Howell and Marks helped to determine the course of the Aesthetic movement as men of taste advising trend- setting collectors. William Morris exercised a more direct and wide- spread influence as a manufacturer of many of the artifacts which expressed Aesthetic values. During the 1860s the firm's style changed dramatically, the massive forms and somber colours of its initial medievalist phase giving way to a lighter and less uncompromising idiom that reflected both the prevailing ethos and the necessity of coming to terms with clients' domestic requirements. In fact, the same tendency is found in the firm's stained glass which, though often used in domestic settings, was obviously mainly conceived for ecclesiastical contexts. The rather drab tones, heavy leading, and bold archi- tectural framework of the earliest windows yield to paler and more delicate effects, with less intrusive leading and a greater dependence on quarries lightly patterned with black and yel- low stain. The so-called Green Dining Room at the South Kensington (now Victoria and Albert) Museum, dating from 1866-67, exemplifies the new style (fig. 77). A prestigious commission in its day, which did much to establish the still- young firm, it remains the most intact and accessible of Morris's secular schemes. The implications of these changes for Burne-Jones need not be labored. To the Green Dining Room alone he contributed six stained-glass panels of girls gathering flowers, all, signifi- cantly, dressed in white, as well as a series of eye-level painted panels representing the signs of the zodiac and the months. Both are closely related to his easel painting. All the stained- glass figures were recast as watercolours, while one of the painted panels provided the design for the figure in Day, which, togeth- er with a companion piece, Night (both Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass.), were to join Leyland's set of Seasons.
A commission to decorate one of the V&A's interiors was the start of a long relationship between William Morris and the Museum – one that was perpetuated after his death by his daughter, May. The work of William Morris's company, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., became fashionable following the 1862 International Exhibition, which had led to a range of decorating jobs for people belonging to its circle of contacts. Within a few years the company had secured two prestigious London commissions: to decorate two rooms at St James's Palace, and the West Dining Room of the South Kensington Museum (renamed the V&A in 1899). Influenced by the Gothic Revival and medieval style, Morris and his collaborators (chiefly architect Philip Webb and painter Edward Burne-Jones) created a restful, blue-green green scheme for one of three new spaces the Museum had dedicated to refreshments. What became known as the 'Green Dining Room' featured a number of the organic patterns that would eventually make Morris's name as a designer. Over the next decade and beyond, Morris took increasing control of his business (he became sole director of the restructured and renamed Morris & Company in 1875), and established himself as a designer of both innovative and successful patterns for embroidery, wallpaper and textiles. In 1876 his cemented reputation as a nationally known designer led to his becoming an examiner at the South Kensington Museum's art school. Then in 1884 he was invited to join the Museum's Committee of Art Referees, a group of consultants – one that also included painters Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Sir Edward Poynter and Frederic, Lord Leighton – that helped the institution make decisions on the purchase of new holdings.