Anemone by William Morris: The Woven Textile Explained

What the records show, and what they do not

This page was assigned to a woven textile called Anemone, but the sources supplied for it do not document any such design. What they do document, in detail, is Bird and Anemone, a printed cotton rather than a woven cloth. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds three examples of it, and its records credit the design to William Morris himself.

That distinction matters. Printing and weaving were separate branches of Morris's firm's production, and a printed chintz should not be described as a woven textile. Readers looking for Morris's woven work will find a reference list of Morris woven work covering the textiles, tapestries and carpets his firm actually produced.

Bird and Anemone: the closest documented design

The V&A records Bird and Anemone as a furnishing fabric, block printed cotton, British, designed by William Morris for Morris & Co. and dated 1882. The museum names Morris as the primary maker. A separate page on the Morris woven work list keeps woven designs distinct from printed ones like this.

The V&A example O78906 has a dyed cotton ground with the pattern block printed in red madder dye. The museum describes it as printed with birds amongst flowers and leaves in white on a red ground, and it carries a Morris & Co. label. Beyond that description, the specific plants shown are not identified in the records.

Two further V&A examples, O270981 and O270982, are block printed cotton furnishing fabrics of the same pattern, printed in white and blue, each with a Morris & Co. label attached. One of them, O270982, is stamped Morris & Company 449 Oxford Street London, which ties the surviving cloth to the firm's retail address.

A dedicated page covers the Bird and Anemone chintz in depth, so this account stays with the documented facts and the questions the records leave open.

Conflicting dates and colourways in the museum records

The V&A's own records do not settle when Bird and Anemone was produced. The museum lists production dates of 1882, before June 1881, and 1882 to 1919 for the pattern. These are conflicting fields in the same institutional record, and this page reports them without choosing between them.

The museum also notes that the O78906 example was surface printed later in madder, and that its printing date can be calculated through marks and labels on the sample. The surviving examples differ in colouring as well, which the table below sets out as recorded.

No evidence gives a separate design date versus a first issue or registration date for the pattern. The three production date fields are all the dating the supplied records offer.

Printing at Merton Abbey and the indigo-discharge context

According to the V&A, Bird and Anemone was one of three monochrome patterns designed especially by Morris to be printed by the indigo-discharge printing method, which had preoccupied him since 1875. This is a printing process, not weaving, and the pattern's documented history belongs entirely to the printed side of the firm's output.

The museum dates the experiments with indigo for these designs to April 1881, carried out at Morris's workshop in Queen Square in London, with successful printing achieved after he moved into his factory at Merton Abbey, Wimbledon, London, in June the same year. The V&A also records that tapestry weaving was established at Merton Abbey when company production was consolidated there in 1881, and that Morris appointed John Henry Dearle to manage production, which shows how distinct the woven and printed departments were under one roof.

The V&A further records that from the early 1880s onwards wallpaper became less of a central concern for Morris as his energies focused on textile production at Merton Abbey Mills. The firm issued a further 35 new wallpaper designs between 1882 and Morris's death in 1896, according to the same account, and Bird and Anemone is one of the few repeating patterns Morris used for both textiles and wallpapers.

Where to see examples and related woven work

The only documented museum examples are the three V&A holdings listed above: O78906, O270981 and O270982. No second institution appears in the supplied records, and no later reissues of the pattern are documented in the evidence.

The pattern did reach contemporary interiors. According to the V&A, in the first half of the 1880s the Earl and Countess of Carlisle, who were friends with Morris and his wife, used Morris's richly coloured Bird and Anemone.

For readers tracing Morris's textile work further:

• The reference list of Morris woven textiles, tapestries and carpets gathers the designs the firm actually wove.
• A closer look at Peacock and Dragon covers one of the documented woven textiles in the same depth this page gives to the printed record.
• The William Morris Original Designs collection shows prints based on documented designs.

Because no woven Anemone is documented, any woven-look fabric sold under that name today should be treated as a later interpretation rather than a Morris design. Checking a design against museum records before buying remains the most reliable habit.