Hammersmith by William Morris: The Story of the Wallpaper

What the Hammersmith specimen shows

The main V&A specimen, object number O248769, is a colour woodblock print on paper. It shows stems of foliage running diagonally across the sheet, printed in white, brown and possibly pale green against a tan ground. The museum notes a question mark over the pale green, so even the colour scheme carries a small uncertainty.

The specimen is inscribed on the back in ink with its title, number and price, and it was given to the museum by Morris & Co. That inscription is one reason the design name can be stated with confidence.

Two specimens, two records: dating and attribution

The V&A holds two Hammersmith wallpaper specimens. The first, O248769, is recorded as made by William Morris with a production date of 1890 in England. The second, O251161, is dated 1880 to 1917 and is recorded as made by Morris as designer and published by Morris & Co.

The records do not fully agree with themselves. Alongside the 1890 date, one field in the O248769 record gives 1875, and the second specimen carries only the broad 1880 to 1917 range. No design date and no first-issue or registration date for Hammersmith is established by the evidence available here.

What can be said is that both museum records name William Morris. On that basis the design is treated here as his work, with the caveat that the records are the sole support for the attribution.

How the papers were printed

The first specimen is described definitively as a colour woodblock print on paper. The second record hedges, calling it a colour woodblock, or machine, print. The sources name no printer for Hammersmith, so no printing firm can be stated.

The pattern book containing the second specimen includes a printed notice from Morris and Company explaining the hand-printing method. It reads:

Each block was dipped into pigment and pressed firmly onto the paper, which is why hand-printed papers carried such solid colour. The notice is a company statement about its papers in general, not a comment on Hammersmith specifically, but it describes the process the woodblock specimens represent.

The two specimens reached the museum by different routes. O248769 was given by Morris & Co., while O251161 was given by Shand Kydd Ltd.

Foliage, not flowers: the pattern and Morris's wallpaper principles

Hammersmith is a foliage pattern. The V&A describes diagonal stems of leaves and names no flowers, and no source in the evidence identifies the stems as any specific plant. They are best left as foliage rather than guessed at as willow, oak or anything else.

That unnamed foliage sits comfortably within the V&A's account of Morris's wallpapers. According to the museum, the success of the designs relies on close observation of nature, and every one centres on plant-based forms treated as subtle stylised evocations rather than literal transcriptions. Hammersmith, a pattern of stems without identifiable blooms, fits that description closely.

Morris himself drew the line against imitation. He also described wallpaper as a "makeshift" decoration, as reported by the V&A, which helps explain why the pattern works by rhythm and stylisation rather than botanical portraiture.

A caution: the Hammersmith carpets are a different thing

The name Hammersmith appears elsewhere in Morris's work, and the two uses are easy to mix up. The V&A also uses Hammersmiths for a type of hand-knotted carpet, named after the location of Morris's London home where they were first woven.

According to the V&A, Morris began to oversee hand-knotting of these rugs in 1879 on looms installed in outbuildings at his London house, and the looms moved to Merton Abbey in 1881. The carpets used the Turkish, or Ghiordes, knot, woven at a thickness of 25 knots to the square inch. None of this concerns the wallpaper; the shared name reflects the same place, not the same object.

Where Hammersmith sits in the firm's wallpaper output

Hammersmith belongs to the later run of Morris and Company papers. Morris became sole director of the restructured and renamed Morris & Company in 1875, and the firm issued a further 35 new wallpaper designs between 1882 and Morris's death in 1896. A production date of 1890 places Hammersmith inside that late group.

The earliest wallpapers came three decades before. According to the V&A, the first wallpaper Morris designed was Trellis in 1862, followed by Daisy in 1864 and Fruit in 1865. You can read more on Fruit and our guide to Daisy on their own pages, and the full run of designs is set out in the complete list of Morris wallpaper designs.