Barbara Joyce Morris born Barbara Trotman (15 November 1918 – 15 July 2009) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

artist and arts and crafts scholar.

Life

Morris was born in Willesden in 1918. She was educated in Art at the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

. Her sketches of Quentin Crisp are in the NPG. The sketches were made whilst she was studying at the Slade. She was there from 1937 to 1939 when the war interrupted her studies. She married

Max Morris Glen Max Morris (March 13, 1925 – January 8, 1998) was an American professional basketball and American football player. He was a consensus All-American in both sports for Northwestern University and later played professional football for the ...

on 12 September 1939. She completed her studies at Slade in 1947. In 1947 she began working at the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

where she was involved with the 1952 exhibition titled ''Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts''. In 1954 she was at the V&A when the thefts of John Nevin were discovered. Nevin was employed at the museum and in 24 years he had smuggled home many exhibits. Morris had gone to Nevin's home to recover objects where she found curtains made from museum materials and broken former exhibits. She was not able to talk about her work due to the official secrets act. Nevin's defence was that he loved the things he stole, but Morris has seen how he had broken them to find valuable parts. It was her job to work thorough the finds to prove that the objects had belonged to the museum, as Nevin had been clever enough to try to remove the records of things that he took. She continued to be called "Morris" after her first marriage ended in 1960. Her first husband soon remarried but although she started a relationship with Dave Bowman she did not marry him until 1991. She retired from the V&A in 1978 and then spent time teaching at

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...

. She appeared as an expert of the BBC's '' Antiques Roadshow''. In 2003 she published a book on embroidery, ''Victorian Embroidery: An Authoritative Guide'', which included photos she had taken at parish churches across the country. Morris was interviewed as part of an oral history project in February 2009 which included her account of the Nevin affair which was still intriguing. She died in Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton in 2009.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Morris, Barbara 1918 births 2009 deaths People from Willesden British copywriters 20th-century English artists People associated with the Victoria and Albert Museum