WILLIAM MORRIS, the poet and pioneer of the British Arts and Crafts movement, is best remembered for his dictum “Have nothing in your houses you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”.

To this he might have added: “And nothing that will not withstand violent fits of rage.” A new biography of the Pre-Raphaelite designer suggests that Morris’s obsession with sturdy medieval furniture was inspired by his frequent red mists, during which he would hurl books at his friends and kick the panels out of doors.

Jan Marsh, a research curator at the National Portrait Gallery, concluded that he respected natural, simple and sturdy materials that would survive his moments of wrath.

“In reminiscences of his contemporaries there are lots of references to him punching the walls and banging his head,” she told The Times. “Whenever something annoyed him he would go into spasms.”

Charley Faulkner, one of Morris’s friends, remarked that his stay at the designer’s Red House in 1863 was a relatively tranquil year.

“I grieve to say he has only kicked one panel out of a door for this twelvemonth passed,” he wrote.

Faulkner was also present when Morris became violent in his workshop at Red Lion Square, Central London, during a dispute over the size of a stained glass window.

Morris, enraged by his colleague, George Campfield, seized a copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle, an encyclopaedia weighing about 4kg (8lb), and threw it across the room. Campfield ducked behind a door, which absorbed the blow but lost a panel in the collision.

Dr Marsh said that the public image of Morris as a cuddly person was misleading. “He was very brusque. He had no social graces whatsoever. If he thought someone was a fool he would say so. His rages were quite physical — biting and bashing things. He didn’t feel the need to be polite.”

William Morris and Red House, by Jan Marsh, is published by National Trust Books.