Great Morris & Co. Commissions: Palaces, Churches and Country Houses

The Short Answer: A Firm Built on Commissions

Morris & Co. grew through commissions. The V&A records that the firm's decorative scheme for St James's Palace, begun in 1866, was its first secular commission, a turning point for a business that had until then looked chiefly to ecclesiastical work. Royal and aristocratic clients followed, and the firm's wallpapers, textiles, rugs and embroidery all found their way into grand interiors.

The documented examples covered here are a palace scheme, a royal wallpaper for Balmoral Castle, a large carpet for a house in Kent, an armchair with provenance from the Grove in Harborne, and church embroidery. That is a short list, and the gap between it and the firm's real output is one of the themes of this page. For the firm's structure and working life, the Morris & Co. history page gives the fuller account.

St James's Palace: The First Secular Commission

The V&A dates the beginning of the St James's Palace decorative scheme to 1866 and identifies it as Morris & Co.'s first secular commission. The same museum's records also state that in 1880 Morris was asked to redecorate rooms at the palace, for which he created the wallpaper 'St James's'. Those two dates describe different moments, and the sources do not explain how the 1866 scheme and the 1880 wallpaper request relate to each other.

The 'St James's' wallpaper itself is well documented. According to the V&A, William Morris designed it for the Grand Staircase at St James's Palace, and it was printed by Jeffrey & Co. for Morris & Co. The V&A dates its specimen to 1881.

Technically it was a demanding pattern. The V&A states that the design required 68 separate printing blocks to create a repeat over two wallpaper widths. Two V&A records give slightly different figures for the vertical repeat, 119.4 cm in one and 127 cm in the other, and the museum's technical record also notes that two widths of paper were needed to complete the pattern horizontally.

A pattern needing dozens of blocks and two paper widths was expensive to produce and difficult to hang. That fits a palace staircase, where the walls were large and the client could absorb the cost. It also helps explain why such papers stood at the top of the firm's range rather than the middle.

Royal Approval: Balmoral and the VRI Cipher

In 1887 Queen Victoria commissioned Morris & Company to create a special wallpaper design for Balmoral Castle with the 'VRI' cipher incorporated into it. The V&A records the commission itself, but its record does not name a designer for the paper and does not describe its appearance.

The V&A draws a conclusion from the royal work: it states that these commissions no doubt boosted the commercial success of Morris's papers and helped secure his reputation. That is the museum's interpretation, and it is a plausible one, since a royal client functions as a public endorsement. It should still be read as the V&A's judgement rather than as a documented sales figure.

Country Houses: Bullerswood and the Grove

The clearest country house commission in the record is a carpet. In 1889 Morris & Company made a Hammersmith rug commission for John Sanderson, a wool trader who lived at Bullerswood in Chislehurst, Kent, resulting in the 'Bullerswood' carpet. The commission is documented with a client, a house and a date, which makes it a useful anchor for this part of the story.

The Bullerswood carpet rested on a decade of rug making. According to the V&A, Morris began in 1879 to oversee the hand-knotting of 'Hammersmith' rugs in limited runs on looms installed in outbuildings at his London house. The looms moved to Merton Abbey in 1881, where Morris & Company produced large Hammersmith rugs for a series of interiors commissions, of which Bullerswood was one.

The second country house object is an armchair. The V&A holds a chair, museum number O372099, with upholstery covers of 'Violet and Columbine' wool and mohair, made for Morris & Co. around 1883 to 1900, that came from the Grove, Harborne. The V&A attributes the chair's design to Philip Speakman Webb and the fabric's design to William Morris.

One caution belongs here. The museum record preserves the chair's provenance from the Grove but not the circumstances of any commission for that house, so it is evidence of where the object ended up, not proof of a documented decorating job. Country house clients and their spending are treated in more detail on the page about the price of Morris & Co. in detail.

Churches and Embroidery

Embroidery was used as part of commissions to decorate the interiors of a number of England's newly built churches. The V&A's record establishes that role, though it does not name the individual churches, so any specific church attribution would go beyond the evidence.

The division of labour in the firm's embroidered panels is documented. From the mid-1870s, according to the V&A, Morris and Edward Burne-Jones worked together on embroidered panels for wealthy clients, with Morris providing decorative detail and Burne-Jones the figuration. It is a clear example of how a single commission could draw on several hands.

The business side changed in 1877. The V&A states that embroidery became a more significant part of the business following the opening of Morris & Company's new 'all under one roof' shop in Oxford Street. By 1885 Morris stepped away from direct involvement with embroidery, putting his daughter May, aged just 23, in charge.

What the Evidence Does and Does Not Show

Two conflicts in the record deserve plain statement. On the date of the St James's Palace work, one V&A record dates the beginning of the decorative scheme to 1866, while another states that in 1880 Morris was asked to redecorate rooms at the palace. Both come from the same museum, and neither explains the relationship between the two moments. On the 'St James's' wallpaper's vertical repeat, one V&A record gives 119.4 cm and another gives 127 cm.

The gaps are just as instructive. The evidence names St James's Palace, Balmoral Castle, Bullerswood, the Grove armchair and church embroidery, but no comprehensive institutional overview of the firm's commissions. No designer is recorded for the Balmoral 'VRI' wallpaper, and no specific newly built church is named for the embroidery work. The full sentence in one source about a four-month period at St James's Palace is cut off in the material available, so nothing can be built on it.

The honest conclusion is that the commission history of Morris & Co. is known in outline and in a few well-documented examples, not in full. Where a source is single and uncorroborated, this page has attributed it in the text rather than presenting it as settled fact.

Common Misconceptions

The first misconception is that every Morris & Co. commission was personally drawn by William Morris. The Grove armchair shows why that fails: the V&A attributes the chair to Philip Speakman Webb and only the 'Violet and Columbine' fabric to Morris. A single commission object could carry two designers' work.

The second is that the firm made everything itself. The 'St James's' wallpaper was designed by Morris but printed by Jeffrey & Co. for Morris & Co., according to the V&A. The firm's commissions often depended on outside manufacturers, a pattern seen across its wallpapers and textiles.

Morris himself left a caution that bears on how his papers were made. In his essay The Lesser Arts (1877), he warned against 'sham-real boughs and flowers' and advised wallpaper designers to avoid falling into the trap of trying to make your paper look as if it were painted by hand.

Why It Matters for Morris's Work

The commissions shaped what the firm made. A palace staircase called for a paper needing 68 blocks and two widths of paper, a royal castle called for a cipher wallpaper, and a Kent house called for a large hand-knotted carpet. The documented output of the firm follows its clients as much as its principles.

The V&A records that Morris produced over 50 wallpapers during his career, and the royal and palace jobs sit within that larger body of work rather than apart from it. Reading the commissions alongside the ordinary pattern books gives a fairer sense of the firm than reading either alone.