De Morgan began his career as an artist, training with Henry Holiday and Simeon Solomon at the Royal Academy Schools. It was when he met William Morris in 1863 that he turned to design, creating stained glass and furniture for Morris’s firm and then setting up his own pottery.

When this closed, he became a best-selling author, and filled his spare time attending lectures and demonstrations at London Polytechnic and patenting a range of inventions including pneumatic bicycle gears.

Behind the success of this polymath was a desire to improve processes of making, the beauty of art, and ultimately build a better world in which to live.

By Sarah Hardy, Director of the De Morgan Museum. The talk will be based on Sarah’s chapter in the recently published ‘A Marriage of Arts and Crafts’.