William Morris's Bird and Anemone Chintz: History and Design

Quick facts: Bird and Anemone at a glance

Some things the records do not fix. The evidence does not state where the cotton was printed, and no later reissues of the design are documented in the material used here.

What the pattern shows

The wallpaper pattern shows intertwined anemone flowers and foliage, with repeats of two designs of perching birds. The birds sit within the scrolling growth rather than flying free of it, and the anemones open along the stems in a dense, even rhythm.

The V&A describes Morris's designs as subtle, stylised evocations of natural forms rather than literal transcriptions. Read that way, the anemones and birds in this pattern are recognisable but reshaped to serve the repeat, with the flowers and foliage interlaced so the eye travels around the pattern without settling.

When it was designed and first printed

The V&A record for the furnishing fabric (O78906) gives a primary date of 1882. The same record lists production dates of 1882, before June 1881, and 1882 to 1919, so the museum's own entries allow for a range rather than a single printing year.

The wallpaper records tell a similar story. The specimen O248678 carries a primary date of 1882 with production dates of 1882 and 1881, while a second specimen, O248675, has a primary date of 1881 with production dates of 1881 and 1882. Taken together, the records point to design and first production around 1881 and 1882, with the cotton remaining in production into the twentieth century.

What the records do not settle is the exact first issue date for the wallpaper and the textile as separate events.

Indigo discharge and the madder printing

Bird and Anemone was one of three monochrome patterns designed especially by Morris to be printed by the indigo-discharge method, an approach that had preoccupied him since 1875. In indigo discharge, the pattern is reserved or discharged out of an indigo ground, which suits strong, flat effects in a limited palette.

The V&A example itself was made differently. It is a dyed cotton ground with a block-printed pattern in red madder dye, and the museum notes that this cotton was surface printed later in madder, a natural red plant dye. So the surviving textile shows the design carried out in madder red on a dyed ground rather than as an indigo-discharge piece.

The wallpaper and the cotton: one design, two registers

The V&A holds a wallpaper specimen of Bird and Anemone, museum number O248678, designed by William Morris and printed by Jeffrey & Co. for Morris & Co. It was block-printed in distemper colours on paper, and it forms part of Volume 2, a pattern book containing 27 Morris & Co. designs.

A second wallpaper specimen, O248675, shows the pattern pale-brown on a darker ground, with a primary date of 1881. Between the two specimens the design appears in more than one colouring, which was normal practice for Morris & Co. wallpapers.

In other words, the wallpaper and the cotton share a design but were not meant to be exact copies of one another.

Where to see examples

The documented holdings all sit in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The table below lists the object numbers recorded in the museum's material.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art also holds a work titled Bird with William Morris listed as designer, designed 1878, in wool, classified as Drawings. The Met's record gives no object number in the material used here, and the title differs from Bird and Anemone, so any connection between the two works is not established by this evidence.

Attribution and open questions

The V&A attributes both the cotton and the wallpaper to William Morris himself. The museum also counts Bird and Anemone among the few repeating patterns Morris designed for both textiles and wallpapers, which makes it a useful case study in how he moved a design between media.

Beyond that attribution, the evidence is quiet.

Bird and Anemone among Morris's printed textiles

Bird and Anemone belongs to the group of Morris printed cottons often called chintzes, and its indigo-discharge intention links it to Morris's long engagement with that printing method from 1875 onwards. Its double life as wallpaper and textile sets it apart from designs made for one medium only.

The timing also matters. From the early 1880s onwards, wallpaper became less of a central concern for Morris as his energies focused on the production of textiles at Merton Abbey Mills, according to the V&A. A design dated 1881 to 1882 that exists in both media sits right at that turning point.

To compare it with its neighbours in the chintz group, see the story of Strawberry Thief, the story of Honeysuckle, or more on Snakeshead. Each shows a different side of Morris's printed-textile practice.