The "If I Can" Embroidery: Morris's First Needlework

What the record shows about Morris's first needlework

A work titled If I Can is a different matter. None of the museum records or sources supplied for this article mentions an embroidery by that name. The design date, the first issue or registration date, and the attribution to Morris, Dearle or another hand are all unanswered in the evidence on hand. The common description of If I Can as Morris's earliest embroidery is likewise not confirmed by these sources, which say only that his first experiments date to the early 1860s.

For readers who want the wider context of his printed, woven and embroidered work, our guide to Morris textiles covers the full range of techniques the firm used. The rest of this page stays within what the supplied records actually document.

Before Red House: the first stitching experiments

The V&A's account of Morris's early needlework is specific about motive and timing. His first stitching experiments were carried out before he was married, and they were an attempt to create a version of the medieval wall hangings he had admired since boyhood. That places the earliest work in the years before his marriage, consistent with the early 1860s dating of the surviving examples.

The experiments developed into a household project. Morris, his wife Jane and their friends later made more refined embroidered wall hangings and curtains for Red House, the Morrises' first family home in Kent. The step from private experiment to collaborative furnishing happened within a few years of the first attempts.

Whether the If I Can Embroidery belongs to this early phase cannot be said on the evidence supplied. No record here ties it to the pre-marriage experiments or to the Red House furnishings.

Embroidery in the early business

Embroidery was present at the firm's first public success. According to the V&A, one embroidered fabric stitched by Jane Morris won Morris's new company an award in the 1862 International Exhibition. The work of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. became fashionable following that exhibition.

The business changed shape in the following decade. The V&A records that Morris became sole director of the restructured and renamed Morris & Company in 1875. Two years later the firm opened its 'all under one roof' shop in Oxford Street, and the V&A dates embroidery's growth into a more significant part of the business to that opening.

If If I Can was produced commercially, the records supplied do not say when, by which workshop, or in what technique. Those details would need to come from an object record, and none is provided here.

Designs, kits and May Morris

According to the V&A, Morris, later his daughter May and his assistant John Henry Dearle, produced designs for completed embroidery panels and for 'embroider yourself' kits. The kit format let customers stitch the firm's patterns at home, which suited a technique that had begun as domestic work.

Collaboration shaped the panels. The V&A notes that from the mid-1870s Morris and Edward Burne-Jones worked together on embroidery panels, Morris providing decorative detail and Burne-Jones the figuration. Attribution within a single panel can therefore be shared between hands.

In 1885 Morris stepped away from direct involvement with embroidery and put May, aged just 23, in charge of that aspect of the business. Any claim that If I Can was designed by Morris, by May Morris or by Dearle would need to be checked against an object record; the evidence supplied does not settle it.

Where the early embroidery can be seen

The museum evidence supplied for this article concerns the V&A. It holds examples of Morris's first embroidery experiments from the early 1860s, and May Morris bequeathed to the museum a sizeable collection of her father's work on her death in 1938, including 30 designs for wallpaper, textiles and embroidery.

No object number for a work called If I Can appears in the records supplied. No object record naming the work, from the V&A or any other institution, is present in the evidence on hand.

What the supplied records do and do not cover:

• V&A examples of Morris's first embroidery experiments, early 1860s.
• May Morris's 1938 bequest to the V&A, including 30 designs for wallpaper, textiles and embroidery.
• No V&A or other object record naming If I Can, and no object number for it.

Reproductions of documented Morris designs, including embroidered subjects, can be found in the William Morris Original Designs collection, which is limited to named works.

Open questions on the If I Can attribution

Setting out what is unknown is part of doing the research properly. The following points are not established by the evidence supplied for this article, and each would need verification against a museum object record or a sourced publication before any firm claim is published.

Questions that remain open:

• The design date of If I Can, and separately its first issue or registration date, if either exists.
• The designer attribution: Morris, Dearle or another hand.
• The maker, workshop or manufacturer responsible for any surviving example.
• The production technique used.
• The plants or motifs shown, and who has identified them.
• Museum holdings, with institution and object number.
• Any later reissues.
• Any documented statement by Morris about the work.

Until those points are checked, the honest summary is the one at the top of this page: Morris's earliest embroidery is documented and dated, but If I Can is not identified in the records on hand.