25 September 2026 – 10 January 2027
Included
William De Morgan and his Fantastical Creatures
30 January 2027 – 9 May 2027
Interested in this exhibition? Plan your visit
Ceramics of the Arts and Crafts Movement
The Holburne is pleased to present William De Morgan and His Fantastical Creatures a major new exhibition that brings together over 50 examples of De Morgan’s richly decorated ceramics alongside his rarely-seen paper designs to focus for the first time on his extraordinary depictions of animals, real and imagined.
William de Morgan began his artistic career as a stained-glass artist, and it was while studying historic glass that he became fascinated by the depiction of animals and beasts in medieval manuscripts and stained-glass windows.
That fascination became a lifelong visual vocabulary: across his ceramic work, De Morgan drew on medieval iconography, Middle Eastern pattern and classical imagery, fusing them into a menagerie of creatures that belonged to no single tradition but to his imagination alone. It was this combination of technical mastery and artistic imagination that secured De Morgan’s reputation as the foremost ceramicist and ceramics designer of the Arts and Crafts Movement
A life-long friend of William Morris, William De Morgan (1839–1917) was a leading figure in the renowned Arts and Crafts Movement of the late 19th Century and one of Victorian Britain’s most famous artists.
Other current & upcoming Exhibitions
-
-
3 October 2026 – 10 January 2027 Included
Ancient Landscape, Modern Times: Eric Ravilious and the Artists of the Chalk Downs