Iris by William Morris: History of the Printed Textile

Iris at a glance

The table covers every point the supplied records state. Anything not listed there, including a separate design date, a documented first issue date and the fabric's motifs, is not established by the evidence and is discussed in the section on open questions below.

The fabric: two V&A examples and what their records say

The Victoria and Albert Museum holds two examples of the Iris furnishing fabric. Both are described as block-printed cotton designed by William Morris for Morris & Co., with a primary date of 1876. The records give museum numbers O73351 and O270841.

The record for O73351 carries more detail. The V&A lists William Morris as designer and Thomas Wardle as manufacturer, with production dates given as 1876 and 1876 to 1919. The span matters: the earlier date marks the start of production, while the range shows the fabric remained in the firm's books into the twentieth century, though the record does not say how continuously it was printed across those years.

Wardle's role deserves a plain caveat. The V&A record names him as manufacturer, but the museum text does not state outright that Wardle's works printed this particular fabric, and no supplied source confirms it. What can be said without overreach is that the record lists him in that role.

One physical detail ties the fabric to the firm directly. The O73351 example bears a mark in the border at the edge of the design reading 'Morris & Co. / 26 Queen Sqr., Bloomsbury', a printed address that places the fabric within the firm's own retail identity.

No other holding institution appears in the records used for this page. On the evidence here, the two V&A examples are the documented survivals.

The Iris wallpaper specimen of about 1877

The V&A also holds an Iris wallpaper specimen, museum number O251146, with a primary date of about 1877. According to the museum's record, this design is credited to John Henry Dearle and published by Morris & Co., and it is described as a design of flowering iris plant entwined with other foliage and small birds. The technique is given as colour woodblock or machine print on paper.

This is the only supplied description of Iris's motifs, and it applies to the wallpaper specimen, not to the fabric. The flowering iris, the surrounding foliage and the small birds are the V&A's reading of the printed sheet.

The record adds commercial context. The specimen was produced by Morris & Co. at 449, Oxford Street, London, and was given to the museum by Shand Kydd Ltd. It forms part of a wallpaper pattern book containing 132 specimens, catalogued under the group number E.2734-2866-1980.

A pattern book page explains the survival of the sheet. Specimens like this were kept as sales records by the firm, which is why a single example can document a design's existence, date range and publisher even when no printed length of the paper itself is known here.

One design or two? What the records leave open

The fabric and the wallpaper share the name Iris, but the evidence does not establish whether they are the same design carried across two media or two separate designs. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the fabric is dated 1876 and credited to William Morris; the museum's wallpaper specimen is dated about 1877 and credited to John Henry Dearle. The difference in attribution and the gap in dates keep the question open.

Several other points remain undocumented on the evidence used here.

Open questions:

• A design date versus a first issue or registration date for the fabric. The V&A gives production dates of 1876 and 1876 to 1919, but no explicit design or first issue date.
• Whether Wardle actually printed the fabric. The V&A record lists him as manufacturer without confirming his works handled this design.
• The motifs of the fabric. The flowering iris, foliage and small birds described by the V&A belong to the Dearle wallpaper specimen; no supplied source describes the fabric's pattern in detail.
• Any documented statement by William Morris about Iris. None appears in the records consulted for this page.
• Later reissues beyond the recorded production range of 1876 to 1919. No reissue information is given.

Stating these gaps is part of the history, not a failure of it. A reader comparing this page with an auction catalogue or a modern reprint listing should know exactly which details come from the museum records and which are assumptions elsewhere.

Iris in the context of Morris's printed textiles

The 1876 Iris fabric belongs, according to the Victoria and Albert Museum, to the group of Morris & Co. printed cottons often called chintzes, and it sits near the 1876 printed textile Honeysuckle in date. A full picture of the firm's printed cottons is gathered in the Morris chintz list, which sets Iris alongside the other named designs and their dates.

The wallpaper context is different. According to the V&A, the first paper Morris designed was Trellis in 1862, suggested by the rose trellis in the garden of Red House, his home in Kent. The museum also records that Morris described wallpaper as a makeshift decoration, which helps explain why printed cottons carried so much of the firm's pattern work.

From the early 1880s, the V&A notes, wallpaper became less of a central concern for Morris as his energies focused on textile production at Merton Abbey Mills. A fabric dated 1876, such as Iris, was designed in the period just before that shift, when printed cottons were moving towards the centre of the firm's output.

The Dearle wallpaper specimen adds a note about the firm's working practice. The V&A records that by about 1877 John Henry Dearle was designing papers published under the Morris & Co. name, and a design titled Iris appearing in both media shows how the firm's pattern vocabulary moved between fabric and paper, even when the exact relationship between the two versions is not documented.

Where to see Iris and related designs

The documented holdings are the two V&A fabric examples, museum numbers O73351 and O270841, and the wallpaper specimen O251146, all at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The object records are the place to check for current display, since the evidence here records the holdings, not the galleries they sit in.

No other institution appears in the records used for this page, so any claim that Iris is held elsewhere would need separate documentation.

For readers who want to compare patterns, Honeysuckle is the closest documented comparison, another printed cotton dated 1876. The printed textiles list gathers the firm's other chintzes, and the Original Designs collection shows printed reproductions available on paper.

If you are considering a printed version of Iris for a wall at home, the William Morris Original Designs collection is where to look.