The Morris Room at the V&A: History of the Green Dining Room

A Dining Room Commission at South Kensington

What is now discussed as the Morris Room was, in origin, the West Dining Room of the South Kensington Museum. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. secured two prestigious London commissions after the 1862 International Exhibition: decorating two rooms at St James's Palace, and decorating the West Dining Room at South Kensington. The dining room was one of three new spaces the Museum had dedicated to refreshments.

The V&A describes the scheme Morris and his collaborators created for this room as a restful, blue-green design, made chiefly with the architect Philip Webb and the painter Edward Burne-Jones. The Museum's page on Morris includes an image captioned Morris room, credited to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, which shows the space as it is known today.

The building itself changed its name in the same decade Morris's association with its collections was ending. The Victoria and Albert Museum records that the South Kensington Museum was renamed the V&A in 1899, a few years after Morris's death, so the firm's dining room outlived the institution name under which the commission was won.

How the Firm Came to Decorate a Museum

The South Kensington commission grew out of the firm's founding story. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, after his marriage Morris commissioned Philip Webb to build the Red House at Bexleyheath, and the furnishing and decorating of that house led directly to the founding in April 1861 of the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company, with premises in Red Lion Square. Britannica lists the other members of the firm as Ford Madox Brown, Rossetti, Webb and Burne-Jones.

Public attention followed quickly. At the International Exhibition of 1862, held at South Kensington itself, the firm exhibited stained glass, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Victoria and Albert Museum notes that Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. became fashionable following that exhibition, which led to a range of decorating jobs.

Those jobs included the two London commissions named above: two rooms at St James's Palace and the West Dining Room of the South Kensington Museum, as recorded by the Victoria and Albert Museum. The dining room scheme was the work of Morris with Webb and Burne-Jones, the same collaborators who had shaped the furnishing of a closer look at Red House, the house from which the firm had grown.

The sequence matters for understanding why a commercial decorating firm was invited into a national museum. A young company showed stained glass a short walk from the Museum's own site in 1862, gained a fashionable reputation, and within a few years was decorating the Museum's own dining room. The evidence records that these commissions were secured following the exhibition, though it does not give an exact date for the start or completion of the dining room work.

What the Evidence Shows, and What It Does Not

For history readers, it helps to be precise about the limits of the record. The V&A's account establishes the commission of the West Dining Room, the three refreshment spaces, and the blue-green scheme by Morris with Webb and Burne-Jones, and its page includes the captioned image of the Morris room credited to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

What the record used here does not state is equally relevant. It does not give a date for the completion of the dining room decoration, nor does it describe the surviving decorative contents of the room in detail, and it does not confirm which name, Morris Room or Green Dining Room, the Museum currently uses for the space, or whether the room still operates as a cafe or dining room. Visitors who want to see the room specifically should check current details directly with the V&A before travelling.

This caution is not a reflection on the room but on the sources. Single institutional pages summarise a long history, and details such as current room names and uses change. The core documented facts, the commission, the firm responsible and the collaborators on the scheme, are firmly established.

Morris and the Museum's Collections

The dining room was only one thread in Morris's long relationship with the South Kensington Museum. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, Morris regularly visited the Museum's collections throughout his career, borrowing design ideas or making notes. For a designer who drew on historical pattern across many media, this made the Museum a working resource rather than a casual interest.

That interest became institutional work. The V&A records that Morris advised on prospective acquisitions during his time as an Art Referee, including in 1887 a medieval tapestry from Tournai in Belgium depicting the Trojan War, and in 1893 the 16th-century Ardabil carpet from Iran. Both objects became part of the collections Morris had studied as a visitor.

Morris also gave the Museum an object from his own workshop. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, in 1893 Morris donated a miniature tapestry loom that had previously been used to instruct apprentice weavers at Morris & Company's workshop at Merton Abbey, the south London works where the firm's weaving and printing were carried out. The loom connected the Museum's collections directly to the firm's production methods, a link explored further in our guide to Merton Abbey Works.

May Morris and the V&A's Morris Holdings

The Museum's Morris collection owes as much to May Morris as to her father. The Victoria and Albert Museum records that May Morris maintained a long relationship with the V&A, lending objects relating to her father's work to various exhibitions over the years.

Her standing in the family business was substantial in its own right. According to the V&A, May Morris took responsibility for the embroidery aspect of her father's business in 1885, at the age of 23, and ran that side of the firm from then on.

The bequest came after her death. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, on her death in 1938 May Morris bequeathed to the V&A a sizeable collection of her father's work, including 30 designs for wallpaper, textiles and embroidery. The Museum notes that it has collected individual pieces by Morris since 1938, and that the majority of its designs come from May Morris's original bequest. Many of those designs can be seen reproduced in our William Morris original designs collection.

Planning a Visit and Nearby Morris Places

The V&A is on Cromwell Road in South Kensington, and its Morris room sits within the museum building, but the record used for this article contains no current opening hours, access arrangements or location details for the room, and does not confirm its current use. Visitors should verify these details with the V&A directly before planning a trip around the room itself.

What the record does establish is the founding story behind the commission. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, the furnishing of the Red House at Bexleyheath led to the founding of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company in April 1861, the firm that went on to decorate the Museum's West Dining Room. Readers planning a Morris itinerary can pair the V&A with Red House to see where that story began.

Other places connect the strands of this article. The Merton Abbey Works page follows the workshop whose miniature tapestry loom Morris gave to the Museum in 1893. For readers building a broader picture of his life across sites, our guide to places connected with Morris's life gathers the houses, workshops and museums in one route.