Oak by William Morris: The Woven Textile Explained

Oak at a glance

Oak is a furnishing fabric, not a wallpaper or an embroidery. The Victoria and Albert Museum dates it to 1881 and credits the design to William Morris on all three of its object records. The pieces are woven silk, and two of the three records describe the technique as damask weave.

Because each of these points rests on a single institution's records, the attributions are given to the museum directly rather than treated as settled consensus. Where the records differ from each other, the differences are set out below.

Three colourways in the V&A

The Victoria and Albert Museum holds three furnishing fabrics carrying the Oak pattern, each catalogued separately. All three are woven silk, and each preserves the pattern in a distinct colouring. One of the three, O271071, has a Morris & Co label attached.

The two blue examples sit close together in colour, with light blue on green for O17590 and pale blue on dark green for O271076. The red example, O271071, reverses the logic of the others by placing a light pattern figure on a dark ground of the same hue.

Who made Oak, and where

The maker question does not have a single answer in the records. Two of the three V&A catalogues, for O271071 and O271076, name only Morris & Co. as the firm behind the fabric and do not record a separate manufacturer. The third record, for O17590, is more specific: it names J.O. Nicholson of Macclesfield as manufacturer, and states that the fabric was also made at Merton Abbey.

The difference matters for anyone tracing where the silk was actually woven. The O17590 record points to a Macclesfield silk firm and to Morris's works at Merton Abbey as production sites. The other two records leave the manufacturing arrangement unstated. The museum records present both positions without reconciling them, and this page does the same.

One further limit should be noted: the evidence available here contains no statement from a named scholar, such as Linda Parry, on the attribution of Oak. The designer credit rests on the V&A records alone, which agree in naming William Morris.

How the fabric was woven

The technique descriptions in the records vary by object. O271071 is described as woven silk damask, and O271076 more briefly as woven silk. The O17590 record is the most detailed, describing the fabric as hand- and power-loom jacquard-woven silk damask. That combination of hand and power looms in a single record suggests the museum is describing a weaving practice that used both, rather than choosing between them.

The O17590 record names J.O. as manufacturer and names Merton Abbey, but does not state that Merton Abbey was Morris's works. What the records do not give is the full production detail for each object, including which looms wove the O271071 and O271076 examples. Those questions remain open on the evidence supplied.

Popularity and dates of production

The V&A notes that Oak proved to be an extremely popular design, used for a diversity of purposes. That comment appears in the museum's record of the fabric and is the closest thing in the available evidence to a contemporary account of how the design was received.

The dates differ between records. The V&A gives a production date of 1881 for O271071 and the same for O271076. For O17590 the museum gives two dates, 1881 and 1881 to 1919, meaning the design was recorded as produced both in the design year and across a long subsequent period. The wider range fits the museum's comment on the design's popularity, since a fabric kept in production would be available for many uses over decades.

Neither record establishes a first issue date or a design registration date distinct from the 1881 production date. If a document exists fixing when Oak was first put on sale, it is not in the evidence used here.

What the records do not tell us

Several questions that readers of a design profile usually ask cannot be answered from the evidence available. They are listed here so the limits of the record are clear.

The open questions are:

• No first issue or registration date for Oak is documented in the records supplied; only the V&A's 1881 production date and, for one object, the 1881 to 1919 range are given.
• No source in the evidence securely identifies the plants or motifs depicted in the pattern. Any description of individual leaves or acorns would be observation, not documented identification, so none is offered here.
• There is no documented statement by William Morris about Oak in the evidence supplied.
• No attribution study by a named scholar is present in the evidence. The designer credit to William Morris comes from the three V&A records, which agree on the point.
• No later reissues of Oak are documented in the evidence, so none is claimed here.
• The firm that wove Oak at Merton Abbey, and the exact division of work between Merton Abbey and Macclesfield, are not recorded in the evidence beyond the O17590 entry naming J.O. Nicholson.

This page will be updated if further records become available, since the design's history is currently known only through the museum catalogues cited.

Oak among Morris's woven textiles

Oak belongs to the group of woven designs catalogued in the [Morris woven work list](/blogs/william-morris/william-morris-woven-textiles-list) on this site, where it can be read alongside the other woven work.