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Morris's importance as both a designer and propagandist for the arts cannot easily be overestimated, and his influence has continued to be felt throughout the 20th century. He was a committed Socialist whose aim was that, as in the Middle Ages, art should be for the people and by the people, a view expressed in several of his writings. After abandoning his training as an architect, he studied painting among members of the Pre-Raphaelites. In 1861 he founded his own firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (from 1875 Morris & Co.), which produced stained glass, furniture, wallpaper and fabrics. The prelude to his finding his true artistic career was his dissatisfaction with the furniture available in the shops and his consequent determination to design his own.
The St George cabinet was designed by Philip Speakman Webb, painted by William Morris, and manufactured by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. It is a rare example of Morris's painted work and typical of the large pieces of furniture, Medieval in inspiration and crude in construction, associated with Morris and his circle from 1858. Family friends such as Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti posed as models for the painted figures. Morris's wife Jane is depicted as the Princess.
This cabinet demonstrates a lack of co-ordination between physical structure and painted decoration; the five scenes of St George are unequally divided over the three doors.
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