Birds in Arts and Crafts Pattern: Morris, Voysey and Crane Compared

The clearest difference: who drew the birds

The sharpest contrast among the documented examples is authorship. In the 'Trellis' wallpaper, which the V&A records as the first paper designed by William Morris but the third to be issued, the birds were designed by Philip Webb, according to the V&A. The 'Bird and Anemone' wallpaper, by contrast, is attributed by the V&A to Morris himself.

That split matters when you look closely at the patterns. 'Trellis' shows a flowering thorned rose bush growing on a wooden trellis, with birds and flying insects, and the V&A dates its design to 1862 with registration and production in 1864. For more on the collaboration behind the birds, see our guide to Webb's birds and animals.

If you want the wider picture of which birds appear across Morris's work, birds in Morris designs are covered species by species in a separate guide.

The three designs side by side

The table gathers the documented facts for each design. Every cell traces to a museum record, and the date conflicts are flagged in the next section rather than smoothed over here.

The V&A also holds a second 'Bird and Anemone' specimen, O248675, printed pale-brown on a darker ground. That gives a sense of how the same wallpaper could appear in different colourings.

For the woven textile in detail, see Bird, our page on the history and design of Morris's bird woven fabric. The Met's record for the textile gives the title, designer, date, dimensions and accession number, but no description of what the design shows and no weaving details beyond the material, so any further description would go beyond the source.

Where the designs overlap

What unites the examples is Morris's documented working method. According to the V&A, the main source of the patterns for his wallpapers was the plants he had observed since childhood, but he also took inspiration from images of plants in illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, woodcuts and historical books.

The V&A records that Morris owned copies of several 16th- and 17th-century herbals, including John Gerarde's The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes (1597). It also notes that he spent many hours studying objects in his own and museum collections, looking for stylistic ideas or an understanding of how to recreate particular effects.

The V&A characterises Morris as a product of the Gothic Revival, which had made medieval style fashionable in Victorian high society, and suggests that what made him unusual were his exacting standards and his passionate commitment to research. That research habit, rather than any single style, is the thread running through all three bird designs.

The same grounding in observed nature runs through the wider group of Arts and Crafts bird patterns documented in museum collections.

Where they part ways, and what the records do not settle

The sources checked for this article leave some dates unsettled, and it is clearer to state what the records support than to pick a winner.

What the records do document:

• For the 'Bird and Anemone' wallpaper, the Victoria and Albert Museum notes that according to the wallpaper logbook the first set was sent out on 15 June 1882, and that a printed fabric of the same name and design was registered on 17 June.
• For 'Trellis', the Victoria and Albert Museum dates the design to 1862, with the wallpaper registered and produced in 1864.

There is also a documented difference between the 'Bird and Anemone' paper and textile. Linda Parry states that a comparison of the two reveals differences partly due to technique but which also indicate that straight matching was not intended, according to the V&A's publication of her work.

Finally, a plain statement of limits. The records used here contain no information about Voysey or Crane, their bird designs, dates or makers, and no verbatim quotation by Morris about birds. This comparison therefore rests entirely on Morris's three documented bird designs, and any broader claim about Arts and Crafts birds as a theme would need other sources.

Bringing Arts and Crafts birds home today

If you want the pattern rather than the history, the shop's all products page collects the current Arts and Crafts bird prints. These are Morris-attributed patterns whose design names are not identified in our records, so they are described visually only.

The group includes a blue paired birds Arts and Crafts print and a navy paired birds print, a blue birds repeat print, a yellow stylised birds print and a blossom tree birds print on a pale blue ground. None of these carries a documented design name, and we will not assign one until it can be checked against a museum record.