Exhibition at 19th-century designer’s old London home will explore renewed popularity via the ‘weird and wonderful’

William Morris famously implored us to avoid filling our homes with items that “you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”. But now the William Morris Gallery – housed in the 19th-century writer and artist’s former home – is appealing to the public to send them all manner of artefacts adorned with his distinctive designs for a major new exhibition.

Morris’s patterns are having something of a moment. “You walk down the high street and if you get your eye in you can see Morris patterns everywhere: iPhone cases, umbrellas, shopping trolleys,” said Hadrian Garrard, the director of the gallery in Walthamstow, east London.