Willow in William Morris Designs

Two Wallpapers and a Dining Room: Where Willow Appears

The documented record for the willow motif is compact and precise. The Met also holds a wallpaper titled 'Willow Bough' (accession 23.163.4k), designed by Morris and dated 1887, block-printed in distemper colors, with a sheet of 27 x 21 1/2 inches.

The Victoria and Albert Museum holds specimens of the 'Willow Bough' wallpaper as well, including one recorded under museum number O248728, a foliate pattern of intertwined willow leaves, block-printed in distemper colours on paper. A third documented example is not a wallpaper by Morris at all: Philip Webb made a design, dated around 1866, for the wall decoration and cornice of the Green Dining Room at the South Kensington Museum, showing a repeated pattern of willow branches with fruit and orange and gold flowers.

The documented examples of the willow motif are:

• The Met's wallpaper 'Willow', designed by William Morris, dated 1874, block-printed (accession 39.18.5).
• The Met's wallpaper 'Willow Bough', designed by William Morris, dated 1887, block-printed in distemper colors (accession 23.163.4k).
• The V&A's specimen of 'Willow Bough' wallpaper, O248728, a foliate pattern of intertwined willow leaves, block-printed in distemper colours on paper.
• Philip Webb's design of ca. 1866 for the Green Dining Room wall decoration and cornice at the South Kensington Museum, with repeated willow branches bearing fruit and orange and gold flowers.

How the Willow Is Drawn

The V&A describes 'Willow Bough' as a foliate pattern of intertwined willow leaves. In the specimen O248728 the pattern is block-printed in distemper colours on paper, and this example has a white background colourway.

A second V&A specimen, O78227, shows the same design in different colours: green willow leaves on a pale-blue ground. Colour, rather than drawing, is what separates the two recorded versions.

Webb's Green Dining Room design draws the motif differently. His ca. 1866 drawing shows a repeated pattern of willow branches with fruit and orange and gold flowers, the willow leaves pale green against a darker green ground. Instead of isolated leaves on a plain ground, the branches carry flowers and fruit within the repeat.

Design by Design: The Documented Examples

The table gathers each documented example with its designer, date, medium, holding museum and dimensions. Where the V&A attributes a design, that attribution is stated in the text, since it rests on a single institutional record.

Because the Met's 'Willow' of 1874 and 'Willow Bough' of 1887 are recorded as separate titles, it is easy to conflate them. If you want a fuller comparison, our guide to the story of Willow vs Willow Bough sets the two patterns side by side.

The Green Dining Room Commission

In 1865, according to the V&A, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. was given the commission of designing the Green Dining Room, one of three new refreshment rooms at the South Kensington Museum. Webb's willow-branch design belongs to this commission.

Attribution matters here. The V&A records that Philip Webb designed the ceiling and much of the wall decoration of the Green Dining Room, and the ca. 1866 drawing for the willow-branch wall decoration and cornice is his. This is a Webb motif within a Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. commission, not a wallpaper design by Morris himself. The record describes the design drawing; it does not state whether the decoration was executed as designed or whether it survives.

Pattern Books and Printing

The V&A records how 'Willow Bough' was made and stored. The firm's papers were block-printed, and the 'Willow Bough' examples were printed by Jeffrey & Co. for Morris & Co., according to the V&A's attribution. The O248728 specimen carries its title, number and price inscribed in ink on the back.

What the Records Do Not Settle

Several questions have no answer in the museum records consulted here, and an honest motif study should say so plainly.

The record leaves these points open:

• Whether the Met's 'Willow' of 1874 and the 'Willow Bough' of 1887 are related designs or entirely separate patterns.
• The V&A's attribution of 'Willow Bough' to William Morris as designer, printed by Jeffrey & Co. for Morris & Co., and the V&A's dating of its first issue to 1887, each of which rests on a single institutional record.
• Whether Morris wrote anything about willow. No Morris writing or quotation on the motif appears in the evidence behind this page.
• The botanical identification of the willow depicted. The records describe the pattern only as intertwined willow leaves or willow branches, without naming a species.
• Any named interpretation of the willow motif. No interpretation of the motif by a named author appears in the consulted records, so this page offers none.

The absence of a recorded interpretation is worth pausing on. Readers will often find symbolic readings of the willow attached to Morris patterns, but none of the sources behind this page supports one, and the V&A's own commentary confines itself to what the pattern shows and how it was made.

Willow Among Morris's Plant Motifs

The V&A notes that William Morris designed a number of wallpapers, all with repeating patterns based on natural forms, and that many of these designs were based on plant forms which he studied at first hand. Willow fits that account: the motif in 'Willow Bough' and in Webb's Green Dining Room drawing is built from a single plant's leaves and branches, arranged into a repeat.

Willow is one plant among many in Morris's pattern vocabulary, and several other botanical motifs have their own documented examples. For the wider picture, see our botanical guide to flowers in Morris designs, and for the best documented willow design specifically, our explained guide to Willow Bough walks through the V&A and Met records in detail.

Botanical pattern also appears in our print range in forms other than the willow. One current print, a pale green willow leaf composition in the Morris manner, is an unidentified Morris-attributed pattern, so we list it by what it looks like rather than by a design name. If you prefer flower prints drawn from the documented designs, our collection of William Morris style flower prints gathers those together.