None of the items being offered for sale actually belonged to Morris – most of the original furnishings can be found at Kelmscott Manor and the V&A – but they represent the efforts of the recent owner, architect Edward Hollamby, to faithfully re-create the interior aesthetic.
Some of the 70 lots from the Red House are illustrated in the photograph right. The two chairs are made out of ebonised ash to a Morris and Co. design and are each expected to fetch £200-300. The Pilkington vase in the foreground is damaged and should make £100, say the auctioneers, while the pre-Raphaelite-style oil painting in the background is actually a 1975 copy of a Rossetti original of 1873, painted by an artist called Michael Blaker and expected to fetch around £100-150.
Coming up in... Guildford
The Red House, the former home of designer William Morris acquired last month by the National Trust, is due to open to the public in Bexleyheath later this summer. But aficionados of the Arts and Crafts movement who cannot bear to wait that long should take a look at the Clarke Gammon sale in Guildford on February 25, where the residual contents of the Victorian house are being dispersed.
