Jane Morris as Embroiderer: Her Work Beyond the Portraits

Embroidering at Red House

The Victoria and Albert Museum records that Jane Morris made experimental embroideries with her husband William Morris while the couple was decorating Red House, their first home. This is the clearest documented picture of her own hand at the embroidery frame: work carried out jointly with Morris, of an experimental character, in the setting of a house being furnished and decorated by the two of them.

The museum record describes this as experimental work, which places it apart from the ordered production of a commercial workshop. It belongs to the early domestic phase of the Morrises' life together, when husband and wife were working out embroidery techniques for themselves in their own home. Beyond this documented episode, the records reviewed here do not identify specific surviving embroideries made by Jane Morris herself.

Teaching the Next Embroiderer

Jane Morris's most clearly documented contribution to embroidery is as a teacher. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, she and Bessie Burden taught May Morris (1862-1938), daughter of William Morris, to make large scale embroideries in crewel work when May was a child.

Crewel work is embroidery worked in wool, and the museum's account presents the two women teaching the child May on a large scale, meaning embroideries of considerable size rather than small samples. This household teaching brought together Jane Morris and Bessie Burden as joint instructors of the person who would later lead the firm's embroidery work.

That teaching mattered for the firm. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, in 1885 May Morris took over the embroidery section of the firm, and after her father's death she took on Morris and Co. and continued to provide designs for them. Her career is covered in full on the May Morris page.

The Embroidery Workshop Jane Morris Worked Alongside

The Victoria and Albert Museum records that from about 1876 Morris designed a series of small square panels usually sold as kits. In these kits an inked design was outlined on plain cloth, to be stitched at home in the soft floss silks provided. This kit system meant that embroideries carrying the firm's designs could be completed by buyers working in their own homes.

The museum also records that some Morris and Co. embroideries were carried out by women at the Royal School of Needlework. Alongside the home kit embroiderers and the school-based stitchers, the firm's embroidery output depended on several different hands, and the records reviewed here do not place Jane Morris personally within any of these production channels.

One surviving panel shows how the kit system worked in practice. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds the 'Olive and Rose' embroidered panel, museum number O1803073, designed by William Morris around 1880 and worked between 1880 and 1900, designed and retailed in London. The panel is worked in floss silk thread on cotton ground fabric, stitched in pale green and cream with a pink background. It was produced as a kit by the Morris and Co. workroom in London and completed by an unknown amateur embroiderer, dating between the 1880s and the 1910s.

May Morris Designs in Museum Records

Two traced embroidery designs attributed to May Morris and held by the Victoria and Albert Museum show the kind of work that grew out of the household teaching described above. The first, museum number O586570, is titled 'Welcome Maids of Honour you do bring in the Spring and wait upon her'. It is made in red ink in Britain in the 1880s for Morris and Co. An embroidery made to this design is in the collection of the William Morris Gallery, catalogue number F368.

The second design, museum number O586567, is in pencil and Indian ink on calico. It shows roses, peonies, tulips and other flowers on a trellis, and was made in Britain around the 1880s for Morris and Co. Both designs are traced drawings prepared for embroidery, and both are attributed to May Morris rather than to her mother Jane or her father William.

What the Record Does Not Tell Us

The records reviewed here establish three things about Jane Morris and embroidery: that she made experimental embroideries with William Morris while decorating Red House, that she and Bessie Burden taught the child May Morris large scale crewel work, and that her husband William Morris lived from 1834 to 1896. What the records reviewed here do not establish is her own birth and death dates, or specific surviving embroideries made by her own hand.

This restraint matters for a figure who is far better known as a model than as a maker. The documented embroidery record is real but narrow, and it is worth stating exactly where it ends rather than filling the gaps with assumption.

Where to See Morris and Co. Embroidery Today

The Victoria and Albert Museum holds the 'Olive and Rose' embroidered panel (museum number O1803073) and the two traced embroidery designs attributed to May Morris, museum numbers O586570 and O586567. The William Morris Gallery holds an embroidery made to the O586570 design, catalogue number F368. These records give readers a starting point for seeing the firm's embroidery work, and the design drawings behind it, in public collections.