William Morris's Bird Woven Fabric: History and Design

Two records, two titles: what Bird is in the museum collections

The starting point for any research on this pattern is that the two museum records disagree on basics. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it holds an object titled Bird, medium wool, with William Morris listed as designer and a design date of 1878. According to the V&A, it holds a furnishing fabric titled Bird and Anemone, a block-printed cotton with a dyed ground, designed by William Morris for Morris & Co., with a primary date of 1882.

The differences run through title, medium and date. Because the evidence supplied here does not confirm that the Met's wool Bird and the V&A's printed Bird and Anemone are the same design, this page keeps the two records distinct and reports each one on its own terms. Readers looking for a single neat identity will not find one, and no responsible account can supply it.

Dating Bird: what the records give and where they disagree

The dating question sits at the centre of this design's history, and the honest answer is that the records diverge. The Metropolitan Museum of Art record for Bird gives a design date of 1878. The V&A records for Bird and Anemone give a primary date of 1882.

Neither record gives a first issue or registration date in the sense usually required for Morris designs. The V&A's 1882 primary date is the date the supplied evidence offers for the printed cotton, and the Met's 1878 is the earliest date attached to the wool textile. If the two records describe one design, 1878 would be the design date and the 1882 date would reflect later production. If they describe two designs, each has its own separate history. The evidence available does not settle the choice, so both possibilities should be held open.

This is a case where naming the disagreement matters more than resolving it. The Met and the V&A are careful institutions, and their records describe the objects they hold. The conflict lies in whether the two objects share a design identity, which is a question no single record answers.

Attribution and maker: Morris, and the question of manufacture

Attribution is the one point where the records agree. The Metropolitan Museum of Art lists William Morris as designer of its wool Bird. The V&A lists Morris as primary maker for both of its Bird and Anemone examples. On the evidence supplied, no other hand is named by either institution, and no source here attributes the pattern to John Henry Dearle or to any collaborator.

Manufacture is a different matter. The V&A records for Bird and Anemone name no printer or manufacturer at all, and the supplied evidence names none for the Met's wool Bird either. Beyond the attribution to Morris himself, nothing in the evidence connects the design to a particular workshop or firm.

That silence has practical consequences. Common assumptions about Morris textile production, including specific printers, dye houses and works, cannot be attached to this design here because the supplied records do not do so.

How the V&A example was made: indigo discharge and madder

The clearest technical documentation concerns the printed cotton, not the wool. The V&A describes Bird and Anemone as a block-printed cotton furnishing fabric with a dyed cotton ground printed in red madder dye. This description belongs to the V&A object, and it should not be transferred to the Met's wool textile.

According to the V&A, existing documents suggest that experiments using indigo for these designs started in April 1881 at Morris's workshop in Queen Square in London. The museum also notes that the particular example catalogued as O78906 was surface printed later in madder, a natural red plant dye, and that its printing date can be calculated through marks and labels on the sample.

Read together, these statements give a small documentary sequence: workshop experiments in the spring of 1881, according to the V&A, and a sample whose own labels fix when it was printed, for a design the V&A records date to 1882. That sequence is specific to the printed cotton and offers no direct evidence about how the wool version at the Met was made.

What the pattern shows: birds, flowers and careful description

The pattern itself can only be described as far as the records go. The V&A's physical description of Bird and Anemone describes birds amongst flowers and leaves. It does not name the anemone in that description, so the flowers cannot be identified by species on the strength of this record. Any closer reading of the plants belongs to observation of the objects, not to sourced fact.

One interpretive statement can be credited. The V&A states that Morris's designs were always subtle, stylised evocations of natural forms rather than literal transcriptions. Applied to this pattern, the museum's point is that the birds and foliage follow Morris's stylising habit, so the design should be read as a composed pattern rather than a study from life. No symbolic meaning of the birds or flowers is stated by any source here, and none should be supplied.

For readers who want the wider pattern family, our guide to birds in Morris designs gathers the bird patterns across his textiles and wallpapers, and paired birds in Morris's woven textiles looks at the historic sources behind paired-bird compositions. Those pages can help set Bird against designs whose documentation is firmer.

Where Bird was used and what the records do not settle

The V&A states that in the first half of the 1880s the Earl and Countess of Carlisle, friends with Morris and his wife, used Morris's richly coloured Bird and Anemone.

Several questions remain open, and it is more useful to list them than to paper over them. The supplied evidence does not establish the following:

• Any documented statement by Morris about Bird or Bird and Anemone. None appears in the evidence used for this page.
• Any attribution of the design by a named scholar. No such source was supplied here.
• A first issue or registration date, as distinct from the design dates the V&A records give.
• Whether the Met's wool Bird and the V&A's printed Bird and Anemone are one design or two.
• The full reissue history of the design. The supplied evidence gives no reissue dates or reissue detail.

One further point on terminology: because the V&A records concern a printed cotton and the Met record concerns wool, describing this page's subject as a woven fabric fits the Met record specifically. The madder printing story is a printing story. Keeping the two apart is the main service a careful account can offer.

Surviving examples and where to look next

For researchers, the concrete holdings are as follows. The V&A holds two examples of Bird and Anemone. The second is museum number O270981, also a block-printed cotton furnishing fabric, with Morris listed as maker and the same primary date of 1882. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds the object titled Bird, medium wool, designed 1878, with Morris as designer.

Checking the object numbers is the fastest route past the confusion that surrounds this design's name. Searching museum catalogues for Bird will surface the Met's wool record; searching for Bird and Anemone will surface the V&A's printed cottons. Anyone comparing the two directly should note the differences in medium and date set out above before deciding how to cite the design.

Comparable woven work by Morris is covered elsewhere on this site. More on Anemone looks at the floral design that shares part of the printed cotton's title.