Morris and Sons

Ruth and Laurie Morris first established their family craft business in the Sydney suburb of Dover Heights during the 1970s. The store on Military Road stocked arts and crafts supplies of all kinds, including items from Semco, Myart and DMC, as well as supplies for making candles and jewellery. Ruth stocked many different kinds of craft and cooking... books, which she remembers sold "like that"! Shortly after the Military Road store opened, the Morrises began to offer a framing service for their customers. Ruth and Lauries youngest son Albert remembers the early days of his parents cutting and joining frames on their kitchen table each night after the store had closed. The Morrises also provided their framing service to a needlecraft store in Double Bay, carefully stretching and framing exquisite pieces of stitching. Ruth describes how the Double Bay store was stocked with "meters of beautiful scissors and the walls were lined with tapestry canvases." This store provided her with the inspiration to sell more needlecraft products through her shop. This was the time when tapestry and craft in general was very popular in Australia. The two large department stores David Jones and Grace Brothers were selling tapestry canvases, as were a number of smaller suburban stores. The Morrises store in Dover Heights developed a reputation for the large range of tapestries they sold, including brands like Royal Paris, Margot, Tapex, Luxury Needlepoint and tramme canvases. Customers travelled from as far as Parramatta to buy these tapestries and the threads they needed. Ruth sold so many DMC threads that she learnt the colour numbers by heart! Each night Ruth would change the window display of tapestry canvases and every day passers-by would come into the store, often thinking the tapestries were paintings. She held classes in their store to teach adults and children(!) how to stitch. The framing and cushion assembly services were also very popular. Laurie introduced a method of framing tapestries with a little foam padding and ...Read More