Bluebell: The Printed Cotton by William Morris

What Bluebell looks like: two V&A examples

The V&A holds two examples of the printed cotton, and they are recorded with different colourings. The first, museum number O271009, is described by the museum as a pattern in white on a green ground, with a Morris & Co. label attached. The second, O89763, is described as a complex pattern of flowers and foliage printed in green and pink.

The two records show that the same design circulated in more than one colourway, which was normal practice for printed furnishing fabrics. The attached Morris & Co. label on O271009 is the only maker's mark noted in the material at hand; its wider significance is not established here.

Designer, date and maker as the V&A records them

The V&A records both examples as designed by William Morris for Morris & Co. in 1876. This is the museum's attribution, stated on each object record, and it is the basis for calling Bluebell a Morris design rather than a work by another hand in the firm.

The dating needs one qualification. The V&A dates O271009 to 1876 but gives a production date range of 1876 to 1919. O89763 is dated simply to 1876. What the records do not settle is when Bluebell was first issued or registered, as distinct from the 1876 design date, and no separate issue date appears in the material at hand.

Printing at Wardle and Co. in Leek

Both V&A records name Wardle & Co. of Leek as the manufacturer. The context for that name is Morris's collaboration with Thomas Wardle, the owner of a dyeing works in Leek, Staffordshire, which began in 1875. According to the V&A, Wardle was keen to re-establish the use of natural dyes, and the partnership gave Morris access to industrial printing capacity for his textile designs.

Bluebell belongs to the early phase of that partnership. The V&A identifies Marigold (1875) as the first textile likely to have been printed by Wardle, a dense pattern that Morris also used for wallpaper. With the V&A dating both Bluebell records to 1876, the year after that first collaboration, the design sits within the Leek period of Morris & Co. printed textiles.

Whether the design was ever printed by Jeffrey & Co. or at Merton Abbey is not established in the material at hand, so no claim is made here either way.

Morris and the discipline of the repeat

The V&A describes Bluebell as a complex pattern of flowers and foliage, and that description fits the way Morris approached pattern in this period. In the early 1870s, according to the museum, Morris accepted that his gift was not for figurative form but for repeat patterns, and threw himself into mastering the technical processes required to make his own products.

Morris set out his own standard for such patterns in his essay The Lesser Arts (1877). In it he warned against sham-real boughs and flowers, and advised those designing wallpapers to avoid falling into the trap of trying to make your paper look as if it were painted by hand.

That principle helps explain the look of the 1876 cottons, which the V&A dates to that year. The V&A characterises Morris's designs as subtle, stylised evocations of natural forms rather than literal transcriptions, and the flowers and foliage of Bluebell should be read in that light: pattern first, botany second.

Where Bluebell sits in Morris and Co.'s textile work

Bluebell belongs to the mid 1870s, before the firm's textile production was consolidated at Merton Abbey. From the early 1880s onwards, the V&A notes, wallpaper became less of a central concern for Morris as his energies focused on the production of textiles at Merton Abbey Mills, and between 1882 and his death in 1896 Morris & Company issued a further 35 new wallpaper designs.

For readers who want the wider run of printed cottons, the list of Morris chintz designs gathers the designs covered in this series in one place.

The V&A also holds extensive collections of Morris's work in textiles, ranging from his first experiments in embroidery in the early 1860s through to tapestry panels created a few years before his death, and May Morris bequeathed a sizeable collection of her father's work to the museum on her death in 1938, including 30 designs for wallpaper, textiles and embroidery.

How the V&A came to hold Bluebell

Morris's connection with the museum, then the South Kensington Museum, ran in both directions. In 1876, the same year the V&A dates Bluebell, he became an examiner at the museum's art school, and in 1884 he was invited to join the museum's Committee of Art Referees. In 1893 he donated a miniature tapestry loom from the Merton Abbey workshop to the museum's collections.

The best documented family gift is May Morris's bequest of 1938, which brought 30 designs for wallpaper, textiles and embroidery into the museum's holdings. The specific acquisition route for each of the two Bluebell cottons, O271009 and O89763, is not established in the material at hand, so this page does not say how either example entered the collection.

Open questions about Bluebell

Several points about this design cannot be settled from the records used here, and it is better to name them than to paper over them.

The following are not established in the material at hand:

• Whether the alternative title Columbine is a documented contemporary name or a later identification.
• When Bluebell was first issued or registered, as distinct from the V&A's 1876 design date.
• Which specific plants are securely identified in the pattern beyond the V&A's general description of flowers and foliage.
• Whether Morris made any documented statement about Bluebell; none appears in the material at hand.
• What later reissues of the design exist, and when they were issued.

If you are researching the design, the two V&A object records are the secure starting point, and any claim about plants, dates or reissues beyond them should be checked against a published source before it is repeated.

Bluebell among Morris's printed chintzes

Bluebell is one of a group of printed and patterned designs from the 1860s and 1870s that the V&A records. On the wallpaper side, the museum records Trellis (1862), designed by William Morris and Phillip Webb and printed by Jeffrey & Co., and Trellis is documented as the first paper Morris designed, suggested by the rose trellis in the garden of Red House; Daisy (1864) and Fruit (1865) followed.

Among the printed cottons covered in depth on this site, related pages include Honeysuckle, Strawberry Thief and Brother Rabbit. Each has its own history page with object records and making details.

If you would like to see how Bluebell compares across the whole run of printed designs, the Morris chintz list is the place to continue.