William Morris's Brother Rabbit Chintz: History and Design

What Brother Rabbit shows

Brother Rabbit is a pattern of rabbits, birds and foliage. That is how the Victoria and Albert Museum describes each of its three examples, and it is the secure core of the design: animals moving through plant forms, printed as a repeating furnishing fabric.

The V&A record for O89660 describes the pattern printed in blue and white on cotton, with a Morris & Co label attached to the cloth. A second example, O89659, carries the same pattern of rabbits, birds and foliage in dark and light blue, again with a Morris & Co label. The third, O266121, is printed in red and white.

Beyond rabbits, birds and foliage, no supplied source identifies particular plant species in the pattern. Any closer reading of the leaves and flowers would be observation rather than documented identification, and this page keeps that distinction visible.

When Brother Rabbit was designed and registered

The clearest fixed date comes from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, whose record for Brother Rabbit gives the design as registered on May 20, 1882. The Met's record also credits the object to Morris & Company in the role of manufactory.

The V&A records give a wider spread of dates. For O89660 the record lists production dates of 1882, before June 1881, and 1882 to 1919, and the record for O266121 gives the same three date ranges.

What the records do not settle is a first issue date.

Who designed it and who made it

The V&A brief descriptions for O89660 and O266121 state that the fabric was designed by William Morris for Morris & Co., 1882. The museum's fuller records for the same objects name William Morris as primary maker, with place given as Merton Abbey for O89660 and O89659, and Great Britain for O266121.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art credits its Brother Rabbit to Morris & Company as manufactory, and separately holds a curtain credited to William Morris in the role of Designer. The two institutions therefore agree on the essential attribution: the design is Morris's, issued through his firm.

Attribution of the design is not the same as identification of every hand in production. From the early 1880s onwards Morris's energies were focused on the production of textiles at Merton Abbey Mills, according to the V&A, but the supplied records do not state that Brother Rabbit was block printed at Merton Abbey, nor which firm printed the cotton, nor who cut or handled the blocks.

How Brother Rabbit was printed

The technique is documented at object level. The V&A describes O89660 as indigo-discharged and block-printed cotton, and O266121 as block-printed cotton. Block printing meant pressing carved blocks, one for each colour, onto the cloth by hand, repeat after repeat.

The O89660 example carries physical evidence of its sale: the object is stamped 'Morris & Company 449 Oxford Street', the firm's London shop address, and also has a Morris & Co label attached. Together the stamp and label tie this printed length directly to the firm's retail operation.

The indigo-discharge method on O89660 is a demanding process, in which the blue ground is printed and then chemically discharged to leave the light pattern on the dark cloth. The V&A's description of the result, blue and white rabbits, birds and foliage, is the visible outcome of that method on this example.

The wider context is the firm's move into textile production at Merton Abbey from the early 1880s, which the V&A identifies as the focus of Morris's energies in that period. The records supplied here do not, however, name the printing works or the printers for Brother Rabbit specifically, so that step of the story stays open.

Reading the pattern: colourways and repeat

Three colourways are documented across the V&A examples. O89660 is printed in blue and white by the indigo-discharge method. O89659 is printed in dark and light blue. O266121 is printed in red and white.

The spread of colourways matters for how the pattern was used. A blue and white discharge printing reads as a cool, graphic cloth; a red and white version reads quite differently in a room, though the drawing of rabbits, birds and foliage stays the same. The V&A's date range of 1882 to 1919 for two of the objects suggests the pattern remained available long enough for tastes to change around it.

As a repeating furnishing fabric, the pattern's unit carries rabbits among birds and foliage, arranged so that the motifs tile across the cloth. The museum descriptions establish the motifs and the colourways; they do not give the repeat measurement, so no figure can be stated here.

Brother Rabbit in museum collections

The documented holdings are concentrated in two institutions. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds three printed examples with published object numbers, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art holds Brother Rabbit credited to Morris & Company as manufactory, with the design registered May 20, 1882.

One gap should be flagged in the Met's entry: the object number for its Brother Rabbit is not established in the records available here, so the table leaves that cell open rather than guessing it. The Met also holds a curtain credited to William Morris as Designer, but the supplied record does not give its full date or description, so it is noted here only as an attribution.

What the records leave open

Several questions that readers naturally bring to Brother Rabbit cannot be answered from the supplied records, and it is more useful to name them than to paper over them.

The following points remain unestablished:

• No documented statement by William Morris specifically about Brother Rabbit is available in the supplied sources.
• A first issue date, as distinct from the design registration date, is not established.
• The firm that printed the cotton, and the place and hands involved in the block printing, are not named in the supplied records.
• No plant species in the pattern is securely identified by a source; only rabbits, birds and foliage are documented.
• No supplied source confirms the spelling 'Brer Rabbit', and no published attribution for this design by a named scholar is available here.
• No documented later reissues of Brother Rabbit, with dates and makers, are available in the supplied records.

Brother Rabbit among Morris's printed chintzes

Brother Rabbit belongs to the firm's block-printed cottons, the chintzes that became the backbone of Morris & Co.'s textile trade from the early 1880s, when production concentrated at Merton Abbey Mills. The Metropolitan Museum of Art records the design as registered in 1882, placing it in the first years of that period.

Comparing it with neighbouring designs is easiest through the full Morris chintz list, which gathers the printed cottons in one place. For close comparisons of date and technique, see Snakeshead, the printed cotton profiled separately, and our guide to Strawberry Thief, another animal-centred pattern from the same block-printing tradition. More on Honeysuckle shows an earlier printed textile, useful for seeing how the chintzes developed.

What distinguishes Brother Rabbit within that group is its subject. Where many of the chintzes are built from plant forms alone, this pattern sets rabbits and birds among the foliage, which is why the museum descriptions lead with the animals.

Bringing Brother Rabbit home

If you are choosing a Morris pattern for a wall or a room, the practical starting point is our William Morris Original Designs collection, which sets out the approved designs with their framing options. For the broader context before you settle on one, the guide to famous Morris patterns explains how the designs differ and how to choose between them.