May Morris (1862-1938) was an English embroiderer, designer, jeweller and editor, and the younger daughter of William Morris and Jane Morris. Born Mary Morris at Red House in Bexleyheath, she learned to embroider from her mother and her aunt Bessie Burden, and enrolled at the National Art Training School, later the Royal College of Art, in 1878.
At twenty-three she was put in charge of all embroidery at Morris & Co., and she remained the leading figure in English art embroidery for the rest of her working life. She wrote and lectured widely on the subject, publishing Decorative Needlework in 1893, and designed wallpapers, jewellery, lettering and book decoration besides. In 1907 she was a co-founder of the Women's Guild of Arts. Long treated as an appendage to her father, she has been recognised since the 1980s as a designer of the first rank in her own right.
Photograph by the Bain News Service. Library of Congress (lccn.loc.gov/2014683895), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
