Morris's Three Tulip Designs Compared: Tulip, Garden Tulip and Wild Tulip

The quick difference: chintz, cotton and wallpaper

The clearest difference is medium and date. Tulip and Willow is a furnishing fabric of block-printed cotton, dated 1873 in the Victoria and Albert Museum's record, which holds it under museum number O78104. Tulip is a printed cotton in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the design registered in 1875 and printing running from 1877 to 1917 under accession number 30.95.44.

Wild Tulip is the wallpaper of the group. The V&A holds a specimen, O248696, dated 1884, designed by William Morris and printed by Jeffrey & Co. for Morris & Co. The Met holds the same design as a wallpaper sheet block-printed in distemper colors, accession number 23.163.4f, also dated 1884.

If you want the full making history of the 1873 cotton, there is a dedicated page with more on Tulip and Willow, and the 1875 registered cotton has its own account at the story of Tulip.

Side by side: the three designs in museum records

The table below keeps to what the two museum records state. Where a cell depends on a single institutional source, that source is named in the surrounding text.

Tulip and Willow: the printing story

Tulip and Willow has the best documented making history of the three. According to the V&A, Morris commissioned Thomas Clarkson of Bannister Hall to print the cotton because he had no means to print it himself. Bannister Hall used chemical, aniline dyestuffs, and Morris was unhappy with the crude effects of the bright blue used.

The V&A records that in 1875 Morris spent time with Thomas Wardle at his print works in Leek, Staffordshire, experimenting with natural dyes, and that it is likely Tulip and Willow was attempted then. The original watercolour design for the fabric is in the collection of the City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham.

A V&A example of the fabric, O266146, carries a maker's stamp reading 'Morris & Company 449 Oxford Street London W', tying the surviving cloth to the firm's retail address. The pattern itself shows tulip flowers and willow branches.

For the fuller account of the chintz, including its place among Morris's printed textiles, see the page on Tulip and Willow chintz.

Wild Tulip: the wallpaper and its pattern book

Wild Tulip is a floral design of tulip flowers and foliage, with diagonally running stems of larger flowers and leaves, block-printed in distemper colours on paper. The V&A dates the specimen to 1884 and credits the design to William Morris, printed by Jeffrey & Co. for Morris & Co.

The V&A specimen is inscribed on the back in ink with its title, number and price, and it forms part of 'Volume 2', a pattern book containing 27 Morris & Co. patterns that was given by Morris & Co. That provenance, straight from the firm, is one reason the Wild Tulip record is unusually firm.

To see where Wild Tulip sits among the firm's paper patterns, the Morris wallpaper list gathers the designs in one place.

Where the records disagree, and what they do not say

One point of the Tulip and Willow record conflicts with itself. The V&A describes the fabric as the second textile designed by Morris, while the same museum's object history states it was Morris' first design for a printed fabric. Both statements come from the V&A, and this page does not try to settle between them.

Other gaps matter for a three-way comparison. The list below sets out what the supplied records do not establish.

Points the museum records leave open:

• No supplied evidence documents a design called Garden Tulip, so no date, maker, medium or holding can be given for it here.
• The relationship between the Met's Tulip, registered in 1875, and the V&A's Tulip and Willow of 1873 is not established by the records consulted; they may be distinct designs, but no supplied source says so.
• No verbatim quotation by William Morris on these designs is available for this page.
• The Met's record for Tulip does not describe the visual appearance of the design, so no pattern description is offered here.

If you have arrived looking for Garden Tulip, the honest position is that this page cannot source it. The dedicated Garden Tulip page carries that design's own record, and the story of Tulip covers the 1875 cotton in detail.

Which sources to trust

This comparison rests on two institutional sources: the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection records and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection records. Where a statement above depends on a single institution, it is attributed in the sentence, because a lone record is weaker than a corroborated one.

Image availability differs between the two museums. According to the Met's record, the Wild Tulip wallpaper sheet (23.163.4f) is public domain under Open Access, while the Met's Tulip cotton (30.95.44) is not marked as public domain. The V&A's Wild Tulip specimen gains strength from its provenance in 'Volume 2', the pattern book given by Morris & Co. containing 27 of the firm's patterns.

If you want to see how designs like these are presented as prints, the shop's William Morris Original Designs collection shows the range of patterns available, including several tulip scroll and leaf compositions whose exact design names are still being confirmed against museum records.