Voysey's Birds and Animals

Book excerpt: An elegant and informative gift book devoted to designs by C. F. A. Voysey that incorporate birds, animals, and plants. Charles Francis Annesley Voysey (1857–1941) is, with William Morris, one of the most enduringly popular designers of the Arts and Crafts Movement. A practicing architect, Voysey also designed a broad range of applied arts objects, from furniture, ceramics, and metalwork to wallpaper, carpets, tiles, and fabrics. His pattern designs, created from the 1880s to the early 1930s, are among his best- known works today. His wallpaper and textile designs are characterized by simple, stylized, rhythmic patterns that base their motifs on forms found in the natural world. Plants abound, but so too do birds and animals, represented as silhouettes or in soft pastel shades. This elegant, accessibly priced volume offers a wealth of colorful designs by Voysey in which birds and animals are the principal motifs. Written by Karen Livingstone, a published expert on Voysey and the Arts and Crafts Movement, this book brings together not only completed patterns but also working drawings in pencil and watercolor. Voysey’s Birds and Animals will both inform and delight, appealing to a broad readership of museum visitors and lovers of art and design.