Acclaimed British novelist, poet and essayist A.S. Byatt (The Children's Book) loves color. She also loves William Morris designs, and has filled her house with them on curtains, wallpapers, tea towels and kitchen tiles. She first encountered the work of Mariano Fortuny at the Palazzo Fortuny museum in Venice; back in England, she found his work intertwining with Morris's in her mind. Peacock & Vine is the result, a meditation on two "polymaths in the arts." Their houses were not only marvelous aesthetic creations, but the active studios of hardworking artists, integrating their domestic lives, philosophies and work. "They created their own surroundings, changed the visual world around them, studied the forms of the past and made them parts of new forms."
Fortuny was a Spanish aristocrat with a peaceful domestic life; he was most inspired by women and is best known for his multicolored, finely pleated couture silk and velvet garments, though he also worked in painting, architecture and lighting technology. Morris was an unhappily married, upper-middle-class Englishman and socialist--an artist, designer and writer who was most inspired by nature; he struggled between his desire for everyone to live with beautiful handmade things and the expense of creating them. Byatt meanders through their biographies, considering their similarities and differences, their homes and furnishings, tools and inventions, their approaches to textile design and her favorite texts and museums about them. Peacock & Vine will appeal to Byatt's fans, and to anyone interested in a light introduction to two brilliant and influential artists. --Sara Catterall