William Morris's Lily Wallpaper Explained

What Lily looks like

The V&A record describes Lily as a pattern showing a variety of plants laid over an underlay of small leaves, all on a pale ground. The specimen is a colour woodblock print, printed by hand on paper.

That is the extent of the documented description. The record does not name the individual plants, so any identification of the flowers in the pattern would be observation rather than museum documentation.

Date and attribution: what the records actually say

The V&A dates the Lily specimen O248529 to 1873 and attributes the design to William Morris. Both details come from that single museum record, and no separate design date or first issue date is documented in the evidence available.

Nor is there an independent published attribution to set beside the museum's. Parry is directly evidenced only for a comment on production. Writing of the design, Parry notes that:

The log book reference is the closest thing to a production history the design has. Who printed Lily is not recorded in the evidence available; the printer Jeffrey & Co. is named in museum records for other Morris wallpapers, not for this one.

The specimen itself: O248529 and Volume 1

The surviving evidence for Lily is a physical specimen, and it carries its own documentation. The V&A records that the back of the specimen is inscribed in ink with the title, a number and the price.

The specimen belongs to a pattern book the V&A calls Volume 1, which contains 25 Morris & Co. patterns. That grouping places Lily among the firm's issued wallpapers as collected and bound by the firm, rather than as an isolated surviving sheet.

Lily and Lily and Pomegranate: two designs or one?

The V&A holds two specimens of a wallpaper titled Lily and Pomegranate, museum numbers O248724 and O248726, both dated 1886 and attributed to William Morris as designer. One of the two has a pale blue background covered in white dots, according to the museum's record.

Lily and Pomegranate is described as a design of entwined foliage, pomegranate fruit and lily flowers. The V&A records it as a separately titled design with its own date and object numbers, distinct from the 1873 Lily, and this page treats the two as different designs. Lily and Pomegranate is covered in full on its own page.

Lily in the context of Morris's wallpaper work

Lily belongs to the early middle years of Morris's wallpaper output. The V&A states that the first wallpaper Morris designed was Trellis in 1862, followed by Daisy in 1864 and Fruit in 1865, and that between 1882 and Morris's death in 1896 Morris & Company issued a further 35 new wallpaper designs.

According to the V&A, the success of Morris's wallpaper designs relies on his close observation of nature, and his designs were stylised evocations of natural forms rather than literal transcriptions. Read against that observation, Lily's varied plants over a leafy underlay fit the pattern of working natural forms into a flat, repeating structure.

Morris also left general advice on the craft. In his guidance to wallpaper designers he told them to avoid falling into the trap of trying to make your paper look as if it were painted by hand.

The full run of designs is set out in our Morris wallpaper list, and designs such as Trellis, Daisy and Fruit have their own pages if you want the earlier history.

Other 'Lily' names in museum collections

Several other designs share the name Lily, and none of them is the 1873 wallpaper. The table below gathers them so they are not confused with it.

The V&A sample CIRC.65B-1959 is recorded as designed by Morris and manufactured by Wilton Royal Carpet Factory Ltd. The evidence does not establish whether it is a carpet or textile version of the wallpaper design or how the two relate, so the connection is best left open. The Tulip and Lily textiles, recorded by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the V&A respectively, and Dearle's Rose and Lily at the Met are separate designs with their own histories.