Career

Henry Dearle 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.In the late 1880s, Dearle began designing repeating patterns for wallpapers and textiles, and it is likely that his designs for large-scale embroideries also date from around this time.