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Morris was about as successful and famous it was possible to be, yet there is still an air of tragedy about him. Here’s our homage to WmMo, a bed-time story for a peculiar child (from This Slavery graphic novel). It’s wide, so tap to see the whole feverdream 🦉 🎻 🏺 🌺

An intense double page spread from This Slavery graphic novel, depicting Hester reading William Morris’ News from Nowhere to her eldest child. Around them, images from the story are intertwined with a WmMo style ‘wallpaper’

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Morris was an idealist, a romantic, a socialist, an anti-imperialist and you could even say an early eco-socialist. More famous now for his influence on Victorian interiors, he was known as a writer and activist. He founded the Socialist League and a society for the protection of ancient buildings

A photo portrait of an older, more serious Morris

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Morris married the most famously beautiful woman of her generation, Jane Burden. They had two daughters, but the thing about Jane was that she was passionately in love with Morris’ best mate Rossetti, who painted her over and over and over again. Everyone knew about their love affair.

Proserpine, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (one of many modelled on Jane Burden)

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Morris was odd. He was bullied at school, they called him “Crab”. He really committed to special interests. At uni it was medieval art, and he called his close mates the ‘Brotherhood’. They were artists and poets who teased him for being bourgeois and erratic. He picked up a lot of their expenses.

A young William Morris, looking like he’s a New Yorker in the early 1970s

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Rickard Sisters @rickardsisters.com · 02/10/2026

On this day 130 years ago, died the poet, artist, publisher and activist William Morris. You likely have something in your home with a Morris & Co design on it. I bet your bedroom looks like this.

A panel from This Slavery graphic novel, depicting a lovely four-poster bed with Morris & Co curtains. There is also a woman passed out face down on the floor, but you’ll have to read the book if you want to know why

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The site foreman hard at work, in our graphic novel of Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

A panel from a graphic novel, showing a man reading a comic with his feet up on the table. You can see tools paint cans and brushes and clamps on the scullery shelves

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Rickard Sisters @rickardsisters.com · 01/10/2026

This image from No Surrender graphic novel expresses a view from 1910 that is still widely held today. It ignores the structural inequalities that steer women and girls into the jaws of the criminal justice system: poverty, abuse, homelessness and mental ill-health

A panel from the graphic novel of Constance Maud’s No Surrender, a story of women’s suffrage. In it, a prison chaplain smugly pontificates, “Experience has taught me that women who are sent to prison are invariably bad.”

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Rickard Sisters @rickardsisters.com · 30/09/2026

Here’s No Surrender graphic novel, with the rosettes & glass fly leaves printed on the insides of the cover

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Rickard Sisters @rickardsisters.com · 30/09/2026

The fly leaves are the pages on the inside of the cover. They are traditionally blank or patterned. We like to make them themed to the story

An illustration: Votes for Women rosettes, scattered on a cream patterned cloth, with sharp shards of broken glass

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Rickard Sisters @rickardsisters.com · 30/09/2026

“What happens when you fall out?” people ask us. Here’s how we make decisions- almost always by consensus! We haven’t yet met any ‘artistic differences’ to fall out about. See the thread for how the fly leaves turned out 🪰

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Rickard Sisters @rickardsisters.com · 29/09/2026

More than a million families are being squeezed by rising private rents and frozen housing support levels, according to @resolutionfoundation.org Rent controls, and better quality standards, would change lives instantly.

A panel from The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists graphic novel, showing a young woman and her baby in her rented home. She’s saying “The wind used to come up between the floorboards.” The baby is saying “Waaah!”

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If you can’t be bothered to make it, why would anyone want to read it? For me, the initials AI will always represent Amnesty International. Their slogan through the nineties and noughties? “PROTECT THE HUMAN”

Amnesty International protest banner in black with yellow text PROTECT THE HUMAN

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And it turns out that this Thing they have brought forth - because it has no creators, but has been stitched together from the flesh of stolen creative corpses - can never be copyrighted! So again, what’s the point?

Frankenstein’s unnamed and motherless monster, reading a graphic novel by the fire.

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If we found a way to make a generic, soulless version of what we do for half the cost in half the time, we just … wouldn’t? It’s like a hungry diner choosing a plate of cardboard for £5 over a nutritious meal for £10. Why would you?

A book cover: on a bottle green background, a sign writer is putting finishing touches to a square panel which reads Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, a graphic novel by Scarlett and Sophie Rickard. A young boy hands the man a tin mug of tea. Another worker sits reading a newspaper.

A book cover. The text reads ETHEL CARNIE HOLDSWORTH’S THIS SLAVERY, a graphic novel by Scarlett & Sophie Rickard. The full page illustration shows two women standing back to back in a steep terraced street at sunset. The blonde woman holds a violin, the dark haired woman wears a man’s coat. A young man looks at them from an upstairs window on the left, and on the right there is a perky white and brown dog. In the distance the factory chimneys smoke. It’s all very ‘mills & doom’

A book cover: on a dark inky blue background a five women stand together holding up an ornate protest banner which reads Constance Maud’s No Surrender, a graphic novel by Scarlett & Sophie Rickard. They are dressed in Edwardian clothing and VOTES FOR WOMEN sashes. The girl in the centre, who wears the shawl of a working woman, holds a loud-hailer

A book cover, with the title MANN’S BEST FRIEND and the names Scarlett and Sophie Rickard. The picture is a drawing of a man walking a big dog up an urban street in the evening. The man has his hood up and holds the dog on a red lead. He’s walking towards us along the pavement past shops with lights on.

