The Hammersmith Carpets of William Morris

A carpet with a house name: what Hammersmith means

The name Hammersmith does not refer to a single pattern. According to the V&A, all of Morris & Co.'s hand-knotted carpets are called Hammersmiths, after the location of Morris's London home where they were first woven. The word describes a method of making and a place of origin rather than one repeated design.

Within that group, one example is unusually well documented. The V&A holds a carpet, object number O78824, with a production date of 1889 and a place of production given as London. The same record carries the brief description 'Bullerswood Carpet' under the name William Morris, which points to the commission examined in the next section.

For readers who want to place this carpet among the firm's other woven work, the Morris woven work list on this journal collects the reference records for his textiles in one place.

The Bullerswood commission, 1889

The O78824 carpet was part of the Morris & Co. furnishings for Bullerswood in Chislehurst, in Kent, the home of the wool trader John Sanderson, according to the V&A record. Two Hammersmith carpets were ordered for the house: one for the hall, and the O78824 example, which was designed for the drawing room.

The house itself has a documented building history. The V&A dates Bullerswood to 1866 and records that it was later altered by Ernest Newton. The carpets therefore went into a substantial suburban house that had already been reworked by a known architect before Morris & Co. furnished its rooms.

A later record gives a sense of how the drawing room was understood. Museum records from a visit to the house in 1921 state that, in their words, the drawing room's treatment pointed to Morris himself.

Who designed it: Morris, Dearle, or both

The attribution evidence comes from the V&A record for O78824, and it is worth reading carefully because it is not uniform. The record's structured fields list John Henry Dearle as primary maker and as designer, alongside William Morris as designer.

The same record's summary text puts the balance differently. The V&A describes O78824 as the first weaving of a design made by William Morris and his assistant J.H. Dearle, and, as noted above, the brief description credits William Morris. Read together, the fields and the summary agree that both men were involved, but they leave the division of labour between designer and assistant unstated.

The honest position is that the V&A record supports a shared attribution, weighted towards Morris in its summary, and that firmer division between the two hands would need further sources.

Hand-knotted: materials and technique

The O78824 carpet is hand-knotted, with woollen pile on a cotton warp, according to the V&A. Hand-knotting is a slow, knot-by-knot process, which is why the surviving Hammersmiths are comparatively rare objects next to the firm's machine-woven textiles.

Another documented hand-knotted Morris carpet shows what this technique looked like in practice. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a Holland Park carpet designed by William Morris, dated late 19th century, in wool with Turkish (Ghiordes) knot at 25 to the square inch.

Where the looms actually stood is not settled by the records gathered here. The V&A's record for the Redcar carpet, designed by William Morris in 1881, says that it was originally made at Kelmscott House, Hammersmith. This article does not attempt to resolve the wider question of where all the early Hammersmiths were woven; readers should treat the weaving location for the early Hammersmiths as an open question.

Later weavings and the question of what survives

The V&A states that two later weavings of the O78824 design were made. The record, as available here, does not say how those later weavings differ from the first, when they were made, or where they are held.

Several practical questions also remain open in the evidence at hand. The dimensions of the O78824 carpet are not given in the material used here. The evidence does not identify the designer of the hall carpet at Bullerswood, the companion piece to O78824. And no second museum example of a Hammersmith carpet, with its institution and object number, is established by the records on hand.

Hammersmiths beside their siblings: Redcar, Holland Park and the Wilton work

Setting the Hammersmiths next to other documented Morris carpets shows what the group shares and where it differs. The V&A holds the Redcar carpet, object number O89244, designed by William Morris in 1881. That carpet was originally made at Kelmscott House, Hammersmith, and the V&A's version was woven in the early twentieth century, according to the museum's record.

The Redcar record is also unusually specific about construction. It is hand-knotted with cotton warp, mohair, camel hair and woollen pile and jute binding wefts, at 28 knots to the square inch, which gives a measurable sense of the firm's hand-knotted work.

Across the Atlantic, the Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a Holland Park carpet designed by William Morris, dated to the late nineteenth century, in wool with a Turkish, or Ghiordes, knot at 25 to the square inch. Our own guide has more on the Holland Park Carpet and its knotted construction. The Met also records a Lily Carpet produced by Morris & Co. in London, woven by Yates & Co. in Wiltshire, and later by the Wilton Royal Carpet Factory, Ltd.

Not all Morris carpets were knotted by hand. According to the Art Institute of Chicago, Morris also designed carpets woven at Wilton in Wiltshire, and Wilton-style machine-woven carpet was eventually available from Morris & Company in 24 different designs. The Hammersmiths sit at the slow, expensive end of a production range that stretched from the hand knot to the power loom.

The Kelmscott House drawing room, 1896

A photograph of the drawing room at Kelmscott House, probably by Emery Walker, was taken in 1896, probably soon after William Morris's death, according to the V&A. It is the closest surviving view of how Morris himself lived with carpets of the kind his firm made.

The floor in that photograph is covered with a mix of Persian carpets and Morris's own Tulip and Lily, a design of about 1875, according to the V&A's description of the image. Bought-in Persian rugs and Morris-designed carpets sat side by side in the same room, which is consistent with the Persian study that first pushed Morris into hand-knotted production.

What we still do not know

For researchers, the gaps in the record matter as much as the facts. The following points are not established by the material on hand, and this article does not fill them by guesswork.

• The design date versus the first issue or registration date for the Hammersmith carpet design associated with O78824.
• Secure identifications of the plants or motifs in the Hammersmith carpet design.
• The named weavers or workshop that executed the hand-knotted weaving of the Hammersmith carpets.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art's object number for its Holland Park carpet.
• Any documented statement by Morris himself about the Hammersmith carpets.
• How the two later weavings of the O78824 design differ from the first, and where they are held.

Seeing Morris carpets today

The V&A is the practical starting point for studying these objects in person. Its textile collections range from Morris's first embroidery experiments in the early 1860s to tapestry panels made a few years before his death, and both O78824 and the Redcar carpet are recorded there.

Readers who want Morris designs at home rather than under glass can browse the Original Designs collection of prints in the shop, which works from documented designs.