Mallow by William Morris: The Story of the Wallpaper

What we can and cannot verify about Mallow

A reader searching for the history of Mallow deserves a straight answer, and the straight answer is that the documentary record supplied for this page is silent. The following points could not be verified and are therefore not asserted here.

Unverified points about Mallow:

• The design date and the first issue or registration date.
• The designer.
• The manufacturer or printer.
• The production technique specific to Mallow.
• The plants or motifs depicted.
• Any museum object record, with institution and object number.
• Any later reissues.
• Any documented statement by Morris about Mallow.

Where a design cannot be named with confidence, it should not be given a history it does not have. The sections below describe the verified context for Morris and Co. wallpapers generally, which is the honest frame within which Mallow sits.

How Morris and Co. wallpapers were made

The Victoria and Albert Museum records that Morris's wallpapers were printed using wood-blocks cut by the family firm Barrett's in Bethnal Green, who dealt directly with Morris's firm in the transfer of designs. Block cutting was therefore a specialist trade carried out outside the design studio.

Printing was likewise outsourced. The London firm Jeffrey and Co., which specialised in high quality 'Art' wallpapers, printed Morris wallpapers in distemper, water-based colours giving a thick chalky effect. If Mallow was printed for Morris and Co. in the usual way, this is the process it would most likely have gone through, though no source in the evidence confirms this for Mallow itself.

Morris's wallpaper practice in context

The V&A dates the first wallpaper Morris designed to 1862, Trellis, suggested by the rose trellis at Red House, followed by Daisy in 1864 and Fruit in 1865. According to the same record, between 1882 and Morris's death in 1896 Morris and Company issued a further 35 new wallpaper designs.

The V&A also notes that from the early 1880s onwards wallpaper became less of a central concern for Morris as his energies focused on textile production at Merton Abbey Mills. Any wallpaper issued in that later period belongs to a firm whose attention was shifting elsewhere.

One further note of context: the V&A records that Morris described wallpaper as a 'makeshift' decoration and preferred woven textile hangings for the walls of his own home. He designed wallpapers commercially for decades regardless.

What Morris said about wallpaper design

No documented statement by Morris about Mallow exists in the evidence. What survives are his general principles, which set the standard a wallpaper like Mallow would have been judged against.

In his essay The Lesser Arts of 1877, Morris warned against decorative flowers and foliage that imitate real branches, and advised wallpaper designers not to try to make their paper look hand painted. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the essay reads:

May Morris described her father's working method in words recorded by the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her account concerns Morris's designs generally, not Mallow specifically.

Where to look next

The best place to seek a verified record for Mallow is the V&A's wallpaper pattern books. The museum's 'Volume 1' pattern book, containing 25 Morris and Co. patterns from 1862 to 1881 under the number E.441-529-1919, shows how the firm's wallpapers were collected and documented, and similar volumes are where a Mallow record would need to be confirmed.

For other designers working for Morris and Co., see our Dearle design list, which documents the wallpaper and textile designs of John Henry Dearle.

For designs whose histories are fully documented, browse the William Morris original designs collection, where each print is tied to a named design.