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A romantic moonlit walk from This Slavery graphic novel

A panel from This Slavery, depicting Jack and Hester walking through the woods above the town, in the moonlight.

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From 1935 Sylvia campaigned relentlessly for Ethiopia against the Italian invasion. She was around for the beginnings of Rastafarianism and moved to Addis Ababa at the invitation of Haile Selassie. She died there aged 78, and was given a full state funeral.

An early studio portrait of Sylvia, before she got famous for causing bother

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She campaigned in London’s East End for workers rights, equality and anti-colonialism. She was too socialist and too pacifist for her sisters. When WWI came along she campaigned for conscientious objectors. Sylvia campaigned for Irish home rule, Indian independence, and against fascism of every type

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She designed the WSPU logo, leaflets and many banners and posters. She painted portraits of working women, and wrote for the suffragette press. She was arrested for protests loads of times, and went on repeated hunger strike.

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Today we remember Sylvia Pankhurst, who died on this day in 1960. Pankhurst women were each a strong flavour, and Sylvia is our favourite. Brought up by suffragist socialist activist parents, Sylvia trained as an artist (Manchester, then Royal College of Art), noting every exclusion along the way

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Rickard Sisters @rickardsisters.com · 21/09/2026

We’re gearing up for LICAF next weekend, who’s coming? I don’t think we’ll be boating this year, since the festival will be in Kendal and the schedule’s packed with stuff we’re keen to see.

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In the USA, over 4 million people have lost access to SNAP food poverty support in the last year, and there are more rule changes coming next month

A soup kitchen from The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists graphic novel. It’s the precursor to British ‘food banks’. A child has brought a jug from home. A wealthy woman is supervising her maid ladling some hot soup into the jug. Everyone looks ashamed except for the wealthy lady, who feels smug about her charitable giving. A better system would be for her to pay tax and for the child to receive dignified state support, but what do we know

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Rickard Sisters @rickardsisters.com · 20/09/2026

Look at this scrappy sketch Scarlett just found in an old notebook! The only real change is the spine, because we soon learned that ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ is practically impossible to say quickly or fit on small surfaces…

Sideways on lined paper, about 10cm by 7cm, a blue pen layout design of the front, back and spine of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists graphic novel

A finished The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists graphic novel cover, back and spine as published in the UK in 2020

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Rickard Sisters @rickardsisters.com · 13/09/2026

hbd Annie Kenney (1879) this dog is here tell you facts about his special interest, radical activists with spicy lives, indulge him

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Rickard Sisters @rickardsisters.com · 09/09/2026

real sisters talking about fictional sisters This Slavery graphic novel tells the tale of Rachel and Hester, who take very different approaches to survival but never abandon one another

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Rickard Sisters @rickardsisters.com · 08/09/2026

Bert the unwaged apprentice mixing toxic lead to make paint in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. France banned its use in 1909 (for the health of the painters). The UK banned it in 1992.

A series of 8 panels from The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists graphic novel.
1. A barrel of white lead
2. Bert opens it and the powder escapes
3. He scoops the powers out by hand
4. He’s bent right over inside the barrel to get the last bit out
5. He’s bent tips the powder into a big vat
6. He returns the empty barrel to the dray
7. He adds other ingredients to the paint and stirs
8. He’s bent double, saying “it’s just one of my belly aches”
Poor Bert will surely go mad with lead poisoning, and then be just the right age to serve in WWI 😢

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Rickard Sisters @rickardsisters.com · 07/09/2026

A little bit of character design, which always has to include what people do for a living and elements of their home life

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Haha yeah Christabel contained multitudes… she was also a bit pro-WWI and Royalist for my tastes. She’s the subject of one of the best portraits in the National Portrait Gallery (imho)

Christabel Pankhurst by Ethel Wright, oil painting

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It would be another 15 years before any women could vote in Britain, and even then it was only some of them. These days the suffragettes are broadly considered to be noble freedom-fighters. At the time they were terrorists. Views have changed because they (eventually) won. ✊

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The fires were extinguished pretty easily, and no-one was ever caught or prosecuted. It’s widely believed that the WSPU arson campaign was led by this woman: Christabel Pankhurst 🔥🔥🔥🔥…

Black & white photo of Pankhurst looking mighty and defiant

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Who would carry out such a heinous crime? Well, the next morning, Votes for Women and other suffrage pamphlets were found attached to trees in the grounds with ladies’ hatpins, alongside discarded petrol cans 🔥🔥🔥…

Detail from the fly leaves of No Surrender graphic novel, showing WSPU rosettes and broken glass

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Term had not yet begun, and Dulwich had the decorators in. The arsonists used one of the painters’ ladders to reach an open window on the first floor of the science building, and set fires in two different places 🔥 🔥…

A panel from The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists graphic novel, showing a decorator up a ladder. Just for fun

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