This embroidery was part of a frieze of five parts commissioned by Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell and his wife Margaret for the dining room of Rounton Grange, Northallerton, Yorkshire. The panels depict the story of The Romaunt of the Rose by Geoffrey Chaucer and were based on original pictures drawn by Edward Burne-Jones c.1874-76. The exquisite embroidery was executed by the wife and daughter of Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, Margaret Bell and Florence Johnson, respectively.
Rounton Grange, near Northallerton, Yorkshire, built in 1872-76 for the northern industrialist Isaac Lowthian Bell (1816-1904), was another house designed by Philip Webb for which Morris & Company provided the interior decora- tion. Although it occasioned Morris's well-known fulmination at "ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich," it was one of the firms most important and extensive commissions, includ- ing wallpaper, painted ceilings, furniture, and a large carpet that was one of the first produced at the Merton Abbey Works in 1881-82. 1 For the dining room Morris and Burne-Jones devised an even more elaborate scheme of decoration than the Palace Green Cupid and Psyche murals (cat. nos. 40a-l). This time there was to be a textile frieze, referred to in both artists' accounts for 1873-74 as "tapestry," but intended to be executed as embroidery. This was carried out, apparently from photo- graphic enlargements of Burne-Jones's drawings, 2 by Bell's wife, Margaret, and their daughter Florence, taking them eight years to complete. The background of stylised briar roses was designed by Morris. The three sections covered the north, south, and west walls of the room. In the centre, over a massive stone fireplace, the Pilgrim is shown gazing on sculpted figures representing the miseries of the world — Hate, Felony, Villainy, Covetousness, Avarice, Envy, Sorrow, Age, Time, Hypocrisy, and Poverty 3 — while on either side is the poets dream of Love leading the Pilgrim to safety and away from danger, and of introducing him to the Garden of Idleness, where he finds ineffable beauty in the heart of the rose. 1. See Victoria and Albert Museum 1996, pp. 143, 241, fig. 62 (the embroi- dered frieze in situ). 2. According to De Lisle 1904, p. 114, 3. Burne-Jones portrayed a similar gathering of evils in designs of 1872 illustrating The Masque of Cupid, from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (see cat. nos. 60-62).
Fitzwilliam Account book: 1874 1st panel of the Romance of the Rose for Tapestry (sic) 40... Nov. 30. 5 figures for Rounton Tapestry L'amant- L'Amour. William de Lorris - Daungie & Jalousie £12 each ea: 60 1875 June Rounton Tapestry 2nd set 132 1882 May design for last subject of Romance of Rose 20 Studies for the figures of "Largesse and Richesse" and "Love and Beauty" are held in private collections. "Courtesy and Frankness is reproduced in "Drawings of Burne-Jones" by T Martin Wood The story as related by the embroideries does not accord with that of Chaucer. It would seem that in order to adapt to the architectural context the episodes from the story were placed out of sequence, the Vices over the fireplace opposed to the A hawthorn tree features in the painting "The Beguiling of Merlin" and also the twisted stems appear as a backdrop to the figures here. In Henry Phillips "Floral Emblems" hawthorn represents hope, but in this case the curving ad twisting lines that the boughs create, was of more interest than its symbolism.