Trellis Wallpaper by William Morris: History and Design

Trellis at a glance

The core facts about Trellis come from two V&A object records and one Metropolitan Museum of Art record. They agree on the designer, the year of design and the printing technique, and they differ slightly on the dating of production, which is set out in full below.

The documented facts:

• Designer: William Morris, listed as primary maker on V&A records O78220 and O248458, both with primary date 11/1862.
• Birds: designed by Philip Webb, according to the V&A record O78220.
• Technique: block-printed in distemper colours on paper.
• Surviving examples: V&A O78220 and O248458, and a Met example dated 1864.

One point needs care. A separate V&A caption records Trellis as designed by William Morris and Phillip Webb, printed by Jeffrey & Co., 1862, England. The two object records themselves do not name a printer, so the printer of the 1864 registered issue is not established by the object records.

What the pattern shows

The V&A describes Trellis as showing a thorned rose bush with red flowers growing on a wooden trellis, with birds and flying insects, on a pale blue ground. The trellis runs as a visible framework through the repeat, and the birds perch along it rather than floating free of the structure.

The birds are the one element with a separate attribution. The V&A record O78220 states that they were designed by Philip Webb, Morris's friend and the architect of his home at the time. The record attributes the rest of the design to Morris without naming a second hand for the insects or the rose bush.

No plant species beyond the rose is named in the records, and no sourced interpretation of the pattern's meaning exists in the evidence used here. What follows is description of what the records document, not symbolism.

A second V&A example, O248458, survives in a predominantly grey-green colourway, which shows the pattern was printed in more than one colour scheme. The record for that example lists the same two designers and the same production dates as O78220.

Designed in 1862, issued in 1864: what the records say

The dating evidence comes from the V&A. That separates two events: the drawing of the design and its formal registration and issue two years later.

The Met's record dates its example of Trellis, designer William Morris, to 1864, with the medium given as block-printed in distemper colors and a sheet measuring 27 x 21 1/2 in. That matches the V&A's production year rather than the design year.

A V&A caption complicates the picture slightly by recording Trellis as printed by Jeffrey & Co., 1862, England. The caption's date sits with the design date, while the object records place registration and production in 1864. The caption also spells the architect's name Phillip, where the object record spells it Philip (Speakman) Webb.

What is not established is which firm printed the 1864 registered and produced issue. The two V&A object records do not name a printer. The caption naming Jeffrey & Co. carries the 1862 date, so it cannot simply be transferred to the 1864 issue without assuming the records refer to the same printing.

First designed, third issued

The V&A record for O78220 states plainly that Trellis was the first paper designed by William Morris but the third to be issued. The gap between design and issue explains the apparent contradiction: a pattern drawn in 1862 could wait until 1864 to be registered and printed for sale.

A second V&A statement, given in a different context, says the first paper Morris designed was Trellis in 1862. The two statements agree that Trellis was first in design order. Where the record O78220 adds the detail about issue order, the second statement stops at design order, so there is no real conflict between them, only a difference in scope.

For the sequence that followed, the V&A gives the second Morris wallpaper as Daisy in 1864 and the third as Fruit in 1865. Those dates track issue rather than design, which is consistent with Trellis being designed first and issued third.

Red House and the rose trellis

The V&A connects the pattern to a specific place. It states that Trellis, the first paper Morris designed in 1862, was suggested by the rose trellis in the garden of Red House, Morris's home in Kent. The design therefore begins as a record of a real garden structure rather than an invented one.

Red House itself was designed by Philip Webb and completed in 1860, according to the National Trust. It was the home of William and Jane Morris, and the two of them hand-decorated it together with the Pre-Raphaelite circle. Webb, who built the house, is the same hand the V&A credits with the birds on the wallpaper.

Edward Burne-Jones described Red House as shown above, in a quotation recorded by the National Trust. The house was the setting where Morris began designing interiors in earnest, and Trellis belongs to that first burst of decoration for a real building and a real garden.

The garden source also explains the pattern's structure. A trellis is a flat lattice with growth trained across it, and the printed design keeps that flatness: the wooden framework reads as a grid, the rose bush reads as growth on the grid, and the birds sit on top of both.

Attribution questions the records leave open

Several points cannot be settled from the evidence, and it is better to name them than to smooth them over.

The open questions:

• The printer of the 1864 issue. The V&A object records O78220 and O248458 do not name a printer. The caption crediting Jeffrey & Co. is dated 1862, so it does not directly document the 1864 registered and produced issue.
• The spelling of Webb's name. The object record gives Philip (Speakman) Webb; the caption gives Phillip Webb. The object record's spelling is the one used here.
• The flying insects. The V&A attributes only the birds to Philip Webb. No record names who drew the insects, and the evidence does not state that Morris drew every remaining element personally.
• Morris's earliest design. The V&A states Trellis was the first paper Morris designed, and separately describes Jasmine Trellis, a furnishing fabric of 1868 to 1870, as Morris's earliest design for textiles. The two statements cover different media and do not contradict each other, but they are easy to confuse.
• No documented statement by Morris specifically about Trellis appears in the evidence used here.

The Jasmine Trellis record is worth spelling out, because the similar name causes mix-ups. The V&A holds it as a hand block-printed cotton furnishing fabric designed by William Morris for Morris & Co., 1868 to 1870, museum number O266147, made by Thomas Wardle and manufactured by Bannister Hall. It is a textile, not the wallpaper, and it postdates Trellis by several years.

Where examples survive

Three museum examples are documented in the evidence. Two are at the V&A and one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The V&A's O78220 carries an ink inscription on the back reading 'Trellis 9 / 8/8', and belongs to Volume 1, a pattern book containing 25 Morris & Co. items.

The Met's record does not give an object number in the source used here, so the table leaves that cell open rather than guessing. The two V&A records together show the pattern in two colourways, the pale blue ground of O78220 and the grey-green of O248458.

No later reissue dates appear in the evidence, so this page makes no claim about when or whether Trellis was reprinted after the 1860s.

Trellis in the wider wallpaper story

Trellis opens a body of work that grew steadily. The V&A records that between 1882 and Morris's death in 1896, Morris & Company issued a further 35 new wallpaper designs. 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.

Morris's own view of wallpaper was qualified. According to the V&A, he described wallpaper as a makeshift decoration and preferred woven textile hangings for the walls of his own home. That preference did not stop him designing papers, but it frames them as practical wall coverings rather than the art form he valued most.

The advice above comes from Morris's essay The Lesser Arts of 1877, where he also warned against sham-real boughs and flowers. Trellis sits comfortably within that advice: the trellis is drawn as a trellis, a flat printed framework, and the rose is trained on it in the manner of a pattern rather than disguised as a real bush.

The full run of Morris's papers, with Trellis at its head, is set out in the complete list of Morris wallpaper designs.

The pattern book context matters too. O78220 belongs to Volume 1, a V&A pattern book containing 25 Morris & Co. items, which preserves working examples of the firm's papers together rather than as isolated sheets.

Shop Trellis prints

Prints of this documented Morris design are available in the shop. If you are planning a room around the pattern, a closer look at styling Trellis covers colour palettes and pairings.