Garden Tulip Wallpaper by William Morris: History and Design

Garden Tulip at a glance

The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a wallpaper specimen titled Garden Tulip under the museum number O248714. The V&A records William Morris as the designer and gives 1885 as the primary and production date, with the design produced in England. The specimen is a colour woodblock print on paper.

The following points come directly from the V&A record for O248714:

• Designer: William Morris, according to the V&A record.
• Date: 1885, recorded by the V&A as the primary and production date.
• Technique and medium: colour woodblock print on paper.
• Appearance: scrolling foliage with undulating vertical stems of large flowers.
• Inscription: the back of the specimen is inscribed in ink with title, number and price.
• Provenance: given by Morris & Co., and bound into 'Volume 2', a pattern book containing 27 Morris & Co. patterns (E.530-608-1919).

Two further Garden Tulip specimens are recorded by the V&A. One, under the number O248722, shows white scrolling foliage and large yellow flowers, and a second, O248720, shows (?)brown scrolling foliage and large red flowers on a pale ground. Both are attributed to William Morris and dated 1885 in the museum's records.

What the pattern shows

The V&A describes the O248714 specimen as a colour woodblock print on paper. Its pattern consists of scrolling foliage with undulating vertical stems of large flowers. That is the extent of the secure visual description in the museum record used here.

The title suggests tulips, but the records used for this page do not go further than the title in identifying the flowers. The excerpts describe scrolling foliage and large flowers without confirming the plant identification beyond the name Garden Tulip, so any closer botanical reading would be observation rather than documented fact. The V&A does state, more generally, that Morris's designs were stylised evocations of natural forms rather than literal transcriptions.

In the V&A's view, Morris's designs were stylised evocations of natural forms rather than literal transcriptions, and that general point fits what the specimen shows. The stems rise and fall in a vertical rhythm while the foliage scrolls between them, a structure the record describes plainly. No symbolic meaning is attached to the pattern in the evidence, and none is offered here.

Dating the design: what the records say and where they leave room

The V&A gives 1885 as the primary and production date for Garden Tulip, with William Morris recorded as the designer. That is a production date, not a registration or first-issue date. The records used here do not state when the design was first issued or registered as a wallpaper.

A complication comes from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which records a wallpaper titled Tulip with William Morris as designer, the design registered in 1875 and printed between 1877 and 1917, in cotton. The Met's title and dates differ from the V&A's, and the evidence does not state whether the Met's Tulip is the same design as the V&A's Garden Tulip. The relationship between the two records is unresolved, and this page does not treat them as one object.

The maker question is also open. No record used here names a printer or manufacturer for Garden Tulip specifically. Firms such as Jeffrey & Co. printed other Morris wallpapers, and the V&A records Jeffrey & Co. as the printer of Sunflower (1879), Trellis (1862) and Larkspur (1874), but none of those records extends to Garden Tulip. It is likewise not established whether Garden Tulip was printed at Merton Abbey, or whether John Henry Dearle had any role in the design.

One small documentary detail does survive on the object itself. The back of the O248714 specimen is inscribed in ink with the title, a number and a price, which shows the specimen served as a trade record, though the records used here do not give the price or list the colourways issued.

Garden Tulip in Morris's wallpaper work

Wallpaper ran through Morris's working life from the start. According to the V&A, the first paper Morris designed was Trellis in 1862, suggested by the rose trellis at Red House, his home in Kent, followed by Daisy in 1864 and Fruit in 1865. Garden Tulip belongs to the later stretch of that career, sitting among the designs the firm issued in its final decades.

Morris ranked wallpaper modestly among the decorative arts. The V&A notes that Morris still described wallpaper as a 'makeshift' decoration, treating it as only a tolerable substitute for grander wall coverings.

The advice above comes from Morris's essay The Lesser Arts of 1877, in which he also warned against 'sham-real boughs and flowers'. In the V&A's account, Morris's designs were stylised evocations of natural forms rather than literal transcriptions, and a woodblock printed pattern such as Garden Tulip sits within that description.

The firm kept producing papers steadily. Between 1882 and Morris's death in 1896, Morris & Company issued a further 35 new wallpaper designs, according to the V&A. The V&A dates Garden Tulip to 1885, which falls in the middle of that run.

Even so, wallpaper was becoming less central to Morris by then. From the early 1880s onwards, the V&A records, his energies focused increasingly on textile production at Merton Abbey Mills, where company production had been consolidated in 1881 and John Henry Dearle was appointed to manage it. The full run of Morris's papers, Garden Tulip included, can be traced through the Morris wallpaper list on this site.

Related tulip designs by Morris

The tulip motif appears in several Morris designs beyond Garden Tulip, and the museum records describe them in different media and dates. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a design titled Tulip with William Morris as designer, registered in 1875 and printed between 1877 and 1917, in cotton. The Met also holds a design titled Wild Tulip, dated 1884, block printed in distemper colours, with a sheet measuring 27 by 21 and a half inches. Whether either of these is the same design as the V&A's Garden Tulip is not established by the records used here.

In printed cotton, the V&A records Tulip and Willow as a furnishing fabric designed by William Morris and made by Morris & Co. in 1873. The museum also notes that Morris was disappointed by the crude effect achieved with Prussian blue dye on that design. Other tulip-named textiles in the records include Tulip and Lily, a sample designed by Morris and made by the Heckmondwike Manufacturing Company in 1875, and Tulip and rose, a furnishing fabric designed by Morris and manufactured by the same company in 1876.

Our guide to the tulip designs compares these patterns in more detail. The table below lists only what each museum record states.

Where to see examples

Three Garden Tulip wallpaper specimens are recorded at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The main record, O248714, is the colour woodblock print on paper described above, showing scrolling foliage with undulating vertical stems of large flowers. It was given by Morris & Co. and belongs to 'Volume 2', a pattern book containing 27 Morris & Co. patterns, catalogued as E.530-608-1919.

The recorded holdings are:

• Victoria and Albert Museum, O248714: colour woodblock print on paper, scrolling foliage with undulating vertical stems of large flowers, inscribed on the back in ink with title, number and price.
• Victoria and Albert Museum, O248722: white scrolling foliage and large yellow flowers, attributed to William Morris, dated 1885.
• Victoria and Albert Museum, O248720: (?)brown scrolling foliage and large red flowers on a pale ground, attributed to William Morris, dated 1885.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tulip: the record used here does not give an object number for this design.

The pattern book context matters for researchers. Because the O248714 specimen was bound into Volume 2, a pattern book of 27 Morris & Co. patterns, it preserves the design as the firm itself filed it, complete with its inked title, number and price on the reverse.