Fitzwilliam Museum Exhibition Restores Kate Faulkner, Morris & Co's Overlooked Designer

Key facts

• "A Call to Art: William Morris and the pre-Raphaelites" opens 23 October at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and runs until 3 May 2027
• It is the first exhibition dedicated to Kate Faulkner as a designer, maker and workshop supervisor at Morris & Co
• A 6.3 metre-wide oak and silvered-gesso altarpiece commissioned from Faulkner by Morris & Co in 1886 is shown publicly for the first time
• Faulkner was the first person after William Morris to design wallpapers and fabrics for the firm and one of only four designers he trusted
• Her 1879 Mallow wallpaper is still sold by Morris & Co, and patterns registered under her name in the 1870s and 1880s remain in production
• New research shows she embroidered a Morris design of Artemis for Red House in Bexleyheath, where Morris & Co was conceived in 1861
• Carnation, her first pattern registered under her name, was registered in 1875, 13 years after she and her sister began selling embroideries to the firm
• Curator Karen Livingstone is seeking descendants of Faulkner's sister Lucy Orrinsmith to locate a photograph or portrait, as none is known to exist
• Faulkner died in 1898 and her work has often been attributed to Morris