The Victorians

Someone was asking me about ideas for incorporating art into a history unit on the Victorians. In a way there are far too many things that could be done but, after giving it some thought, I thought that doing something on the Arts and Crafts Movement, and William Morris in particular, would be suitable.

There is a good web resource on the movement here, which provides short info-bytes on the main personalities involved as well as links to galleries, museums and collections that house some of their work. William Morris used a lot of natural forms in his designs so he is an ideal subject for spring and summer. If you want to find out more about him and see some examples of his work then why not take a look at the website of the William Morris Society, which can be found here. If you want to see an idea of how to use his work to inspire art projects then there is a good display available on the website of St Nicholas Church of England Community Primary School in Warwickshire, which you can get to by clicking this. Why not cut designs into polystyrene tiles and then use them as printing blocks to create your own wallpaper designs?

You can get more help on using William Morris in teaching from the Education Department of the William Morris Gallery here, including an Inspired by Nature resource pack, which is free to download and suitable for key stage 2 pupils.

Otherwise, to find out more about Victorian art there is an excellent links page here. This site (the Victorian Web) is, in part, funded by the National university of Singapore and there are links on most areas of artistic endeavour: design, architecture, photography, sculpture and fashion. Personally, among my favourites, are the cartoons from Punch on subjects ranging from politics to women and children. It is well worth browsing for both history and art ideas.