John Henry Dearle

John Henry Dearle or J. H. Dearle (London 1859 – 15 January 1932) was a British textile and stained-glass designer trained by the artist and craftsman William Morris who was much influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Dearle designed many of the later wallpapers and textiles released by Morris & Co., and contributed background and foliage patterns to tapestry designs featuring figures by Edward Burne-Jones and others. Beginning in his teens as a shop assistant and then design apprentice, Dearle rose to become Morris & Co.'s chief designer by 1890, creating designs for tapestries, embroidery, wallpapers, woven and printed textiles, stained glass, and carpets. Following Morris's death in 1896, Dearle was appointed Art Director of the firm, and became its principal stained glass designer on the death of Burne-Jones in 1898.

Morris's reputation overshadowed Dearle's work throughout Dearle's career: Dearle exhibited early patterns under Morris's name and Dearle designs continue to be sold as Morris patterns. Critical assessment of Dearle's work then underwent a significant change, during the final decades of the twentieth century, recognizing Dearle's mature work as having a unique artistic vision of its own. Dearle always remained close to Morris's esthetic, but from the 1890s onward he incorporated a distinctive set of Persian and Turkish influences.

Dearle was born in Camden Town, north London in 1859. He began his career as an assistant in Morris & Co.'s retail showroom in Oxford Street in 1878, and then transferred to the company's glass painting workshop, where he worked mornings and studied design in the afternoons. Morris recognized Dearle's talents as a draftsman, and took him on as his tapestry apprentice. Morris had finished his first solo effort at tapestry in September 1879, and shortly thereafter Morris and Dearle set up a tapestry loom at Queen Square. Dearle executed Morris and Co.'s first figural tapestry from a design by Walter Crane in 1883. Dearle was soon responsible for the training of all tapestry apprentices in the workshop and partnered with Morris on designing details such as fabric patterns and floral backgrounds for tapestries based on figure drawings or cartoons by Burne-Jones (some of them repurposed from stained glass cartoons) and animal figures by Philip Webb.

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