Poppies in William Morris Designs

The 'Poppy' or 'Wreath' design at the V&A

The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a design for the 'Wreath' wallpaper by William Morris for Morris & Co, dated about 1880, under museum number O250934. The museum's record gives the design two names, 'Poppy' or 'Wreath', which is why both titles appear in listings of Morris's wallpapers.

The design shows poppies in pink, blue and white set against a dense ground of swirling acanthus leaves in shades of green. Technical annotations for production appear on the sheet, so this is a working design rather than a finished presentation drawing.

The V&A records the materials as pencil, pen and ink, watercolour and bodycolour on paper. That combination is typical of wallpaper designs at full scale, where the drawing had to carry enough information for the block printers to follow.

Who made it, and what it shows about Morris and Co

Attribution needs care here. The V&A lists George Young Wardle as maker and decorator of the design O250934, even though the museum also frames the sheet as work by William Morris for Morris & Co. Both statements come from the same record, and the design should be discussed with that dual listing in mind.

The V&A states that the design shows how William Morris's confidence in creating highly sophisticated pattern repeats had evolved by the late nineteenth century. The museum also describes the rich colours, scrolling foliage and effect of three-dimensionality as typical of Morris & Co.'s output from the mid-1870s onwards.

The acanthus connection

The poppies in this design do not sit on plain ground. According to the V&A, the design borrows the motif of stylised scrolling foliage from the 'Acanthus' paper (Circ. 297-1955), one of Morris's best known wallpaper patterns. The swirling green leaves that carry the pink, blue and white flowers are therefore a direct reuse of an earlier Morris motif.

For readers who want that plant in depth, our study of the Acanthus Leaf in William Morris Designs follows the acanthus motif across Morris's wallpapers and textiles.

What we cannot confirm about poppies in Morris designs

A well documented Morris-related object is often assumed to show poppies, but the record available for this study does not say so. The Met holds a wallpaper titled 'Compton', designed by John Henry Dearle in 1896 and block-printed in distemper colors (accession number 23.163.4e). The record does not describe the motifs in enough detail to confirm poppies, so it cannot be listed here as a poppy design.

The Art Institute of Chicago holds the 'Swan House' Carpet, designed by William Morris (English, 1834-1896) and produced by Morris & Co., London, with the design dated c. 1883 and the carpet made in 1887 (accession number 1974.524). The carpet was among the original furnishings of the John J. Glessner House on Prairie Avenue in Chicago, a house designed by architect Henry Hobson Richardson and completed in 1887. The Art Institute states that in the 1870s Morris began designing hand-knotted and machine-made carpets, and that for the 'Swan House' Carpet Morris looked to Turkish and Persian rugs for inspiration. The museum's description of the carpet's design does not name poppies, so it too stays off the confirmed list.

Two further gaps should be stated plainly. No Morris writing on poppies appears in the sources checked, and no named author has proposed an interpretation of the poppy motif in Morris's work in the material reviewed. Without a sourced statement, no symbolic meaning can be attached to the flowers in the V&A design.

Poppies among Morris's other flowers

The poppy is one flower among many in Morris's pattern vocabulary, and the confirmed evidence for it is thinner than for some of its neighbours. Our parent guide to flowers in Morris designs gathers the botanical studies in one place and is the best starting point for comparing motifs.

Two related studies sit alongside this one. Readers interested in other garden flowers can read more on Roses in William Morris Designs in our roses study, or follow the Tulips in our tulips motif page, another flower that appears in documented Morris patterns.

Seeing poppy designs in print

Our William Morris Style Flower Prints collection gathers floral prints in the Arts and Crafts manner for readers who want the look of these patterns on a wall. Among them is a Cream Lilac Acanthus Poppy print, a Morris-attributed pattern whose specific design name is not identified in our records, so we describe it only by what it shows: poppy flowers in cream and lilac tones with acanthus-style foliage.