The Flora and Pomona Tapestry: Morris & Co. at Merton Abbey

What the Flora and Pomona pair shows

The pair takes two female figures from classical subject matter. Pomona is the goddess of orchards and gardens, and she was paired with another tapestry depicting Flora, according to the Art Institute of Chicago's record.

Two background treatments are documented. According to the Art Institute of Chicago, the first version of the pair was woven in the mid-1880s with a bold background of large leaves designed by William Morris. Smaller versions were later produced with a millefleurs background designed by John Henry Dearle, in which scattered small flowers fill the space behind the figures.

Who designed which parts

The Art Institute of Chicago credits its Pomona tapestry as after designs by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and John Henry Dearle. The same record notes that smaller versions of the pair were later produced with a millefleurs background designed by John Henry Dearle.

No source in the record separates the figure and background hands beyond these credits, and no published excerpt from a named scholar gives an attribution for Flora and Pomona specifically. The safest statement is the one the museum makes: the design is credited jointly to Burne-Jones and Dearle, with the later millefleurs background credited to Dearle. Dearle's broader work for the firm is set out in the Dearle design list.

How the tapestries were woven at Merton Abbey

Tapestry weaving was established at Merton Abbey when the Victoria and Albert Museum records that Morris & Co. consolidated production there in 1881, and Morris appointed John Henry Dearle to manage production. The move gave the firm its own weaving workshop at the site it used for the rest of its tapestry output.

Large tapestry commissions were often designed by Morris, Dearle and other artists in collaboration and executed by the company's weavers on Flemish-style looms that Morris had built, according to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Flora and Pomona fits that pattern: figure designs by one hand, backgrounds by another, weaving by named craftsmen.

The Chicago Pomona shows the technique in detail. It is made of cotton, wool and silk in slit and double interlocking tapestry, and it was made at the Merton Abbey Tapestry Works.

The Chicago Pomona: dates, weavers and record

One example of the pair is fully documented. The Art Institute of Chicago records its Pomona tapestry under reference number 1919.792, produced by Morris & Co., London, and woven by Walter Taylor and John Keich at the Merton Abbey Tapestry Works.

The museum gives three dates for this tapestry: figure design 1882, background design 1898, and made 1906. These are design and production dates for the Chicago example, not a first issue or registration date for the design as a whole, which no source in the record supplies.

The Flora companion tapestry's full record is not available in the source material, and no second museum record with an institution and object number is established here. Readers researching the pair should treat the Chicago Pomona as the documented anchor.

Two backgrounds, one pair: what changed and why

The Art Institute of Chicago records that smaller versions of the Flora and Pomona pair were later produced with a millefleurs background designed by John Henry Dearle.

The Art Institute of Chicago offers a reason for the change: the floral background produced a more harmonious composition because Dearle's smaller flowers were better suited to the delicate rendering of the goddesses. That judgement is the museum's, and it is attributed here to the museum.

No source identifies the specific plants or motifs in the background beyond the general term millefleurs. Any plant-by-plant reading of the background would go beyond the record.

Selling tapestry: large commissions and smaller panels

The Victoria and Albert Museum describes Morris & Co. tapestry practice as collaborative at the top end: large commissions were often designed by Morris, Dearle and other artists together and executed by the company's weavers on Flemish-style looms. Flora and Pomona, with its layered credits, is a clear example of that working method.

The commercial side is also on record: the company made more money from smaller, affordable tapestry panels or cushions sold through the Oxford Street showroom and overseas agents than from large commissions. That economics helps explain why smaller versions of the Flora and Pomona pair, with Dearle's millefleurs background, were later produced, as the Art Institute of Chicago records.

What remains uncertain

Several points often repeated about this design are not established by the record, and it is worth setting them out plainly.

The following cannot be stated on current evidence:

• No first issue or registration date for Flora and Pomona is documented, distinct from the design dates given for the Chicago Pomona.
• No documented statement by Morris about Flora and Pomona specifically is on record.
• No source identifies specific plants or motifs in the background beyond the general term millefleurs.
• No later reissues are documented beyond the Art Institute of Chicago's statement that smaller versions with the millefleurs background were later produced.
• Only one museum object record, the Art Institute of Chicago's Pomona (1919.792), is established here.

Dearle's millefleurs background for the pair is credited by the Art Institute of Chicago. A comparable pattern from the same hand is covered in a closer look at Golden Lily, and his carpet and wallpaper work appears in the Bullerswood Carpet in detail and in Daffodil.