William Morris's Dove and Rose Woven Fabric: History and Design

A double cloth of doves and foliage

Dove and Rose is not a printed cotton. It is a woven silk and wool double cloth, a structure in which two layers of cloth are woven at the same time, each carrying part of the pattern. The V&A records the medium for the surviving lengths as silk and wool.

The three V&A lengths show the same design in three colour schemes. One length shows pairs of doves and stylised foliage in pink, blue and green. A second shows the pairs of doves and foliage in dark and light blue on a light red ground. The third shows them in green, yellow and light red on a mauve ground. All three descriptions come from the museum's own records of the objects.

A double cloth of this kind has weight and body that printed furnishings do not, and the two fibre types, silk and wool, take dye differently within one cloth. The museum's colour descriptions, ranging from pink and blue to dark blue on light red and green and yellow on mauve, suggest colourways designed for different rooms rather than a single standard scheme.

Date, designer and maker

According to the V&A, Dove and Rose was designed by William Morris in 1879. The same records state that it was made by Alexander Morton & Co. for Morris & Co., and the V&A dates production to 1879, with a production range of 1879 to 1919 given for two of the three records.

The museum's summary confirms the picture: the pattern of flowers and vegetation was, in the V&A's account, designed by William Morris in 1879 and woven by Alexander Morton & Company for Morris and Company. The place of production is recorded as Darvel, in Scotland.

Some details commonly asked for cannot be stated from the records available here. No evidence supplies a design date distinct from the 1879 production date, and no registration record is mentioned. No evidence documents any statement by Morris about Dove and Rose, and no evidence records later reissues beyond the 1879 to 1919 production range that the V&A gives for two of the lengths.

Alexander Morton and the weaving of the fabric

Dove and Rose was not woven in Morris's own workshops. According to the V&A, Alexander Morton established his textile company in Scotland in 1867, and the firm manufactured silk and wool fabrics and gauzes for Morris & Co. The V&A credits Alexander Morton & Co. as the maker of Dove and Rose, with Darvel recorded as the place of production.

The arrangement is one of commissioned weaving rather than in-house production. Morris & Co. supplied the design and the commission; Morton's Scottish works supplied the looms and the labour. The records used here do not state who wove the fabric at the level of individual works or looms, only the firm and the town.

The relationship between Alexander Morton & Co. and Morris's own works at Merton Abbey is not fully stated in the records available here, which are truncated on that point. What is clear is that in 1879, the year of Dove and Rose, Morris & Co. was commissioning woven silks and wools from Scotland rather than weaving them itself.

Morris and Co. in 1879

The commission sits at a particular point in the firm's history. According to the V&A, Morris & Co. was founded by William Morris in 1875, and the museum states that Morris became sole director of the restructured and renamed Morris & Company in that year.

So by 1879, the date the V&A gives for Dove and Rose, Morris had led the firm under its familiar name for about four years and was directing its output of wallpapers, textiles and furnishings. Commissioning the weave from Alexander Morton & Co. in Scotland was one of the ways the firm met demand for woven furnishing fabrics before its own textile production was consolidated.

The three V&A lengths

Three lengths of Dove and Rose are documented in the Victoria and Albert Museum's collections, each under its own object number and each in a different colourway. They are the principal surviving, publicly recorded examples of the pattern.

What the pattern shows, and what is not established

The V&A's descriptions of the three lengths are the safest guide to the pattern. Each shows pairs of doves with stylised foliage, and the museum's summary describes a pattern of flowers and vegetation. The colourways listed above give the palette of each surviving length.

Beyond that, caution is needed. No supplied source identifies the specific plants depicted, and no botanical identification of the foliage is available here. The rose of the title is part of the design's recorded name, but no sourced description in these records spells out which flowers appear in the weave, so any claim about particular species would be a guess.

The same applies to meaning. No symbolism attaches to the doves or the flowers in any record used here, and none should be invented. What can be said is what the museum records say: paired birds and stylised foliage, woven in silk and wool, in three recorded colour schemes.

Dove and Rose among Morris's textiles

Dove and Rose belongs to a family of Morris patterns that pair a bird or flower name with an alternating motif. Nearby in name and date is Rose and Thistle. The V&A holds a Rose and Thistle furnishing fabric by William Morris, dated 1881, under museum number T.634-1919. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a Rose and Thistle in cotton, designed by William Morris before April 1881 and printed between 1917 and 1923, accession number 23.163.9.

The pairing formula also appears on the wall. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds Pink and Rose, a wallpaper designed by William Morris around 1890 and block-printed in distemper colours, accession number 23.163.4a. The V&A holds the same design, published by Morris & Co. and manufactured by Jeffrey & Co., about 1890, under museum number E.708-1915.

For the woven work specifically, including other double and triple cloths, the reference list of Morris woven textiles, tapestries and carpets gathers the designs in one place. A closer look at Peacock and Dragon, the story of Bird and the story of Flower Garden each take one woven fabric in the same detail as this page.

Where to look next

The three V&A lengths, under object numbers O264957, O271095 and O271093, are the documented examples to check first, since the museum's online records carry the descriptions quoted here. Anyone wanting to live with the pattern can browse the collection of William Morris original designs, which prints named Morris designs from museum sources. A comparison with the story of Bird, another woven fabric with birds in the repeat, shows how differently the two designs handle paired birds in cloth.