Bruges Wallpaper by William Morris: History and Design

A formalised foliate pattern: what Bruges shows

The V&A describes Bruges as a formalised foliate pattern. That is as far as the museum's record goes: the description names foliage, not specific plants, and no botanical identification appears in the catalogue entry.

It is tempting to read named flowers or leaves into a Morris pattern of this kind, but the evidence here does not support it. What can be said plainly is that the design belongs to the family of leaf based wallpapers the firm produced in England, as the V&A records its place of origin.

Date, attribution and maker, with what is uncertain

The V&A dates its Bruges specimens to 1888 as a production date. The museum also attributes the design to William Morris and records that it was printed by Jeffrey & Co. for Morris & Co., block printed in distemper colour on paper. Each of these points rests on the V&A's record alone, so the museum should be named as the source for all three.

Some things are simply not documented. The evidence gives no first issue or registration date for Bruges, so the V&A's 1888 production date should be read as the date of the surviving specimens, not a design date. No statement by Morris about Bruges has been found in the current evidence either.

The Volume 2 pattern book and its conflicting dates

The three Bruges specimens are pasted into a V&A pattern book called Volume 2, which contains 27 Morris & Co. patterns and carries the museum number E.530-608-1919. Pattern books of this kind preserve working samples, and Volume 2 records two small physical details about Bruges.

What the specimens themselves tell us:

• Each specimen is inscribed on the back in ink with its title, number and price.
• The specimens were given to the V&A by Morris & Co.

One complication sits with the pattern book rather than the wallpaper. The two ranges cannot both be right, and the record does not resolve the conflict. The firm's own gift of the specimens, meanwhile, is straightforward and worth noting as provenance.

Bruges in Morris and Co.'s wallpaper output

The V&A dates the surviving Bruges specimens to 1888, and the museum records that Morris & Company issued 35 new wallpaper designs between 1882 and Morris's death in 1896, so the specimens fall within that documented period of the firm's output.

Wallpaper itself was never Morris's first choice of wall covering. According to the V&A, he described wallpaper as a 'makeshift' decoration and preferred woven textile hangings for his own home. The firm made papers anyway, in quantity, because they were what customers could afford.

His documented advice about designing them is consistent. Writing on wallpaper, Morris told designers to avoid falling into the trap of trying to make your paper look as if it were painted by hand:

The same principle runs through The Lesser Arts of 1877, where Morris warned against 'sham-real boughs and flowers'. A formalised foliate pattern such as Bruges fits that position: the V&A's own description is of foliage stylised into pattern, not foliage imitated.

Bruges also sits late in a long run of wallpaper design that began decades earlier. The V&A dates Trellis, Morris's first wallpaper, to 1862, and Daisy, the second, to 1864. Between those first papers and the designs of the 1880s the firm built a large body of work, gathered in the complete list of Morris wallpaper designs.

Three specimens at the V&A

The V&A holds three specimens of Bruges, each with its own museum number. The records do not explain why three separate numbers exist, whether for colour variants or otherwise, so no reason should be inferred.

Related designs to explore

If the leaf patterns of the 1880s interest you, other wallpapers from the firm's later years have their own profiles here, each researched the same way from museum records.

Designs covered in detail elsewhere on this site:

• The story of Acanthus, one of the firm's most recognisable foliate designs, is covered in our profile of Acanthus in detail.
• Compton, a later design associated with the firm's final decades, has its own history at more on Compton.
• For a smaller scale leaf pattern with a clear botanical subject, read about Willow Bough.