British postage stamp with embroidery motif of oranges and orange blossom, designed and worked by May Morris (TRC 2018.3365).Shelley Anderson writes on Saturday 23 February 2019:

A recent acquisition of the TRC sent me scurrying to the Internet to find out more. The object was a small (3.5 x 3.5 cm) British postal stamp with an image of a beautifully embroidered orange branch with flowers and fruit (TRC 2018.3365). The stamp also has the text “Mary 'May' Morris 1862-1938. Designer and textile artist". May Morris had designed and executed the image, from silks on a linen background, in the 1880s.

Mary ‘May’ Morris was the youngest daughter of Arts and Crafts movement leader and designer William Morris. She had an unconventional childhood and was taught embroidery by her mother and her aunt. She also studied embroidery at art school and at the age of 23 became the Director of the Embroidery Department at her father's business. She was an able manager and designer, in addition to her own considerable skills in needlework, creating both ecclesiastical and household objects.

She researched older styles of embroidery, in particular the famous medieval needlework of England (Opus Anglicanum), in order to develop a more free-style fine technique which came to be known as art needlework. Later in life she taught embroidery at art schools throughout England, including the Royal School of Art Needlework (now the Royal School of Needlework), mentoring many other women who later established their own names in embroidery. In 1907, when guilds such as the Art Workers Guild refused to accept women, she founded a new association, the Women’s Guild of Arts.

As if this were not enough, she also made a name for herself as a designer, creating designs for jewellery, wall paper, textiles and more. Concerned about the status of women and workers, she was an active socialist all her life. In her later years she collected and published 24 volumes of her father’s works, thus securing his name in history, in addition to writing her own books and plays. She lived the last few decades of her life with a woman companion in a home designed in the Arts and Crafts style. “I’m a remarkable woman,” she wrote in 1936 to her ex-lover, playwright George Bernard Shaw, “always was, though none of you seemed to think so.” A remarkable woman indeed, who is finally getting the credit she deserves.