Daisy Wallpaper by William Morris: History and Design

Daisy at a glance: what the design shows

The pattern is easy to describe because the V&A describes it carefully. Plants rise across the sheet with red and yellow flowers, and the ground behind them suggests grass. The plants are drawn flat and frontally, without shading to suggest depth, so the whole surface reads as one even field of growth.

The V&A describes the motif as flat, simple and frontal. On the museum's example the back carries an ink inscription giving the title, number and price, which is a small but useful trace of how the paper was sold from stock.

The material facts are short. The paper is block-printed in distemper colours, and it was made in England. That is the full technical description the V&A gives for object O248429, and it is worth stating without embellishment.

What the records establish about the design:

• A repeating pattern of plants with red and yellow flowers on a ground suggestive of grass, per the V&A description.
• Block-printed in distemper colours on paper, made in England.
• Dated 1864 by the V&A, with William Morris named as designer.
• According to the V&A, the source of the flat, simple, frontal motif 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).

One limit should be flagged now rather than later. The evidence behind this page identifies no plants in Daisy beyond the V&A's general description of plants with red and yellow flowers and its reference to meadow flowers. Individual botanical identifications for the pattern are not stated in the museum records consulted here, so none are offered.

When Daisy was designed and first issued

The V&A dates its Daisy wallpaper, object number O248429, to 1864, with a production date given as 01/02/1864. The Metropolitan Museum of Art independently dates its own Daisy example to 1864. Both institutions therefore agree on the year, which gives a firm anchor for the design.

The sequence of Morris's first wallpapers is slightly less tidy. According to the V&A, Daisy was the second wallpaper William Morris designed but the first to be issued. The same museum also records that Daisy was the first wallpaper designed by Morris to be put into production. Those two statements come from the V&A and point the same way: Trellis came first as a design, Daisy reached the market first.

A related V&A article fills in the design side of that sequence. It states that the first paper Morris designed was Trellis in 1862, suggested by the rose trellis in the garden of Red House, and that the second was Daisy of 1864, a simple design of naively drawn meadow flowers. So the two V&A sources are consistent with each other: designed second, issued first.

What the records do not settle is any finer dating. Whether Daisy was registered or first issued in a specific month or year beyond the 1864 production date is not stated in the evidence, and no printer for the pattern is recorded in the V&A object records. The later story of the firm's wallpaper work, including designs such as Willow Bough, sits well after Daisy's first appearance.

The early 1860s context matters for understanding why the date is significant. The V&A article states that Morris made wallpaper one of the first things his new interior decorations company put into serial production in the early 1860s. Daisy, dated 1864 by the V&A, falls squarely within that first phase of serial wallpaper production.

Daisy in the making of Morris's wallpaper business

Wallpaper was not a side line for Morris's firm in its early years. According to the V&A article, it was among the first products his new interior decorations company put into serial production in the early 1860s. Daisy, dated 1864 and described by the museum's writers as naively drawn meadow flowers, belongs to the beginning of that manufacturing story.

The firm's wallpaper output continued to grow for decades. Between 1882 and Morris's death in 1896, Morris and Company issued a further 35 new wallpaper designs, according to the V&A. Daisy, issued decades earlier, sits at the head of that much longer list of patterns.

From the early 1880s, wallpaper became less of a central concern for Morris as his energies focused on textile production at Merton Abbey Mills, according to the V&A article. That shift came long after Daisy's 1864 date, and the evidence places the consolidation of company production at Merton Abbey in 1881, when tapestry weaving was established there and Morris appointed John Henry Dearle to manage production. None of that applies to Daisy itself, which predates the Merton Abbey years.

Morris's own view of wallpaper was more equivocal than his business practice suggests. According to the V&A article, Morris described wallpaper as a makeshift decoration and preferred woven textile hangings for the walls of his own home. He sold wallpapers steadily, but he did not rank them above cloth for his own rooms.

