Emery Walker's House Reopens After Winter Break

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Vital conservation work is now completed

The best preserved Arts & Crafts home in Britain reopens in March after a three month closure for vital conservation work and improvements.

Emery Walker’s House in West London was the home of one of the key members of The Arts & Crafts Movement in the early 20th Century. After a major restoration it reopened last April to excellent reviews from national media including The Guardian, Financial Times, Sunday Telegraph, Country Life and World of Interiors and was shortlisted for a prestigious international award for best museum opening of the year by Apollo.

The house is packed with Arts & Crafts treasures, including one of the largest in situ collections of Morris & Co wallpapers in the world and outstanding textiles and embroideries which require care and constant conservation, hence the winter closure.

The closed Georgian door, at number 7 Hammersmith Terrace, concealed a lot of hard work to get the house ready to reopen again this week (March 1st) and to make its collection more accessible.

There have been several new additions since the house opened last Spring – homecomings for two V& A loans - the original Barnsley bed, an étagère and Emery himself, well, a portrait of him to be precise, which have been returned to their former home. A new handling box includes Walker’s original type and matrixes which demonstrate the processes and skills which brought him renown; relics from the family’s many travels abroad and a box of Kermes gifted by William Morris who named it ‘the king of dyes’.

The large ‘Bird’ hanging which used to adorn the entire length of Morris’s drawing room at Kelmscott House has been cleaned and reinstated. During the closure objects from the collection were also loaned out to the recent May Morris exhibition at The William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow and a touring exhibition on William Morris in Barcelona and Madrid helping to raise awareness of the Arts & Crafts movement and the treasures at Emery Walker’s House, in particular.

The terraced house is packed with artefacts created by Walker’s friends and colleagues and collected on travels around Europe and Africa so can only be open on two days a week. Guided tours take you up three floors accessed by narrow stairs and down steps into the riverside garden. So only eight people at a time can join the guided tours, and it is difficult for people with disabilities to visit. This year The Arts & Crafts Hammersmith project has introduced a virtual tour and The Emery Walker’s House website so that more people can remotely explore inside.

For those who want to see the house in person, it opens on Thursdays and Saturdays for one hour tours three times a day accompanied by an expert guide and steward. The house has extended its tour season from March to the end of November, but tours are already selling fast, so book early to avoid disappointment online .

 

February 28, 2018