William Morris's Lily and Pomegranate Wallpaper Explained

What the pattern shows: foliage, fruit and flower

The V&A describes the design as showing entwined foliage, pomegranate fruit and lily flowers. The stems loop and cross over one another, with the round fruit and the trumpet-shaped lilies set at intervals through the repeat. This is a description of what the pattern depicts, not a claim about intended meaning.

The O248726 specimen has a pale blue background covered in white dots, a detail recorded by the V&A. Both specimens carry inscriptions on the back in ink, giving the title, number and price, which tells you these were working specimens from the firm's own stock rather than random offcuts.

Quick facts: date, designer and technique

The V&A records William Morris as the designer and gives a production date of 1886 for both specimens. The wallpaper was made in England and is a colour woodblock print on paper. These points rest on the V&A's records, which are the single source used here.

No printer or manufacturing firm is named in the records checked for this page. Morris & Co. wallpapers were produced in several ways over the firm's life, so it would be wrong to attach a printer's name to this design without evidence.

The two V&A specimens and the Volume 2 pattern book

The V&A holds two specimens of Lily and Pomegranate, under museum numbers O248724 and O248726. Both were given to the museum by Morris & Co., so they entered the collection directly from the firm.

Both specimens belong to a pattern book the V&A calls Volume 2, described as containing 27 Morris & Co. patterns from 1882 to 1896.

What the records do not settle

Several questions remain open. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a wallpaper titled Fruit (or Pomegranate), designed by William Morris, dated about 1866 and block-printed in distemper colours, under accession number 23.163.4g. The Met lists it as a separate design from Lily and Pomegranate, and the evidence available does not establish whether the two are related or distinct.

No source checked here names the printer of Lily and Pomegranate, no evidence addresses later reissues, and no documented statement by Morris about this specific design has been found. The Morris quotations that survive concern wallpaper design in general, discussed below. Anyone researching the design further can also read about pomegranate motifs across Morris's work.

Morris on wallpaper: the ideas behind the pattern

The V&A notes that Morris described wallpaper as a makeshift decoration, treating it as only a tolerable substitute for more luxurious wall coverings. That view shaped how his papers behave: they acknowledge their own flatness rather than imitating something else.

In his essay The Lesser Arts of 1877, Morris warned against sham-real boughs and flowers. He also advised those designing wallpapers to avoid falling into the trap of trying to make your paper look as if it were painted by hand. Read against that advice, Lily and Pomegranate works as flat pattern: the lilies and pomegranates are stylised shapes locked into the repeat, not studies from life pretending to depth. This is description of the pattern's behaviour, not a symbolic reading.

Where the design sits in Morris's wallpaper work

The V&A dates the design to 1886, which places it in the later phase of Morris & Co. wallpaper production. According to the V&A, Morris became sole director of the restructured and renamed Morris & Company in 1875, so the firm that issued this paper was under his sole control.

The V&A records that between 1882 and Morris's death in 1896, Morris & Company issued a further 35 new wallpaper designs. Lily and Pomegranate belongs to that busy final decade. You can see where it falls in the sequence through our complete list of Morris wallpaper designs.

Related designs with lilies and pomegranates

Several related museum objects combine lilies or pomegranates with other plants, and their attributions differ in ways worth keeping exact. Tulip and Lily is recorded by the Met as designed by William Morris, designed about 1875, in wool, under accession number 1998.276. The V&A separately holds a Tulip and Lily sample, designed by Morris, made by Heckmondwike Manufacturing Company in 1875, under museum number T.101-1953.

The V&A also holds a Lily sample designed by William Morris, manufactured by Wilton Royal Carpet Factory Ltd. about 1875, under museum number CIRC.65B-1959. John Henry Dearle's hand appears in Rose and Lily, which the Met records as designed by Dearle, dated 1893, in silk and wool, under accession number 23.163.14. Keeping these attributions separate matters, since Morris and Dearle worked a generation apart on some of these pieces. More on fruit motifs can be found in our guide to pomegranates in Morris designs.

Seeing Lily and Pomegranate and related patterns today

The documented place to study Lily and Pomegranate is the V&A, which holds both specimens under museum numbers O248724 and O248726. The ink inscriptions on their backs, recording title, number and price, make them especially useful evidence of how the firm sold its papers.

If you want a pomegranate-patterned print for a wall, our William Morris Original Designs collection includes several Morris-attributed pomegranate patterns: one with blue fruit and pomegranates in a blue palette, a darker print with lemon and pomegranate tones, and two acanthus and pomegranate designs in orange and in rust. These are patterns in the Morris manner whose exact design names are not identified, so we describe them by their look rather than by a title.

If you want to see the flowers at the start of the tradition, our guide to Daisy, Morris's early wallpaper, makes a useful comparison. Blackthorn and Pimpernel cover other repeat patterns of the later years.