Vine by William Morris: The Story of the Wallpaper

A foliate pattern of leaves and grapes

The V&A describes Vine as a foliate design of two types of leaves and grapes. That is the extent of the documented description, and it is worth taking literally: the pattern is built from foliage and fruit, without the flowers that carry many other Morris wallpapers of the period.

The record does not identify which two leaf types appear, so any more precise botanical reading would go beyond the evidence. What the description does establish is a design organised around a vine motif, with grapes giving the pattern a heavier, fruiting character than a purely leafy scroll would have.

Dates and attribution: what the V&A record says

According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, Vine carries a primary date of 1873, with production dates of 1873 and 1874. The same V&A record states that the wallpaper was first issued in 1874. Because the V&A is the only source checked for this page, these dates are attributed to it directly rather than presented as settled consensus.

The distinction matters. A primary date of 1873 with a first issue of 1874 suggests the design was drawn or prepared in one year and put on sale in the next. No registration date appears anywhere in the record, so the 1874 first issue is the earliest documented point at which Vine was available.

On attribution, the V&A records William Morris as the designer of the Vine wallpaper. No other source was available for this page, so the attribution rests on the museum's record alone.

Who printed Vine, and how

The V&A states that Vine was printed by the wallpaper manufacturer Jeffrey & Co. for Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. Jeffrey & Co. was a commercial wallpaper printer; Morris's firm supplied the designs and sold the finished papers under its own name.

The technique is documented precisely: the wallpaper was hand printed in distemper colours by wood block, on paper. Distemper colours are bound with glue and sized, a method suited to wall papers, and wood block printing meant each colour in the pattern required its own block, laid on by hand.

Some context on the firm helps place the dates. According to the V&A, Morris founded his own firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., in 1861, and it became Morris & Co. in 1875. The museum also records that Vine was first issued in 1874, so the wallpaper was issued under the original firm name, the year before the reorganisation.

One point the evidence does not settle: nothing in the checked record states that Vine was produced at Merton Abbey. Only the Jeffrey & Co. printing is documented, and this page does not assume otherwise.

The gold crape ground and the pattern hidden on the back

After its ordinary release as a distemper print, Vine was brought out on a gold crape-embossed ground. The V&A notes that this material had appeared earlier in Jeffrey & Co.'s own range, so the firm was adapting a stock ground it already knew for Morris's design.

Vine also left a second, quieter legacy. Willow, issued in the same year, is a simple pattern derived from the backprint of Vine, the impression left by the printing blocks on the reverse of the paper. That reversal of a working byproduct into a design in its own right is documented by the V&A, and Willow has its own page on this site.

No reissues of Vine after the gold crape-embossed version are documented in the evidence checked for this page.

The specimens and their pattern book

Two Vine wallpaper specimens are held by the V&A, under museum numbers O16974 and O248535. Both belong to a pattern book the museum calls Volume 1, which contains 25 Morris & Co. patterns from 1862 onwards, under the reference E.441-529-1919.

The specimens carry their own working record. Each is inscribed on the back in ink with its title, number and price, which is how the firm's own stock information survives on the objects themselves.

The pattern book context is useful for dating by association. A volume gathering 25 Morris & Co. patterns from 1862 onwards places Vine among the firm's early wallpaper output, alongside designs of the 1860s and 1870s rather than the later Merton Abbey period.

Vine and the Acanthus and Vine tapestry

A tapestry titled Acanthus and Vine connects the wallpaper name to Morris's first venture into weaving. According to the V&A, the Acanthus and Vine tapestry was Morris's first attempt at tapestry weaving; he began it on 10 May, 1877 at Kelmscott House and finished it on 17 September after more than 500 hours of work.

The V&A holds a cartoon for the Acanthus and Vine tapestry, museum number O89229, in pencil and watercolour on paper, dated 1879. The same record notes that Morris drew the original design for the tapestry, also in the collection as E.45-1940, but that the cartoon may have been drawn in the Morris & Co. studio rather than by Morris himself.

The record is not tidy here, and it is better to say so than to smooth it over. A separate V&A listing gives a cartoon for the Acanthus and Vine tapestry, designed by William Morris, made by Morris & Co., 1879, England, under museum no. E.3472-1932, which conflicts with the O89229 number given above. The dates also sit awkwardly: the weaving is said to have begun in 1877, while the cartoon is dated 1879, and the museum's own excerpt notes the tension. Whether these records describe one cartoon or two, and how the dates reconcile, cannot be settled from the evidence checked.

What can be said with confidence, on the V&A's account, is that the tapestry was Morris's own first weaving, begun at Kelmscott House in 1877. The relationship between the wallpaper design and the tapestry subject beyond the shared name is not spelled out in the record.

Open questions the record leaves

The V&A's Vine page includes the start of a sentence stating that seven years afterwards, Morris asked in his publication, but the excerpt is cut off before the statement completes. Because the sentence breaks off, no verbatim Morris quotation about Vine can be given here, and nothing about what he asked or where can be established.

Two other gaps are worth naming. No registration date for Vine appears in the V&A record, which gives only the 1873 primary date and the 1874 first issue. And no source by any scholar beyond the V&A itself was present in the evidence checked, so no independent view on the attribution can be reported on this page.

Where Vine sits in Morris's wallpaper work

The Volume 1 pattern book, with its 25 Morris & Co. patterns from 1862 onwards, is the clearest frame for Vine's place in the firm's history. It belongs to the first decades of wallpaper production, the years when, according to the V&A, the firm's papers were printed by Jeffrey & Co. and sold under the Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. and then Morris & Co. names.

Within that run, Vine pairs naturally with other early foliate papers. The full Morris wallpaper list sets it against the designs that came before and after, and the profiles of Acanthus in detail and the story of Fruit cover two contemporaries with their own documented histories. Willow, the pattern the V&A describes as derived from Vine's backprint and issued in the same year, completes the group.

For readers who want to see how a single pattern carries a whole period, Daisy is a useful comparison: an earlier paper, differently composed, from the same pattern book era.