The Daisy Hanging: Morris's Red House Embroidery

What the records show: a Daisy wallpaper, not a hanging

Every Daisy record supplied describes a wallpaper. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, Daisy is a repeating pattern of plants, with red and yellow flowers, on a ground suggestive of grass.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's record names William Morris as the designer and gives the date 1864. Nothing in any supplied record describes an embroidered hanging under the Daisy name, and no record connects the design to Red House.

Attribution and date: what is verified and what is not

The attribution to William Morris is consistent across the records. The V&A names Morris as the designer of the wallpaper at O248429 and of two further Daisy records, O248432 and O248431, all with a primary date of 1864. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's record also names William Morris as designer and gives 1864.

The museum's object history states that it was the first wallpaper designed by Morris to be put into production.

Several points remain unstated in the records. The design date and the first issue date are not distinguished: the records give only the primary date of 1864. No manufacturer or printer is named for Daisy, and the place of production is given only as England. The claim that the design was worked as an embroidery at Red House is not supported by any supplied source.

Where the motif comes from

The V&A's Daisy record states the source of the flat, simple, frontal motif: it can be seen in a wall hanging illustrated in a fifteenth-century version of Froissart's Chronicles, shown in an illuminated manuscript at the British Museum (BL Ms 4380, fol. 1).

Museum examples of Daisy

Three V&A wallpaper examples are on record, numbered O248429, O248431 and O248432, all attributed to William Morris with a primary date of 1864.

The V&A's Daisy example carries an ink inscription on the back with title, number and price.

According to the V&A, the example forms part of Volume 1, a pattern book containing 25 Morris and Co. patterns from 1862 to 1881, catalogued as E.441-529-1919.

Why the Red House embroidery story cannot be confirmed

The title of this page promises an embroidery, and honesty requires saying what the evidence does and does not support. The following points cannot be established from the records on file.

• No distinct object called the Daisy Hanging appears in any supplied record; according to the V&A, all Daisy records describe wallpaper, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's record is also for a printed work.
• No plants or motifs in Daisy are securely identified by name; the descriptions give only plants with red and yellow flowers, flowering plants and naively drawn meadow flowers.
• No documented statement by Morris specifically about Daisy appears in the available sources.
• No later reissues of Daisy are documented in the evidence.
• The attribution of an embroidered Daisy hanging to Red House, or to any named stitcher, has no supporting excerpt among the sources supplied.

Before a Red House attribution could be published, it would need a distinct object record for an embroidered Daisy hanging, a named holding institution with an object number, and a source naming the stitchers and the date of work. None of these is present here. Readers interested in Morris's documented textiles and needlework can follow Morris textiles more broadly, including a closer look at Artichoke Embroidery and our guide to Red House Heroines Embroideries.

Embroidered hangings that are documented

While no embroidered Daisy hanging is on record, the supplied records do document other embroidered hangings. According to the V&A, a wall hanging was designed by William Morris and made by Ada Phoebe Godman in 1877 in England.

These records show the kind of documentation an embroidered Daisy hanging would need: a named institution, a named designer, a named maker or embroiderer, and a date. The Daisy records on file contain none of this for an embroidery.

Daisy among Morris's wallpapers

The V&A also notes that from the early 1880s onwards wallpaper became less of a central concern for Morris, as his energies were focused on the production of textiles at Merton Abbey Mills.

For readers who want the wallpaper history in full, Daisy in detail covers the Daisy wallpaper separately, and more on Daisies gathers the daisy designs together.

Prints of the Daisy design

Prints of the Daisy design are available in our William Morris Original Designs collection. According to the V&A, Daisy is a documented Morris design, and these prints are named as the records name it. They are not originals and not the hanging discussed above.

Two Daisy print variants are currently listed: a Daisy print by William Morris and a second Daisy print by William Morris. Each is a print of a documented Morris design, not an original wallpaper or embroidery.