Snakeshead: The Printed Cotton by William Morris

What the Snakeshead fabric looks like

The Victoria and Albert Museum describes the Snakeshead pattern as scrolling and intertwining leafy floral stems. That is the secure visual description: stems that curve and cross one another, clothed in leaves and flowers, filling the width of the fabric without a hard border or central scene.

The museum holds the design in more than one colourway. Another, O270987, reverses the balance: light blue, green, yellow and white printed on a dark blue ground. The two together show that the design was worked in both light grounds and dark, and that the same drawing carried different palettes.

No plant species can be named from the evidence used here. The V&A's own wording stops at leafy floral stems, and no source in this record identifies specific flowers in Snakeshead. The pattern should therefore be described in those terms alone.

Quick facts: designer, printer, medium and dates

Both institutions that hold documented Snakeshead examples credit William Morris with the design. The V&A record for O87499 lists Morris as designer and Thomas Wardle as printer. The Art Institute of Chicago's record for its cotton, 1972.395, likewise names Morris as designer, with production by Morris & Co. of London and Wardle & Co. of Bridgnorth.

The Chicago record gives the medium as cotton, plain weave. All four museum examples discussed below are block printed cottons. The table gathers the dating records, which do not agree perfectly and are set out plainly rather than smoothed over.

One caution on the dates: the evidence does not state whether the V&A's 1876 refers to the design date, the first issue, or a registration. That distinction matters for any serious study of the pattern, and the next section lays out both museum datings in full.

When Snakeshead was made: the dating evidence

The V&A record for O87499 gives a primary date of 1876, with production dates of 1876 and a longer range running to 1919. The same 1876 primary date appears on the records for the two further V&A examples, O270986 and O270987. In other words, the museum's catalogue treats 1876 as the anchor date for the design across all three holdings.

This is a different kind of statement: not a catalogue date for an object but an account of when the pattern entered production and how long the dye work took.

The two records can sit together, since a design dated 1876 could plausibly reach full production the following year, but the evidence does not resolve them explicitly. No registration date or first-issue date appears in the sources used here, so that question must be left open.

The Art Institute of Chicago's record for its Snakeshead cotton, 1972.395, names William Morris as designer, with production by Morris & Co. of London and Wardle & Co. of Bridgnorth. According to the same record, the Morris & Co. logo appeared on selvages and the style of the typeface offers clues to when a fabric was made.

Thomas Wardle and the printing of Snakeshead

Thomas Wardle is the one printer securely connected to Snakeshead. The V&A record for O87499 names him as printer, and the Art Institute of Chicago describes the collaboration from the printing side: Morris worked with Wardle, a dye chemist, on the pattern's production, and the experimentation lasted three months before the fabric was first produced in 1877.

The relationship outlived the 1870s. According to the Art Institute of Chicago, Wardle's company continued to print selected Morris patterns, and after Thomas Wardle died in 1909 his son Bernard maintained the arrangement. The Chicago Snakeshead cotton, made between 1925 and 1940, is credited to both Morris & Co. and Wardle & Co. of Bridgnorth, which fits that continuing story.

What the evidence does not say is where Snakeshead itself was printed. No source used here places the pattern at Merton Abbey or any other named site, and no source connects Jeffrey & Co. to it. Both gaps should be respected rather than filled by assumption.

Reading the pattern: structure and repeat

Snakeshead is built from scrolling and intertwining leafy floral stems, in the V&A's description. The stems carry the eye across the cloth in curves that cross and re-cross, and the flowers and leaves grow from those curves rather than sitting in rows.

The V&A characterises Morris as highly influenced by historical patterns and as one of the most knowledgeable textile historians of the late 19th century. That judgement is the museum's, and it frames how the firm's printed cottons, Snakeshead among them, relate to earlier textile traditions.

Morris left one documented principle that bears on how his patterns should be read, though it was written about wallpaper. In his essay The Lesser Arts (1877) he advised designers:

He also warned in the same essay against sham-real boughs and flowers. The point, in his own words, was that a flat pattern should behave as a flat pattern. Snakeshead's scrolling stems, drawn as pattern rather than as a botanical portrait, sit naturally within that stated aim, though the essay itself does not mention Snakeshead and should not be treated as a commentary on it.

For the wider company context: the V&A records that Morris & Co. was founded by William Morris in 1875 and produced textiles commercially for sale in two London shops, and that from the early 1880s his energies focused on textile production at Merton Abbey Mills. Snakeshead belongs to the earlier, Wardle-led phase of the firm's printed cottons, before that consolidation.

The full list of Morris chintzes places Snakeshead alongside the other printed cottons that can be dated from museum records.

Snakeshead in museum collections

Four documented examples of Snakeshead are recorded in this evidence, three at the Victoria and Albert Museum and one at the Art Institute of Chicago. Each carries a museum number, which is the honest currency of pattern research: it lets a reader check the record directly.

The Chicago example is the latest of the four, and its record explains how that dating was reached. According to the Art Institute of Chicago, Morris & Co.'s logo appeared on selvages and the style of the typeface offers clues to when a fabric was made; the selvages of 1972.395 indicate a date between 1925 and 1940.

What we cannot yet establish about Snakeshead

Several questions that a full study of Snakeshead would want answered are not settled by the evidence currently to hand. They are listed here so that readers know the limits of this page.

Open questions on the record:

• Whether the V&A's 1876 is a design date, a first issue or a registration. No source states which.
• Any documented statement by William Morris specifically about Snakeshead. None appears in the evidence.
• Which plants are depicted. Only the V&A's phrase, scrolling and intertwining leafy floral stems, is secure.
• Where Snakeshead was printed. No location is given; only Wardle is named as printer.
• Any role for Jeffrey & Co. The evidence does not confirm one.
• Original prices, cloth widths, colourways offered at first issue, or named client commissions. None is recorded here.

These gaps are normal for 1870s commercial textiles. Where a source is silent, this page stays silent with it.

Snakeshead among Morris's printed chintzes

Snakeshead sits in the group of Morris printed cottons now usually called chintzes, made in collaboration with outside printers before and after the firm's move to Merton Abbey. Several of these patterns have their own research pages. more on Honeysuckle covers the 1876 printed textile that shares Snakeshead's mid-1870s dating, while Strawberry Thief and the story of Brother Rabbit follow two later chintzes through their documented histories.

If you are weighing up Morris patterns for a room or a frame, the general guide to William Morris designs explains how the patterns were made and how to choose between them.