Red House benches For National Trust

Red House Benches from above.

“directory maker designer Angus Ross has blown us away with a new furniture commission at Red House”. Crafts Council newsletter 31st July 2021

Angus was commissioned by the National Trust (in association with the Crafts Council UK) to create a contemporary tree seat for the Red House - former home of enormously influential poet, designer, artist, saga translator and socialist William Morris.

 The Red House was designed for Morris by architect Philip Webb in 1859 to create a medieval-inspired family home for Morris and his new wife (nee Jane Burden). The interior was decorated by William and Jane alongside the Pre-Raphaelite artists Edward and Georgie Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his wife Lizzie Siddal. Morris lived at the Red House between 1859 and 1865 (age 25-30) and his two daughters were born there. The firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co was established in 1861 by Morris, Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Webb, and others to offer high quality hand-made stained glass, wallpapers, fabrics and carpets. Later it became Morris & Co with some designs still in production.

Door into the garden at Red House with “Pilgrim Seat”.

The Red House is in Kent, 10 miles from central London, on a Pilgrim Route. At the time of building, the house was surrounded by orchards, and the L-shaped design closely connected the house to the garden. Nothing of the Pre-Raphaelite garden remained and the National Trust have recently created a beautiful garden room with a formal structure, soft romantic planting and hand-woven wattled hazel fencing based on a painting by Morris found on a settle in the house. The painting depicts an imagined “herber”: a small, private, formal, medieval, pleasure garden.

Morris brought the garden into the house with his interiors. When designing the tree seat for the new “herber” Angus brought elements of the house into the garden including: Gothic arches (seen around windows and doorways throughout the house); seating surrounded by an over-arching structure (settles in porch, hall and drawing room); natural materials and high levels of craftsmanship.

Red House Benches in the workshop. When installed the bottom 60 cm are buried in the ground.

The benches were designed before the pandemic and were made during Summer 2020 . They were installed earlier this year and fortunately they are perfect for social distancing.

The design of the benches inverts the usual nature of a tree seat by making the tree the visual focus: not the backrest. Four arched benches will frame the central Tibetan cherry tree (Prunus serrula) from sapling to mature tree. The benches fill the redundant corners of the central square and help create a quiet reflective space for visitors to gather, sit and connect.

The benches are robust, easily used by people with a range of physical abilities and virtually maintenance free. The design encourages a quiet interaction between users but can also be sat on from the other side to look out into the garden.

The NT Red House is open to visitors.

When we visited last month the magical atmosphere of the place was revealed. As a group of visitors came into the ‘herber’ they sat down and strangers became a group perfectly demonstrating a sense of community so valued by Morris. When the adorable Hikari began to play it wasn’t difficult to image Morris and his girls playing in the garden 160 years ago.

Each bench consists of three uprights, a straight one in the centre, with two outer steam-bent arcs (tenoned into the central rail at the top) creating Gothic arches. The uprights are interconnected under the seat by two rails, morticed and tenoned to each other and then pegged through the joint. The rails are braced by the two planks of the shaped seat. The benches are made in durable native oak and the wood has been left bare to weather to silvery grey.