Bower by William Morris: The Story of the Wallpaper

A pattern of flowering plants amongst foliage

The V&A describes the Bower specimen O248645 as showing a variety of flowering plants amongst foliage in shades of green on a (?)pale-blue ground. The question mark before the ground colour is the museum's own marker of uncertainty, so the exact tint of the background should be treated as unconfirmed.

Beyond that description, the record does not name individual flowers or leaves. What can be said with confidence is the overall effect: layered green foliage carrying flowering stems across the sheet.

Quick facts: date, designer and maker

The V&A dates both recorded specimens to 1877 and attributes the design to William Morris. The same records name Morris & Co. as publisher and producer, working from 449, Oxford Street, London. Because these attributions rest on the museum's records alone, they are stated here with that source named.

Two gaps should be stated plainly. No source in the record names a printer for Bower, so no firm such as Jeffrey & Co. can be attached to it. And no design date separate from the 1877 production date given by the V&A is documented; the evidence gives only that production year.

The V&A places Morris's appointment as sole director of the restructured and renamed Morris & Company in 1875, two years before the 1877 production date it gives for both Bower specimens.

How Bower was printed

The two V&A records describe the technique slightly differently. Specimen O248645 is recorded as a colour woodblock print on paper. Specimen O251080 is recorded as a colour woodblock, or machine, print on paper, leaving open whether that example was block printed or machine printed.

The pattern book containing O251080 carries printed text stating that the papers it holds are printed by hand, and explaining that hand-printed papers are produced slowly, each block being dipped into pigment and pressed on to the paper for each separate colour. That description, from the Morris & Co. pattern book inscription recorded by the V&A, gives a plain account of how a block-printed wallpaper such as Bower was made.

The two surviving specimens and their pattern books

Bower survives in two specimens held by the V&A. The back of this specimen is inscribed in ink with its title, number and price.

The second, museum number O251080, belongs to a wallpaper pattern book containing 132 specimens, catalogued as E.2734-2866-1980 and given by Shand Kydd Ltd. The V&A records this specimen as produced by Morris & Co., 449, Oxford Street, London.

The pattern book contexts are worth a note of caution.

Bower in Morris's wallpaper work

Bower belongs to the middle of Morris's wallpaper career. According to the V&A, the first paper Morris designed was Trellis in 1862, followed by Daisy in 1864 and Fruit in 1865. The full run of these early designs is set out in the complete list of Morris wallpaper designs.

The V&A also 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. Between 1882 and his death in 1896, the museum states, Morris & Company issued a further 35 new wallpaper designs. Bower, for which the V&A gives the production date 1877, sits before that shift.

For comparison with the earliest papers, see the story of Daisy and more on Fruit, both of which have their own documented V&A records.

What the plants show, and what Morris said about flowers on walls

The V&A's description of Bower stays general: a variety of flowering plants amongst foliage in shades of green. No source identifies the specific species, so any attempt to name them beyond that description would be observation rather than documented fact.

The V&A notes that Morris's wallpaper designs centre on plant-based forms and are stylised evocations of natural forms rather than literal transcriptions. Bower fits that account as the museum describes it, though the point is the V&A's, not a claim about this one pattern alone.

Morris himself wrote about flowers on walls in his essay The Lesser Arts (1877), the same year as Bower's recorded production date. He warned against 'sham-real boughs and flowers' and advised wallpaper designers 'to avoid falling into the trap of trying to make your paper look as if it were painted by hand'.

Questions the record leaves open

Several things cannot be established from the evidence. No documented statement by Morris specifically about Bower appears in the record. No printer is named for the design. No later reissues are recorded. And the two specimen records differ on technique: one is a colour woodblock print on paper, the other a colour woodblock, or machine, print.

These gaps are part of the design's history as it currently stands. Where a fact cannot be traced, this page leaves it out rather than filling it in.

Seeing Bower and related designs

The design survives in the V&A's pattern books, in the 'Volume 1' book given by Morris & Co. and the 132-specimen book given by Shand Kydd Ltd. Those two volumes, catalogued as E.441-529-1919 and E.2734-2866-1980, are the documented place to find Bower today.

To set Bower alongside its contemporaries, the Morris wallpaper list gathers the designs in one place, and the profiles of Daisy and Fruit cover the earliest papers in detail.

If you want to see how these patterns work on a wall, our William Morris Original Designs collection collects printed designs in the same spirit.