part local fascists and communists..
The last gasp of fascism occurred in April 1938 when a Kings Hall meeting, which Mosley spoke, was violently disrupted by local Communists. Local BUF activists had ascertained before the meeting that any trouble could be contained. The violence inside and outside the hall proved him wrong. Several thousand people turned up to demonstrate against the presence of the leader of the black shirts. The worst incidents of the night, however, occurred after the meeting.  A large number of anti-fascists assembled outside and waited for Mosley to attempt to leave. When he emerged with a body of escorts, in a portion of the crowd broke through a police cordon and rushed the fascists and fighting continued for quite a while before the police succeeded in restoring order. But it was the up turn in the local economy that doomed the BUF in Stoke. At the time of Mosley’s final visit to Stoke-on-Trent as fascist leader in 1938 pottery exports from the start of the year had increased impressively and the need for a radical right solution to economic problems seemed unnecessary.
One boost for the local industry occurred with eagerly awaited Coronation of Edward VIII intended for the spring of 1937. Edward was very much a play boy prince succeeded his respected father George V in January 1936. However by December a constitutional crisis occurred when Edward let it be known that he intended to marry his girlfriend the American divorcee Wallis Simpson . The Government lead by the Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and the Church of England made it clear that they could not allow the relationship to continue as it would jeopardise Edward’s position as Head of the Church of England. The Church could not recognise Mrs Simpson as Queen as a divorced woman. While the crisis developed one man who was willing to support Edward was Oswald Mosley who was living with his second wife Diana at Wotton Lodge in the Staffordshire Peak District. Mosley had married Diana Mitford at a secret ceremony in Germany in October 1936. Hitler was one of the guests. However his assistance was not required and Edward abdicated to be replaced by his brother who ascended the throne as George VI. Although the institution of the Monarchy shook it quickly resumed its popularity and it was the intentions of the American woman which questioned in that most insightful of arenas the school playground’s of Stoke. My mother recalled children’s song of the time


Who’s that coming down our street?
Its Mrs Simpson and her smelly feet.
She’s been married before
And now she’s knocking on Eddy’s door.
The change  for the Coronation caused consternation in the Pottery industry as the Sentinel opined
Of course mugs and beakers, which are either in the biscuit or glost stage, will be capable of utilisation for King George VI designs but losses must be sustained in respect of the great quantity of lithographic sheets which have been printed already

 Mr Gilbert of Drubbery Lane, Longton in the Letters page had a solution

I suggest that every family in the Potteries and elsewhere should endeavour to buy a Coronation Mug bearing the image of Edward VIII

In this way we can assist the manufactures, wholesalers and shopkeepers to clear their stocks and reduce the burden that has been placed on them.

But the new King and his family had the good will of the people of North Staffordshire and in an editorial in the Sentinel commenting on these tumultuous events remarked

In all we say let there be charity, in all we do let there be unity. Then the Empire will save its soul.

We have a constant vision. The happy family, the beloved little Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose. We are confident of a happy future.

But already the vision was beginning to darken

William Morris and Japan

The great Victorian artist, designer, poet, writer and socialist William Morris founder of the Arts and Crafts Movement, lived and worked in Leek between 1875 and 1878.

Morris interest in Leek was the consequence of an interest in returning to the colours in dyes derived from natural materials. He came to the town several times from February 1875 onwards some time staying for several weeks working with Thomas Wardle the brother in law of his works manager George at his dye works at Hencroft.

 Morris was faced with working conditions that were the consequences of industrialisation. He regarded one of the worst aspects of factories was the tendency to chain workers to a single repetitive task. Morris would describe in a lecture of the 1880s that the modern factory as “a temple of overcrowding and overwork” His anti factory system writings drew on his Leek experience. For the first time he came across the social consequences of capitalism and its impact upon people. The poor huddled together beside gigantic factories in houses the size of dog kennels. He also saw the spoliation of rivers and the increase in atmospheric pollution which he concluded were the consequence of unrestricted capitalism. The 19th century had a profound impact upon Leek, in the 1870s has seem its population triple from the beginning of the century. This growth in its textile industry would result in it becoming one of the centres of the British silk industry. At the start of his first stay Morris initial opinion about Leek was favourable. He thought the town not nearly as bad as he anticipated and in a letter to his wife described the countryside around as being beautiful.

He lodged with the local industrialist Thomas Wardle  in his substantial house in St Edward Street. Morris became obsessive with the goal of producing prefect original colours naturally. Both Wardle and Morris spoke to older dyers who remembered how they did things before synthetic dyes were introduced. Morris would write back to friends and family chronicling the experiments and the search for natural dyes that he and Wardle were enthusiastically embarking upon but it was the search for the perfect blue that dominated Morris’s time and energy.

 He became an expert at the process, one could almost say obsessive, knowledgeable on the problems of oxidation identifying the smell of “stinking meat” which indicated that the dye was ready. He was” hands on” in this hunt and when he returned to London it amused his friends to discover that his hands were bright blue. It caused embarrassment to him when he was out and about in the capital and he was nervous about gaining admission to the premier of Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera “The Sorcerer” because of the state of his stained hands. While away from Leek he fretted and became engaged in a protracted correspondence with Wardle about the experiments in colour this correspondence is described by Morris’s biographer Fiona McCarthy as being amongst the most remarkable business letters ever written. Morris became more and more demanding and began to loose his temper

“They have been very trying: but I wish I hadn’t been such a fool: perhaps they will turn me out tomorrow or put me in a blue vat”.

Ultimately Morris was dissatisfied with the Leek experience although he continued working on these problems during the following decade.

They are a number of tangible legacies of William Morris time in Leek one being the interest he took in the Leek School of Embroidery which was founded by Mrs Wardle in the 1880s. He offered to design a rug for her woolwork and sending items to a textile museum that she created. Fiona McCarthy believes the most moving aspect of his time in Leek is the existence of so many Morris style church embroidered items- many of them still in use in local churches.

Another monument to Morris in the town was the establishment of the William Morris Labour Church shortly after his death by Larner Sugden. The art work in the church owed a great deal to many followers of Morris in the Arts and Craft movement.  The church had red painted walls with stencilled tracery. Woodwork was painted green and the curtains that hung there were blue velvet of one of Morris’s designs.

Interest in William Morris in Japan was evident within a few years of his death. 316 studies on Morris were published there between 1897 and 1975, the majority of which were written before the outbreak of the Second World War. Early interest in Morris’ writings primarily had to do with his social thought, which was described in Japanese as “artistic socialism”. The 1930s were the golden decade for Morris studies in Japan. In 1934 as a celebration of the hundredth anniversary of his birth, an exhibition of the works of William Morris was held in Maruzen, Tokyo.

In 2008 a major exhibition of work by Morris was held at  Momak Kyoto entitled Arts & Crafts from Morris to Mingei