Birds in William Morris Designs: Which Species and Where

What the records establish about birds in Morris designs

The documented record for this topic rests on a small number of museum objects. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds 'Bird and Anemone', a furnishing fabric of block printed cotton designed by William Morris for Morris & Co., with a primary date of 1882 and museum number O78906. According to the V&A, that fabric is also one of the few repeating patterns Morris used for both textiles and wallpapers.

A third object sits in a different category. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it holds a woven wool textile titled 'William Morris Bird', manufactured by Scalamandré. Its record, as supplied, carries no date and no design attribution to Morris himself.

That distinction matters. The V&A objects document designs by Morris (and, in one case, by Philip Webb). The Met's textile documents a twentieth century manufacture named after Morris. This guide keeps the two categories apart throughout, and readers who want the wider context of Morris's output can start with the main Morris guide.

Key facts at a glance

The list below gathers the documented facts about the two V&A bird designs and the Met textile in one place. Each item traces to the museum record named.

Documented facts about birds in Morris designs:

• 'Bird and Anemone' is a furnishing fabric, block printed cotton, designed by William Morris for Morris & Co., primary date 1882, V&A museum number O78906, according to the V&A.
• The V&A records 'Bird and Anemone' as dyed cotton with a block-printed pattern in red madder dye, showing birds amongst flowers and leaves in white on a red ground, with a Morris & Co. label attached.
• The 'Trellis' wallpaper (V&A museum number O248458) shows a flowering thorned rose bush on a wooden trellis with birds and flying insects, block-printed in distemper colours on paper.
• In 'Trellis', the birds were designed by Philip Webb, while the paper was designed by William Morris, according to the V&A.
• 'Trellis' was the first paper designed by Morris but the third to be issued; according to the V&A it was designed in 1862 and produced in 1864.
• According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Met holds the 'William Morris Bird' woven wool textile, manufactured by Scalamandré.

'Bird and Anemone': birds among flowers in dyed cotton

The V&A describes 'Bird and Anemone' as dyed cotton with a block-printed pattern in red madder dye. The pattern shows birds amongst flowers and leaves in white on a red ground, and the object carries a Morris & Co. label. The V&A gives the design a primary date of 1882 and credits it to Morris for Morris & Co.

The fabric belongs to a distinct group in Morris's printing work. According to the V&A, it was one of three monochrome patterns designed by Morris to be printed by the indigo-discharge printing method, a technique that had preoccupied him since 1875. In this scheme, the white birds and foliage against the red ground are the result of the discharge process rather than a multi-colour build up.

The V&A also records that 'Bird and Anemone' is one of the few repeating patterns Morris used for both textiles and wallpapers, which makes it a useful reference point for anyone comparing the bird motif across media. Prints in the full collection include other Morris-attributed bird patterns discussed later in this guide.

The dating question around 'Bird and Anemone'

The V&A gives 'Bird and Anemone' a primary date of 1882. The supplied record also places the design within a group of experiments whose timing is documented more closely, as set out below.

According to the V&A, 'Bird and Anemone' was one of three monochrome patterns designed by Morris to be printed by the indigo-discharge printing method, which had preoccupied him since 1875. Experiments using indigo for these designs started in April 1881 at Morris's workshop in Queen Square in London, and were successfully printed after he moved into his factory at Merton Abbey, Wimbledon, London, in June the same year.

'Trellis': the first Morris paper, with birds by Philip Webb

The V&A holds 'Trellis' (museum number O248458) as a flowering thorned rose bush growing on a wooden trellis, with birds and flying insects, block-printed in distemper colours on paper. The attribution is split: according to the V&A, the birds were designed by Philip Webb, while the paper was designed by William Morris. For anyone studying the bird motif specifically, that split is the key fact about this object.

The dates are also specific. The V&A records that 'Trellis' was the first paper designed by Morris, but the third to be issued; it was designed in 1862 and registered and produced in 1864. The V&A further places it in 'Volume 1', a pattern book containing 25 Morris & Co. patterns from 1862 to 1881 (E.441-529-1919).

A second example survives in the V&A's holdings (museum number O78220) on a pale blue ground with red flowers, inscribed in ink on the back 'Trellis 9 / 8/8'. The existence of two examples with different grounds shows the pattern circulating in more than one colourway within the documented record.

Webb's role here is not an isolated curiosity. It raises the question of how often the creatures in Morris's patterns came from another hand, a subject covered in the story of Webb's birds and animals.

Where the plant sources come from

The birds in these designs sit among flowers and leaves, and the V&A's record explains where Morris's plant forms came from. According to the V&A, the main source of the patterns for Morris's wallpapers was plants he had observed since childhood, along with images of plants in illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, woodcuts and historical books, including John Gerarde's The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes (1597).

According to the V&A, 'Daisy', the first wallpaper issued by the firm, was issued in 1864 by Morris, Faulkner, Marshall & Co. Knowing that the foliage around the birds drew on observed plants and printed herbals helps explain why the settings read as dense, stylised garden growth rather than field observation of any one habitat. It does not, however, identify the birds themselves.

What we cannot yet say: species, Morris's own words, and the Met textile

Three gaps in the record should be stated plainly. First, no supplied museum record identifies the bird species shown in 'Bird and Anemone', 'Trellis' or any other Morris design. The birds are recorded as birds; any species identification would need a named source, and none is on file for this guide. Species-level discussion of related motifs is handled separately in our guide to paired birds in detail.

Second, no quotation by Morris about birds in his designs appears in the evidence, so this page makes no claim about what he intended the birds to mean. Third, the Met's 'William Morris Bird' woven wool, manufactured by Scalamandré, carries no date in its record and no design attribution to Morris. The Met's record establishes the title, the manufacturer, the dimensions, the accession number and the 1977 gift, and stops there. How it relates to Morris's own designs is a question the record does not answer, and it is treated at length in our guide to Bird.

Bird motifs in the shop's Arts and Crafts pieces

Alongside the documented museum objects, the shop sells a group of Morris-attributed bird patterns whose design names are not identified in the record. They are described here strictly by what they look like, without assigning design names. Blossom Tree Birds Pale Blue Arts And Crafts shows birds set against a blossoming tree on a pale blue ground, and Blue Birds Repeat Arts And Crafts shows a repeating arrangement of blue birds.

Paired birds appear twice in the group: Blue Paired Birds Arts And Crafts and Navy Paired Birds Arts And Crafts both show birds arranged in facing pairs, on blue and dark navy grounds respectively. Yellow Stylised Birds Arts And Crafts shows birds in a stylised form on a yellow ground. The theme of birds arranged in pairs and their historic textile sources is covered in our paired birds guide, and all of these pieces sit within the wider collection.

How birds fit Morris's wider pattern work

The two documented bird designs mark distinct moments in Morris's pattern career. According to the V&A, 'Trellis' was designed in 1862 and registered and produced in 1864. In the same early period, the V&A records that 'Daisy', the first wallpaper issued by Morris, Faulkner, Marshall & Co., was issued in 1864.

'Bird and Anemone', with a primary date of 1882 according to the V&A, belongs to a later phase of Morris's pattern career, and the V&A notes that it is one of the few repeating patterns Morris used for both textiles and wallpapers. That crossing between media makes it a natural comparison point when surveying the patterns collected in the main Morris guide, and the peacock, a bird with its own tradition in the period's design, is treated separately in our guide to peacocks.