William Morris's Medway Chintz: History and Design

What Medway is: a Morris & Co. printed cotton

The museum gives the design a primary date of 1885. That attribution rests on the V&A's records alone in the material used for this page, so it is presented here as the museum's attribution rather than as an independently confirmed fact.

The V&A holds three examples of the pattern, under the object numbers O270910, O270911 and O270912. The museum also records the pattern under the alternate name Garden Tulip, in the object history for O270911.

For O270911, the V&A records the materials and techniques as dyed, discharged and block printed cotton. The museum's shorter description of the design calls it block printed cotton, a British furnishing fabric.

Medway is treated on this page as one of Morris's river patterns, a grouping of named designs covered in our guide to the river patterns. That grouping is a classification, and no supplied source describes the imagery of Medway itself.

Marks on the cloth

One of the three V&A examples, object O270911, carries maker's marks that tie the cloth to the firm. The museum records a Morris & Co. label attached to this example, and the object is also stamped 'Morris & Company 449 Oxford Street London W'.

These marks identify the selling company on one surviving example. The material supplied for this page does not name the printer of Medway or the site of manufacture, so no printer or works is stated here.

The dates: 1885 and what the records do and do not settle

The V&A gives Medway a primary date of 1885 and records it as designed by William Morris for Morris & Co. Both points rest on the museum's records alone in the evidence supplied for this page.

For O270911 and O270912 the V&A lists production dates of 1885 and 1885-1919. For O270910 the museum lists a production date of 1885 only.

The material supplied states these dates as the museum records them. It does not explain what the 1885-1919 range signifies, and it does not label any of the dates as a design date, a first issue date or a registration date. This page therefore reports the dates without assigning them that meaning.

What the records leave open

A short list of gaps is part of an honest record, and for Medway the gaps are specific. The material used for this page does not cover the following points, so none of them are asserted here.

On the evidence supplied, the following are not established:

• The imagery of the pattern. No supplied source describes the plants, motifs or composition of Medway, so any account of its appearance beyond the alternate name Garden Tulip would be invention.
• The printer or manufacturing site. No excerpt links Jeffrey & Co., Thomas Wardle, Bannister Hall or Merton Abbey to Medway specifically.
• A documented statement by Morris about Medway. None exists in the material supplied.
• Later reissues. No excerpt documents any.
• Holdings beyond the three V&A objects. No other museum record is supplied.
• What the 1885-1919 production range on two of the records signifies. The material supplied lists the dates but does not explain them.

Two cautions follow from this. First, descriptions of Medway as a river pattern rest on the grouping of named designs rather than on a source describing its imagery, so read it as classification, not as observation of the cloth. Second, where a general record describes Morris's textile making, it should not be silently applied to this specific design.