The Clouds Carpet: A Morris Hand-Knotted Carpet

What the records do and do not establish about Clouds Carpet

The gaps extend to the making and the survival of the object. No checked source states whether Clouds Carpet was hand-knotted or machine woven, which firm manufactured it, what plants or motifs it shows, which museums hold examples with object numbers, or whether it was reissued later. No documented statement by Morris about the design appears in the sources either.

In summary, the checked records leave all of the following unanswered:

• Design date and first issue or registration date.
• Designer attribution according to museum records.
• Manufacturer and production technique.
• Identified plants or motifs.
• Museum object records with institution and object number.
• Later reissues.
• Any documented statement by Morris about the design.

Until museum records confirm those details, any fuller profile of Clouds Carpet would rest on guesswork, and this page will not supply it. Readers looking for carpet designs with verified records will find pointers below.

Morris's carpet work: the verified background

The Victoria and Albert Museum records that in the late 1870s, inspired by his study of Persian rugs, Morris moved into carpet production by hand and revived the practice of hand-knotting. This is the securely dated starting point for his carpet work.

Morris had entered carpet design earlier by a different route. According to the V&A, he began to design and outsource the machine production of carpet designs in the mid-1870s, probably beginning with Kidderminster carpet.

The museum's records also show the range of that outsourced production. The V&A holds a Lily carpet sample designed by Morris and manufactured by Wilton Royal Carpet Factory Ltd, dated about 1875, and an Artichoke carpet sample designed by Morris and manufactured by Heckmondwike Manufacturing Company, dated 1875 to 1880.

Hand-knotting and the Hammersmith rugs

The hand-knotted side of the work has a documented sequence, though parts of it rest on a single source and are attributed here to the V&A. In 1879, the V&A records, Morris began to oversee the hand-knotting of what the company called Hammersmith rugs in limited runs, on looms installed in outbuildings at his London house.

The V&A further records that those looms were moved to Merton Abbey in 1881, where Morris & Company produced large Hammersmith rugs for interiors commissions. The dedicated page on the Hammersmith Carpets covers this practice in detail, so it is only summarised here.

Whether Clouds Carpet belonged to this hand-knotted tradition cannot be said, because no checked source describes its technique. The Hammersmith material is simply the closest documented context for any Morris carpet claimed to be hand-knotted.

Carpet designs with verified records

Several Morris carpet designs are documented in museum records, and they are separate designs, not Clouds Carpet. The V&A holds a Bullerswood Carpet credited to William Morris and John Henry Dearle, dated about 1889, and records that it was made in 1889 for John Sanderson of Bullerswood in Chislehurst, Kent.

The Art Institute of Chicago holds a Lily Carpet designed by William Morris, produced by Morris & Co., London, woven by Yates & Co., Wiltshire and later Wilton Royal Carpet Factory, Ltd., under reference number 1973.691. According to the Art Institute's record, the design dates by 1877 and examples were made from 1877 to 1940, in wool and cotton, plain weave with supplementary pile warps forming cut solid pile, woven on a loom with a Jacquard attachment.

A fully documented hand-knotted example with its own profile is the Holland Park Carpet in detail. Readers who want a design to hang on a wall rather than a carpet to research can browse the William Morris Original Designs collection, which lists only designs with verified records.

Persian models Morris studied

The V&A's account of Morris's turn to hand-knotting names his study of Persian rugs as the inspiration. The museum's records also document the carpets listed below.