Paired Birds in Morris's Woven Textiles and Their Historic Sources

Paired Birds in 'Strawberry Thief'

The best-known paired-bird design is 'Strawberry Thief'. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a curtain of printed cotton with this title, designed by William Morris in 1883, printed at Merton Abbey and retailed by Morris & Co. between 1918 and 1940, under museum number O270853.

The V&A's record sets out the making of the cloth. It is cotton, first dyed with indigo, then discharge printed and then wood block printed. The museum lists the colours as a dark indigo ground with the repeat in half-indigo, red, brown, yellow, green, pink and white.

The paired birds sit at the centre of the pattern. According to the V&A, the design shows a turnover repeat of two types of thrush like birds perched in pairs amidst foliate and floral stems. One pair of confronted birds 'warble' whilst the other pair are about to break off two ripe strawberries.

The museum also gives an account of where the idea came from. The V&A states that Morris based the pattern and name of 'Strawberry Thief' on the thrushes which frequently stole the strawberries in the kitchen garden of his countryside home, Kelmscott Manor, in Oxfordshire. This is the museum's interpretation, and it is the only named account of the design's origin in the record behind this page.

The V&A describes 'Strawberry Thief' as one of Morris's best-known designs and states that, despite being one of the most expensive printed furnishings available from Morris & Co., it became a firm favourite with clients. The same record notes the cloth's intended uses: it was meant for curtains or draped around walls, or for loose covers on furniture.

The museum holds a second curtain of the same design, museum number O270852, with the same design details as the first. Two surviving examples in one collection underline how widely the pattern circulated.

Confronting Pairs in the 'Bird' Design

The second documented paired-bird design is 'Bird', dated 1878. The evidence for it in the Victoria and Albert Museum's record is a later weaving: the museum holds a jacquard woven woollen furnishing fabric made by Scalamandré in the United States in 1983, after Morris's design, under museum number O294434.

The repeat is built from confrontation. In the V&A's description, the fabric shows alternating pairs of confronting birds in flight and resting on a leaf, with artichoke motifs separating the two sets of bird motifs and a surrounding floral design of flower buds, sunflower heads and other blooms. Where 'Strawberry Thief' pairs its birds on stems, 'Bird' turns each pair to face its partner.

The Victoria and Albert Museum records that the woven wool carries a printed label that reads 'Scalamandré historic fabric. Reproduced for the William Morris Society from Original Document', with '100% wool' overleaf. That label ties the 1983 cloth directly to the Morris Society and to a documented original. For the full history of the design, see our guide to Morris's Bird woven fabric.

What the Museum Records Do Not Confirm

Several Metropolitan Museum of Art holdings involve Morris textiles, but their records do not describe the patterns, so they cannot be listed here as paired-bird designs.

According to the Met's records, the museum holds two woven wool pieces designed by William Morris, dated ca. 1878. The museum record gives no description of the pattern, so no claim that these pieces show paired birds can be made from the evidence available.

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the museum also holds a woven cotton curtain designed by William Morris, dated ca. 1878. Again, the record describes no pattern, so the curtain stays off the list.

For the wider question of meaning in Morris's patterns, including why this journal avoids assigning symbolism without a sourced author, see our guide to meaning in Morris patterns.

The Question of Historic Sources

The central question of this page is whether Morris's paired birds came from historic silks, such as Sicilian or Persian woven textiles. The honest answer is that no supplied source connects any historic textile tradition to paired birds specifically.

The V&A does document Morris's habit of drawing on historical material in general terms. According to the museum, his sources included observed nature and historical books, including John Gerarde's The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes of 1597, which he owned. That is a statement about pattern sources broadly, not about birds in pairs.

The V&A also records a historic Italian textile, acquired by the South Kensington Museum in 1883, that inspired a Morris design.

So the position stands as follows: two Morris designs are documented as showing paired birds, the V&A names observed nature and historical books as his general sources, and one design is tied to a named historic textile. What no record here supplies is a named Sicilian, Italian or Persian silk as the source of the paired-bird motif itself. Anyone researching that link should treat it as an open question rather than an established fact. For the broader survey of bird species across the work, see our guide to birds in Morris designs.

Paired Birds to Explore Further

The shop collection includes several paired-bird prints in the Morris manner. Each is a Morris-attributed pattern whose design name has not yet been identified, so they are described here by appearance alone and no design name is attached to any of them.

Two of them put the motif at the centre: Blue Paired Birds Arts And Crafts and Navy Paired Birds Arts And Crafts, both built around the facing-bird arrangement the museum records describe for Morris's bird designs. The full range sits in the shop's all products collection, alongside the other bird and animal subjects.

If you want the documented history rather than a print, the next step is the design itself: our guide to Bird covers the design dated 1878 in the V&A's record and its later weavings.