“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful is a collection of tea towels which feature reproductions of designs by William Morris and Morris & Co. The title of this artwork by David Mabb is deliberately ironic as many of the designs on the tea towels are badly reproduced. The designs’ original ‘Arts and Crafts’ aesthetic, with its tradition of cultural authenticity, has been transformed in the production of cheap mass-produced goods. However, traces of Morris’s design principles endure. The installation sets Morris’s medieval vision of utopian pageantry against the banality of domestic kitsch".

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/38705