Branch Wallpaper by William Morris: History and Design

Two specimens in the V&A: what the records show

Branch survives in the V&A through two wallpaper specimens, and almost everything written about the design must start from them. The first, museum number O249371, is described as a pattern of branches of leaves overlaying one another, green with a dark ground. The second, museum number O74598, is described as a pattern of leaves overlaying one another in the same colouring. Both are colour woodblock prints on paper.

Each specimen carries written evidence on its reverse. O249371 is inscribed on the back in ink with title, number and other details, and is described there as designed by William Morris. O74598 is likewise inscribed on the back in ink with title, number and price. These inscriptions matter because they come from the specimens themselves rather than from later cataloguing.

The provenance of the two objects differs. O249371 was bequeathed by J. R. Holliday. The Holliday specimen sits in a pattern book of 23 Morris & Co. patterns, dated around 1871 in the V&A description. Both books are firm records of how the firm stored and presented its wallpapers.

Attribution and dating: what can be said plainly

The V&A records William Morris as the designer of Branch for both objects. That is the attribution this page uses, and it is supported by the inscriptions on the backs of the specimens, which name Morris on at least one of them. No other designer has been put forward in the records available here.

The dating is less settled. The second specimen, O74598, is dated about 1872. Taken together, these place Branch in the years around 1868 to 1872.

Several things the reader might expect are simply not established by the records here. No design date or first issue date is securely recorded for Branch. No printer or manufacturer is named for it in the evidence. No botanical identification of the plants in the pattern has been published in the sources used for this page, and no statement by Morris about the design is known. It is better to say so than to fill the gaps.

How Branch was made

Both specimens are colour woodblock prints on paper, which means the pattern was built up with hand cut blocks, one for each colour, pressed onto the sheet. The V&A records O249371 as made in London and O74598 as made in Great Britain. No printer is named for Branch in the records available here.

Block printed wallpaper was the technique behind most of Morris's wallpapers, and he thought carefully about its limits. A design of flat, overlaying leaves such as Branch sits squarely within that advice.

What the pattern shows

The V&A's two descriptions of Branch differ slightly. The record for O249371 describes branches of leaves overlaying one another, while the record for O74598 mentions only leaves overlaying one another. Both agree on the colouring: green against a dark ground. The overlapping gives the pattern its depth, with leaf shapes laid over each other in layers rather than set side by side.

Beyond branches and leaves, no plant in Branch has been securely named in the sources used here. It would be guesswork to assign botanical identities to the forms, so none is offered. What the museum records establish is the general character: foliage, dense and overlapping, on a dark field.

Branch in the context of Morris's wallpaper work

Branch belongs to the earliest phase of Morris's wallpaper production. According to the V&A, Morris made wallpaper one of the first things his new interior decorations company put into serial production in the early 1860s. A design dated within roughly a decade of that beginning, as Branch is, sits among the firm's foundational patterns rather than its later ones.

The firm itself changed shape during the years Branch was in production. The V&A records that Morris became sole director of the restructured and renamed Morris & Company in 1875. The company's pattern books, such as those holding the Branch specimens, carried designs across that transition.

As for the pattern's style, the V&A states that Morris's wallpaper designs centre on plant based forms and are stylised evocations of natural forms rather than literal transcriptions. That description fits Branch's overlapping leaves, though no interpretation of the design's meaning beyond this is made by the museum. You can see how Branch sits beside the firm's other early patterns in our Morris wallpaper list, or compare it with Daisy, another early design in the same plant based tradition.

Seeing Branch and related designs

The Victoria and Albert Museum holds the two known specimens, O249371 and O74598, and any study of the design should start with its records and the pattern books that contain them. No other institution's example appears in the evidence for this page.

For other plant based Morris wallpapers, our guides to Fruit and to Willow Bough cover designs with similarly leafy structures. If you want to see how printed reproductions of Morris designs work in a room, our William Morris Original Designs collection gathers approved prints based on the firm's patterns.