Granada by William Morris: The Woven Textile Explained

A velvet brocaded with gold: what Granada is

Granada is not a printed cotton or a wallpaper. It is a woven silk velvet, and the gold that runs through it is real metal leaf in effect: strips of gilt paper wrapped round a silk core, brocaded into the pile. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a furnishing fabric of this design, museum number O88432, and attributes it to William Morris.

The museum's verdict on its difficulty is blunt. According to the V&A, Granada is the most technically complicated textile William Morris designed. That judgement follows from the materials and the weaving, both of which pushed the firm's equipment to its limit.

Date and attribution

The V&A dates the Granada furnishing fabric O88432 to 1884 and attributes it to William Morris. Two further V&A records agree: the museum holds a second Granada furnishing fabric, museum number O271017, attributed to Morris for Morris & Co. and made at Merton Abbey, and it captions a third example, museum number T.4-1919, as William Morris, 1884, England.

These are museum attributions and museum dates, and they are consistent across the three records. What the evidence does not give is a separate registration or first issue date distinct from the 1884 production date. It is safest to say that Granada was designed and woven in 1884, on the V&A's evidence.

Sixteenth century brocades behind the design

Granada looks back to older velvets. The V&A states that Morris based the design on Italian and Spanish brocaded velvets of the 16th century, the kind of heavy, gold brocaded pile fabrics made for furnishing grand interiors. That source explains both the ogee structure of the pattern and the use of gilt thread, both of which belong to that tradition rather than to the printed textiles Morris is better known for.

Motifs and composition

The V&A describes the pattern as two series of stems arranged to make overlapping ogee shaped compartments. Where the compartments meet, the design sets expanding buds, pointed leaf shaped devices and pomegranates at the points of intersection. The leaf shaped devices and the pomegranates are filled with delicate sprigs of flowers in blue and white on gold.

This is a physical description of the woven surface, not a botanical key. The pomegranate is named in the museum's wording; the other forms are described as buds and leaf shaped devices, and no source in the evidence identifies further plants. The name Granada itself sits naturally beside the pomegranate motif, but the evidence here describes the fruit, not the naming.

How Granada was woven

The weaving demanded new equipment. Morris constructed a special loom to make Granada, and the fabric was the only velvet woven at Merton Abbey, the works the firm used for its later textiles. Even with the loom built, the cloth came slowly.

According to the V&A, only 20 yards, about 18 metres, were produced in 1884, at a cost of £10 per yard. The museum's account states that the fabric took so long to weave that it was never put into commercial production.

One record complicates that picture. The V&A record for O271017 gives a production date of 1884 and also a production date of 1884 to 1912, which may imply weaving continuing long after the first campaign. The evidence does not resolve whether that range reflects later production or a cataloguing convention, and it sits awkwardly beside the museum's account of a single production run. The records also differ in wording, describing the brocading thread as gold in one case and gilt in the other; the physical account, strips of gilt paper round a silk core, covers both.

Surviving examples

Four documented records cover Granada, all at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Three are 19th century furnishing fabrics; the fourth is a much later commercial reproduction.

It is a 20th century commercial textile, not a Morris & Co. product, and should be read as such.

Granada among Morris's woven textiles

Granada stands apart within Morris's woven work, the only velvet and the only design that needed its own loom. To see it in context, the Morris woven work list gathers the woven textiles, tapestries and carpets in one reference page.

Other woven designs took the opposite path: woven in quantity and sold through the firm. Peacock and Dragon in detail shows a woolen furnishing textile of the same years, while a closer look at Bird covers a woven fabric with a strong silk presence. For another richly patterned weaving, the story of Anemone sets out a comparable design history.