William Morris's Wild Tulip Wallpaper Explained

Wild Tulip at a glance

The table below gathers the firm facts about Wild Tulip drawn from the museum records. Where a detail rests on a single institutional record, the institution is named in the sections that follow.

One detail needs care. The V&A record for the specimen O248696 gives the production date as 1884 and also as 21/11/1884. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, both dates attach to the same object, but the relationship between the year and the precise day is not explained in the record, so this page treats 1884 as the firm date and the November day as an additional detail in that record.

What the pattern shows

The V&A describes its specimen as a floral design of tulip flowers and foliage, with diagonally running stems of larger flowers. That description is the most secure account of the pattern's structure in the records used here, and it is the one worth holding on to when looking at any impression of the design.

The diagonal movement of the stems is the feature that sets the layout. Rather than a formal grid, the larger tulips travel across the paper along opposing diagonals, with foliage filling the ground between them. Beyond this description, the records supplied do not give a fuller account of the pattern's elements, and no symbolic meaning is attached to the design in any sourced account, so none is offered here.

Who designed it and who printed it

This is the attribution this page follows, and it is an attribution resting on the museum records themselves.

It is worth being precise about what that means. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum record for O248696, the design is by William Morris, printed by Jeffrey & Co. for Morris & Co. The evidence here consists of the designer fields in the two museum records. There is no documented statement by Morris himself about Wild Tulip in the sources used for this page, and no source in the evidence attributes the design to another hand such as John Henry Dearle. The plain position is that the museums record Morris as designer, and nothing more specific about authorship can be added.

Jeffrey & Co. is the printer named for the design. The same firm appears in the V&A's records for other Morris wallpapers of the period, including Sunflower, recorded as manufactured and printed by Jeffrey & Co. in 1879, and Larkspur, recorded as manufactured by the firm in 1874. What the records for Wild Tulip do not say is where the printing took place or how the work was organised between the printer and Morris & Co., so those questions remain open.

Where Wild Tulip sits in Morris's wallpaper work

According to the V&A, the first paper Morris designed was Trellis in 1862, suggested by the rose trellis at Red House, Morris's home in Kent, followed by Daisy in 1864 and Fruit in 1865. The firm went on producing papers across three decades.

The V&A also records that between 1882 and Morris's death in 1896, Morris & Company issued a further 35 new wallpaper designs. Wild Tulip falls squarely inside that late run of papers. The same account notes that 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, where tapestry weaving was established when company production was consolidated there in 1881 and John Henry Dearle was appointed to manage production.

The tulip motif was not new to Morris in 1884, the year the V&A gives for Wild Tulip. The Metropolitan Museum holds a wallpaper titled Tulip with William Morris recorded as the artist, its design registered in 1875 and printed from 1877 to 1917, in cotton.

For the full run of papers, the Morris wallpaper list sets out the designs in order and gives the broader context into which Wild Tulip fits.

Surviving examples in museums

The table lists each record with its number where one exists.

The V&A's main specimen has a documented provenance. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, O248696 was given by Morris & Co. and belongs to Volume 2, a pattern book containing 27 Morris & Co. patterns under the reference E.530-608-1919. The specimen is also inscribed on the back in ink with its title, number and price, which is how its identity and commercial status were recorded at the time.

Gifts and bequests built up much of the V&A's Morris material. The museum records that on her death in 1938 May Morris bequeathed a sizeable collection of her father's work, including 30 designs for wallpaper, textiles and embroidery. The records supplied do not state that the Wild Tulip specimens came through that bequest, so the connection is not made here.

What the records do not tell us

A research page should be as clear about gaps as about facts. On the evidence used here, the following points about Wild Tulip are not established, and no reader should treat them as settled.

Points left open by the museum records:

• Whether Wild Tulip was first issued or registered in 1884, and what the 21/11/1884 date in the V&A record marks in relation to the production year.
• Whether Morris wrote or said anything about Wild Tulip. No documented statement by Morris about this design appears in the evidence.
• Whether the attribution to Morris rests on anything beyond the designer fields in the museum records. The V&A record for O248696 names William Morris as designer and Jeffrey & Co. as printer for Morris & Co., and no source here attributes the design to another hand.
• Where the wallpaper was printed. Jeffrey & Co. is named as printer in the V&A record, but the records do not say at which works, or whether any printing happened at Merton Abbey.
• Whether any later reissues of Wild Tulip exist, and if so by whom they were produced. The records supplied document none.
• The Metropolitan object number.
• A full description of the pattern beyond the V&A's brief account of tulip flowers and foliage on diagonally running stems.

None of these gaps undermines what is documented. They simply mark the boundary of the evidence, which is the honest place for a catalogue-style account to stop.

Morris's other tulip designs

Tulips recur across Morris's design work, and the museum records here touch on three wallpaper names that carry the flower: Tulip, Garden Tulip and Wild Tulip. The Met's Tulip is the earliest of the three on paper, with a design registration in 1875, while Wild Tulip follows in 1884.

The flower also appears in Morris's textiles. Tulip and Willow of 1873 was, according to the V&A, Morris's second textile design, and he was disappointed by the crude effect achieved with Prussian blue dye. Tulip and Rose, the first dateable design by Morris for a woven furnishing textile, was registered in 1876. The Tulip and Willow chintz has its own page for readers who want that history in full.

Related wallpapers are covered separately too.