Carnation: The Printed Cotton by William Morris

What the records show, and what they do not

The research questions behind this page asked for a design date, a first issue or registration date, a designer attribution, a printer, museum object records and any documented statement by Morris about Carnation. None of these could be answered. No excerpt from the institutional sources checked documents a design titled Carnation by William Morris, Morris & Co., John Henry Dearle or any other hand.

Likewise, no record of later reissues of a design called Carnation was found, and no Merton Abbey connection for a printed cotton under that name could be established.

In summary, the following points remain undocumented for a design titled Carnation:

• A design date and a first issue or registration date.
• A manufacturer or printer, such as Jeffrey & Co., Wardle or the Merton Abbey works.
• A museum object record giving an institution and object number.
• Any documented statement by Morris about the design.
• Any record of later reissues.

This does not mean a design called Carnation never existed. It means that, on the evidence available to this page, it cannot be described with dates, makers or object numbers, and this page will not guess at them. The full list of printed textiles that are documented appears on the Morris chintz list, where each entry carries its own sourcing.

Carnations in verified Morris designs: Pink and Rose

The one verified connection between carnations and Morris designs is a wallpaper rather than a printed cotton. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a specimen of the wallpaper Pink and Rose, which shows intertwined stems of flowering carnations and rose, under museum number O248786. The V&A attributes the design to William Morris as artist and dates it to around 1890.

According to the V&A's record, Pink and Rose was made as a colour woodblock print on paper in England. The specimen comes from Volume 2, a pattern book of Morris & Co. wallpapers, and is inscribed on the back in ink with its title, number and price.

The V&A holds further wallpaper specimens attributed to William Morris and dated around 1890 under museum numbers O248785 and O248782. One caution: the pattern book source gives inconsistent counts of the Morris & Co. wallpapers in Volume 2, so no figure is stated here.

So if you are tracing carnations in Morris's work, Pink and Rose is the design with a paper trail: an institution, an object number, an attribution and a date. A printed cotton titled Carnation, by contrast, has none of these in the records checked.

Floral printed and printed-paper designs that are documented

Readers who want floral Morris designs with secure records have several options. Each of the following carries an institutional attribution and a date, which is exactly what a design called Carnation currently lacks.

Documented floral designs include:

• Wild Tulip, designed by William Morris and dated 1884, held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and recorded as block-printed in distemper colours.
• Trellis wallpaper, designed by William Morris and Philip Webb and printed by Jeffrey & Co. in 1862, according to the V&A.
• Jasmine Trellis furnishing fabric, designed by William Morris, made by Thomas Wardle and manufactured by Bannister Hall between 1868 and 1870, according to the V&A.

Both pages follow the same standard of sourcing applied here.

About the carnation products sold today

The shop sells several carnation-patterned prints, including a green and cream carnation pattern attributed to Morris, an orange and cream carnation pattern in the Arts and Crafts manner and a peach and yellow carnation pattern attributed to Morris. These are classified as unidentified Morris-style works: patterns attributed to Morris whose design names have not been identified against museum records.

In practice this means the products are described visually only, by their colours and motifs, and are never given a design name. A pattern showing carnations is not the same thing as a documented Morris design called Carnation, and the shop keeps that distinction visible so buyers know exactly what is and is not documented.

If any of these patterns is later matched to a named design in the V&A or another institutional record, the product pages and this article will be updated accordingly. Until then, the honest label stands.