Tulip: The Printed Cotton by William Morris

What the Tulip cotton shows

The Victoria and Albert Museum's record for Tulip (museum number O266141) describes a block printed cotton showing leafy floral stems in shades of red on a white ground. A Morris & Co. label is attached to the example in the museum's collection.

That is the extent of the documented description. The records consulted name no plant species within the pattern, so any identification of the stems as true tulips or other plants would be observation rather than sourced fact. The same caution applies to meaning: nothing in the evidence attributes a symbolic intention to the design, so it is best read as what it appears to be, a repeating pattern of flowering stems.

Date and attribution: what the records say

The V&A dates Tulip to 1875, with production dates of 1875 and 1875 to 1919, and credits the design to William Morris for Morris & Co. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's record agrees on the registration date: according to the Met's record, the design was registered in 1875 and printed between 1877 and 1917.

Two points about the dating are worth separating. The design date, 1875, is when the pattern was drawn and registered. The production dates, running to 1917 or 1919 depending on the record, describe how long the cotton was printed afterwards. The two records differ slightly on the end of production, which is normal for objects printed over decades.

Attribution is straightforward in both records: both institutions name William Morris as the designer. No published source by Linda Parry or other specialists is on file for this design in the material consulted, so this page relies on the museum records alone.

How it was made: block printing on cotton

The V&A identifies Tulip as a block printed cotton. Block printing meant pressing carved wooden blocks, one for each colour, onto the cloth by hand, and it was the technique Morris used for his printed furnishing fabrics of this period.

The Met's related records add a detail about colour application. According to the Met's record for Wild Tulip, a later Morris design dated 1884, that cotton was block printed in distemper colours, a method in which pigment is applied in a glue-based medium. The Met's Tulip record itself gives the registration and printing dates but the material consulted does not state its dyeing method.

Where Tulip was printed is not established by the evidence. The records consulted do not link the design to a named printer or works, so no manufacturer is claimed here.

Where to see examples

Two institutions hold recorded examples of Tulip. The V&A's furnishing fabric, museum number O266141, carries a Morris & Co. label. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a cotton titled Tulip, and also holds Wild Tulip of 1884, a separate later design by Morris.

Open questions around Tulip

Several questions cannot be answered from the records consulted, and it is more useful to name them than to guess.

The main gaps in the documented history of Tulip are:

• Whether the 1875 Tulip is the same design as the 1873 Tulip and Willow or a separate pattern. The evidence does not clarify the relationship, so the two are treated here as distinct records.
• No documented statement by Morris about Tulip specifically is on file. A letter to Thomas Wardle complaining about blue dyes survives for Tulip and Willow, but nothing equivalent for this design.
• The Met's object numbers for Tulip and Wild Tulip are not present in the records consulted, and the dimensions of the V&A and Met examples are unknown.
• No printer or printing location is documented for Tulip, and no reissues after the recorded production end dates of 1917 to 1919 appear in the evidence.

Tulip among Morris's printed chintzes

Tulip belongs to the group of printed furnishing cottons, often called chintzes, that Morris began designing in the 1870s. Others from the same decade include Brother Rabbit, Strawberry Thief and Honeysuckle, each covered on its own page, including our guide to Brother Rabbit.

The tulip name recurs across Morris's work in several designs, which makes careful dating important. For the wider picture, see the full Morris chintz list, and for the tulip family specifically, the story of the tulip designs compares Tulip, Garden Tulip and Wild Tulip side by side.