How Daisy relates to Morris's approach to pattern

The V&A article on Morris and wallpaper design states that his wallpaper designs centre on plant-based forms and are stylised evocations of natural forms rather than literal transcriptions. Daisy fits that description closely. The V&A's own object description of the pattern, with its flat, simple, frontal motif and ground suggestive of grass, shows plants treated as pattern rather than as botanical illustration.

Morris put the principle into words. In his essay The Lesser Arts of 1877, according to the V&A article, he warned against sham-real boughs and flowers and advised wallpaper designers to avoid falling into the trap of trying to make your paper look as if it were painted by hand. The advice reads as a description of what Daisy already does: the flowers are signs of flowers, arranged to repeat.

The source of the motif supports the same reading. The V&A states that the source of Daisy's flat, simple, frontal motif can be seen in a wall hanging illustrated in a fifteenth-century version of Froissart's Chronicles, shown in an illuminated manuscript held as BL Ms 4380, fol. 1. Medieval wall decoration, not close nature study, is where the V&A points for the pattern's visual ancestry.

The Met's record confirms the pattern's standing as a documented Morris design. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a Daisy wallpaper designed by William Morris, dated 1864, block-printed in distemper colors, with a sheet measuring 27 x 21 1/2 in. That institutional record, alongside the V&A's holdings, places Daisy firmly within the canon of Morris's early papers.

The firm's early pattern sequence continued in the same register. The V&A article states that the next pattern after Daisy, Fruit of 1865, demonstrated the same informal naturalism as Morris's first two designs. Daisy, Trellis and Fruit together form the documented opening run of the firm's wallpapers, and Fruit in detail shows how that naturalism developed one year on.

Where Daisy survives: museum examples

Original examples of Daisy wallpaper survive in at least two major collections. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds three recorded examples, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a fourth. The table below sets out what each institution's record states.

Two gaps in the records deserve plain statement. The Met's excerpt consulted for this page does not give an object number for its Daisy example, so none is quoted here. And no printer or manufacturer is recorded for Daisy in the V&A object records, which is a real contrast with other Morris wallpapers from the firm's list, where printers are named.

Later reissues of Daisy are also not documented in the evidence consulted here. Readers should treat any claim about specific twentieth or twenty-first century reissues of the pattern as unverified until checked against a dated source.

Daisy among the early Morris wallpapers

Daisy belongs to a small documented group of first wallpapers. The V&A records Trellis as designed by William Morris and Philip Webb, printed by Jeffrey and Co., dated 1862 and made in England. Trellis was the first paper Morris designed, according to the V&A article, suggested by the rose trellis in the garden of Red House. The story of the story of Trellis is told in full on its own page.

Daisy itself carries no such printer's credit in the records consulted. This is the clearest contrast between the two early patterns: the V&A names Jeffrey and Co. as the printer of Trellis, but the V&A object records for Daisy name no printer. Anyone researching Daisy's manufacture should therefore treat its production arrangements as an open question.

Fruit followed in 1865 and showed, in the V&A article's words, the same informal naturalism as Morris's first two designs. Daisy was issued first, Trellis designed first, and Fruit carried the early manner forward. The full sequence of the firm's wallpapers, with dates, is set out in the Morris wallpaper list, which links back to each individual design profile.

Daisy also has a textile and needlework relative in the Morris circle. The Daisy hanging made for Red House, the Morris family's Arts and Crafts home, is covered separately on our page about the Daisy Hanging in detail, where the same floral subject appears in a different technique.

The daisy as a flower recurs across Morris's work beyond this single wallpaper. For the wider pattern family, see the story of Daisies, which collects the daisy motifs across the firm's designs in one place.

Shop Daisy prints

If you want Daisy on your own wall, we offer prints of this documented Morris design.

The prints follow the pattern the V&A describes, with flowering plants repeated across a grass-like ground. Details of each print, including its dimensions and framing options, are listed on the individual product pages.