Blackberry by John Henry Dearle for Morris & Co.: History and Design

Blackberry at a glance: designer, date and maker

The table below gathers the documented facts about Blackberry in one place. Each point comes from the Victoria and Albert Museum's records for the design, which the V&A attributes to John Henry Dearle and dates to 1903.

What the V&A specimens show

The three specimens in the V&A are colour woodblock, or machine, print on paper, made in England according to the museum's records.

The supplied evidence does not describe the pattern's motifs in detail, so description must stay at the level of the title and the objects themselves. The name Blackberry suggests the plant of that name, but no source in the record identifies the specific leaves, flowers or fruit shown, and no claim about the design's imagery can be made here beyond that observation.

Printed by hand: the pattern book evidence

Each Blackberry specimen forms part of a wallpaper pattern book containing 132 specimens, mounted on a display stand with a cloth cover. The V&A records that the book was given by Shand Kydd Ltd.

That inscription, recorded by the V&A on the pattern book, states plainly how the papers were made. The museum's accompanying explanation describes the process in more detail: hand-printed papers are produced slowly, with each block dipped into pigment and pressed onto the paper, and each separate colour dried before another is applied.

The inscription matters because it fixes the production method for the papers in this book at the time it was assembled. It does not, on its own, identify which workshop or printer carried out the work for any individual design in the book, including Blackberry.

Where Blackberry sits in the Dearle record

The V&A attributes the design of Blackberry to John Henry Dearle. The museum dates the specimens to 1903, by which point the firm traded from 449, Oxford Street, London.

Readers who want to set Blackberry alongside other designs attributed to Dearle can consult the full Dearle design list, which gathers the reference records in one place. Attribution within the firm is a live research question for many patterns, and the V&A record is currently the single documented source for this design's designer.

What the sources do not settle

Several points about Blackberry cannot be stated with confidence from the evidence available, and it is better to say so plainly. The gaps include:

• No source gives a separate design date versus first issue or registration date. The V&A production date of 1903 is the only date supplied.
• Attribution to Dearle rests on the V&A record alone in the current evidence; no second authority corroborates it.
• No evidence identifies the printer of Blackberry. A firm such as Jeffrey & Co. or production at Merton Abbey is often assumed for Morris & Co. wallpapers generally, but nothing here confirms either for this design.
• No documented statement by William Morris about Blackberry appears in the evidence.
• No evidence of later reissues of Blackberry is supplied.
• The full text of the pattern book inscription is truncated in the records; only the phrase 'THESE PAPERS ARE PRINTED BY HAND' is available.

Seeing Blackberry: the V&A records

The Victoria and Albert Museum holds three specimens of Blackberry, under museum numbers O251152, O251153 and O251154. All three were given by Shand Kydd Ltd and belong to the same Morris & Co. wallpaper pattern book.

These three records are the only documented museum holdings of Blackberry in the evidence available for this article. Other collections may hold examples, but no such record has been supplied here.