Honeysuckle in William Morris Designs

The Two Documented Honeysuckle Textiles at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The best-documented examples of the motif are a pair of printed textiles in the Met's collection. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a printed textile titled Honeysuckle designed by William Morris, with the design registered in 1876 and printed between 1876 and 1877. A second printed textile with the same title, also designed by William Morris and registered in 1876, was printed between 1877 and 1917 in cotton, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's record.

The museum gives details of both objects. The cotton example, accession number 30.95.45, measures 79 1/8 by 73 1/2 inches (201 by 186.7 cm).

The wide printing range on the cotton example suggests the design stayed in use over decades, though the record does not say so directly.

What the Records Do and Do Not Say About the Design

A motif study should be honest about its limits, and here the limits are real. The Met's records for both textiles give attribution, dates, materials and provenance, but they do not describe the pattern's appearance or imagery. Nothing in the museum excerpts examined for this page states what the Honeysuckle pattern actually looks like.

Three gaps deserve to be stated plainly, because they are the kinds of detail pages like this often fill with guesswork.

The title Honeysuckle is what the museum records give, and the title is what this study can confirm. Anyone repeating the design's imagery or its plant identification should check a primary source such as the museum object itself.

Honeysuckle and the Embroidery Kit Tradition

The mid 1870s, when the Honeysuckle textiles were registered, was also the period when Morris developed his small square embroidery panels. The Victoria and Albert Museum records that from about 1876 Morris designed a series of these panels, usually sold as kits, with an inked design outlined on plain cloth to be stitched at home in floss silks.

A documented example of the kit format shows how the system worked. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds an embroidered panel titled Olive and Rose, designed by William Morris around 1880, worked in silk on cotton, produced as a kit by Morris & Co. The design was Morris's.

One caution applies. The Olive and Rose panel is not recorded as showing honeysuckle, and the evidence for this page does not document the motif in any embroidery. The kit tradition is offered here as context for Morris's textile practice in the same years, not as a further example of the motif.

Open Questions: Morris's Writings and Attributed Interpretations

Two research questions about this motif currently have no answer in the documented record. First, no surviving excerpt shows William Morris writing about Honeysuckle, so nothing can be quoted from him on the design. Second, no named author or institution offers an interpretation of the Honeysuckle motif in the sources behind this page, so no symbolic meaning can be given here.

This restraint is deliberate. Symbolic readings of Morris patterns circulate widely, but without a named scholar or Morris's own words they cannot be checked, and unchecked readings tend to harden into false facts. If a sourced interpretation of the motif comes to light, it belongs on this page.

The name Honeysuckle in Morris's circle extends beyond William himself. A later wallpaper of that title is associated with May Morris, and that design has its own documented record. See our closer look at May Morris's Honeysuckle wallpaper for the history and design of that separate work.

Related Flower Motifs in Morris's Work

Each major flower motif has its own study in this journal. Three companion studies are set out below, and the parent guide gathers all of them together.

Each of those pages follows the same method as this one: museum records first, interpretation only where it is attributed.

Honeysuckle-Style Prints for the Home

If you want the look of a honeysuckle pattern on your own walls, our shop sells Morris-style flower prints. Two of these, one in a cream and orange palette and one in indigo and cream, are Morris-attributed patterns whose original design names are not yet identified, so they are described here by appearance alone and not given a design name.

You can browse the full range in the William Morris style flower prints collection, including a cream and orange honeysuckle print and an indigo and cream honeysuckle print. These are Morris-style products made by our shop, not documented Morris designs, and we label them accordingly.