Fruit Trees: Apples, Oranges and Lemons in William Morris Designs

The 'Fruit' wallpaper: branches of oranges, limes and pomegranates

The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a specimen of the 'Fruit' (or 'Pomegranate') wallpaper whose design shows branches of fruit trees bearing oranges, limes and pomegranates. The V&A attributes the design to William Morris and records its publication by Morris & Co.

It was made in England and carries the museum number O251025.

The sheet is not a loose survival. According to the V&A, it forms part of a wallpaper pattern book containing 132 specimens, numbered E.2734-2866-1980, so the design is preserved in the company in which Morris & Co. itself presented its range to customers.

When was it issued? A dating question the sources answer differently

The V&A dates the first issue of the 'Fruit' (or 'Pomegranate') wallpaper to about 1866.

There is a further wrinkle in the record: the physical description of the O251025 specimen appears in two forms, one describing the fruit tree design with oranges, limes and pomegranates and one describing the 'Daisy' wallpaper, a design of plants in a brick pattern on a flecked ground. This disagreement is recorded here as it stands rather than smoothed over.

For readers, the practical point is simple. The design's attribution to Morris, as recorded by the V&A, and its fruit tree imagery are firmly documented; the exact year of first issue should be quoted as circa the mid 1860s unless a fuller museum record settles it.

Pomona: apples and oranges in tapestry

The second documented appearance of the motif is a tapestry panel of Pomona in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The V&A attributes the design to Sir Edward Burne-Jones and John Henry Dearle, and records that it was made by Morris & Company at Merton, England, around 1900.

The figure carries the fruit directly. In the V&A's description, Pomona holds an orange branch in her left hand and cradles eight apples in her skirt. The panel is woven in wool and silk on a cotton warp.

The setting matters too. The V&A describes Pomona as a maiden standing amongst flowers and fruits, dressed in three layered robes, with background foliage in the 'millefleur' tradition that includes strawberries.

It is worth being precise about authorship here. According to the V&A, the fruit imagery in this panel belongs to a design credited to Burne-Jones and Dearle, made by Morris & Company, not to a drawing by William Morris personally.

What the record does not show

Several objects that surface in the research turn out not to support the fruit tree motif, and honesty about that narrows the list usefully.

The following limits come straight from the catalogues checked for this page.

• No evidence shows that William Morris wrote about fruit trees, apples, oranges or lemons, so no quotation from him on the subject appears here.
• No botanical identification source is given for the fruit species in the 'Fruit' wallpaper or the 'Pomona' tapestry. The identifications of oranges, limes, pomegranates and apples rest on the museums' own descriptions.
• Its catalogue excerpt does not describe the imagery, so no fruit tree content can be confirmed for it.
• The Art Institute of Chicago holds a 'Swan House' carpet designed by William Morris, produced by Morris & Co., London, with a design of about 1883 and made in 1887. The institute records that it was among the original furnishings of the John J. Glessner House in Chicago, placed in the hall, and completed in 1887.
• Its records do not describe fruit trees in the carpet.

No named-author interpretations of the fruit tree motif appear in the record beyond the V&A's identification of Pomona. Anything further about what the apples or oranges might mean would be guesswork, and this page declines it.

Fruit trees among Morris's plant motifs

Fruit trees sit inside a much larger botanical vocabulary across Morris and Morris & Co. designs. The parent guide to flowers in Morris designs maps that vocabulary design by design.

Pomegranates deserve their own note, since the 'Fruit' wallpaper carries that alternative title, and flowering branches of other kinds recur across wallpapers and textiles. For two well-documented examples, see our guide to Roses and our guide to Tulips, each covering the designs where those flowers appear.