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William Morris (1834–96) seemed destined for a career in the church before art critic John Ruskin’s writings turned him on to architecture. Then artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti opened Morris’s eyes to painting. The resulting philosophy-architecture-art combo sparked the English Arts and Crafts movement and moved Morris to found a firm of craftsmen who contradicted the Industrial Revolution with nature-inspired stained glass, fabrics, and wallpaper—miniatures of which are now available as stamps from the Royal Mail. • royalmail.com
