William Morris's Willow Bough Wallpaper Explained

Willow Bough at a glance

The documented record for Willow Bough is short but firm. The V&A's entry for the specimen O248728 gives William Morris as designer, a production date of 1887, place of production England, and a technique of block-printing in distemper colours on paper.

The same record names the commercial chain behind the paper: it was designed by William Morris and printed by Jeffrey & Co. for Morris & Co., and the V&A dates its first issue to 1887. Because these details come from a single museum record, they are attributed to the V&A here rather than presented as universal facts.

Two things the records do not give are worth flagging at the outset. No registration date for the design appears in the evidence, and no documented statement by Morris about Willow Bough specifically is available. The sections below return to both gaps.

What the pattern shows: intertwined willow leaves

The V&A describes the specimen O248728 as a foliate pattern of intertwined willow leaves on a white background. That is the secure visual description: slender leaves, crossing and interlacing, filling the ground without flowers, birds or other motifs. No further plant species are identified in the records consulted here.

A second V&A specimen, O78227, shows the design in a different colouring: green leaves on a pale-blue ground. Between the white-ground example and this green-and-blue one, the pattern clearly travelled across colourways within its documented life.

On how to read the plant forms generally, the V&A notes that Morris's wallpaper designs centre on plant-based forms based on close observation of nature, but that these are stylised evocations rather than literal transcriptions. Applied to Willow Bough, that means the willow leaves should be read as observed and then redrawn for a flat repeating surface, not as a botanical plate. No symbolic meaning for the pattern is stated in the records, so none is offered here.

Design date and first issue, 1887

The date evidence for Willow Bough rests on the V&A record for O248728. That record gives a production date of 1887 and states that the paper was first issued in 1887. Both dates come from the same source, and both are attributed to the V&A.

What the records do not resolve is the relationship between designing and issuing. No registration date for the Willow Bough design is available, so it is not possible to say from the evidence whether Morris drew the pattern in 1887 itself or earlier, with the first issue following later. The honest position is that 1887 is documented as the production and first-issue date, and nothing more precise is established.

The Met's record for its Willow Bough sheet also carries the date 1887, which agrees with the V&A's dating. Two institutions independently giving the same year is the strongest date evidence this design has.

Who made it: Morris, Morris & Co. and Jeffrey & Co.

Attribution for Willow Bough is straightforward in the primary record: the V&A states that the specimen O248728 was designed by William Morris and printed by Jeffrey & Co. for Morris & Co. That splits the work the way the firm usually did, with the design credited to Morris and the physical printing carried out by a commercial block printer under contract.

It matters that the Jeffrey & Co. attribution is stated only in the record for O248728. The other V&A specimens and the Met sheet do not carry printer information in the records consulted here. That does not weaken the attribution; it simply means the printing detail rests on one documented source.

No maker other than Jeffrey & Co. is named in the museum records used here. If a source elsewhere claims a second manufacturer, it goes beyond what those records state.

How Willow Bough was printed

Both museum records agree on the technique. The V&A describes O248728 and O78227 as block-printed in distemper colours on paper, and the Met describes its Willow Bough sheet the same way. Distemper colours, pigment bound with glue and applied to paper by hand-carved printing blocks, were the standard method for Morris & Co. wallpapers of this kind.

The V&A adds context about what block-printing meant for Morris's papers more generally. In the period when the firm's mature wallpapers were produced, the designs required a complex printing technique involving a large number of individual printing blocks, which made them more costly than his earlier, simpler designs. Each colour in a pattern needed its own block, and each block had to be pressed in register across the full width of the paper.

No block count, no named block cutter and no printing-run details survive for Willow Bough in the records used here. The technique is documented; the workshop specifics are not.

Willow Bough in Morris's wallpaper work

The V&A places Morris's peak as a wallpaper designer in the 1870s, stating that he really mastered designing for wallpaper in that decade and created many of his most enduring designs there. Willow Bough of 1887 comes after that peak, in the last period of Morris's own lifetime of pattern-making.

The V&A also records a shift in the firm's priorities: 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. A wallpaper issued in 1887 therefore belongs to a phase when the firm's wallpapers were no longer the driving project they had been a decade earlier.

One more point from the V&A rounds out the picture. Morris described wallpaper as a makeshift decoration and preferred woven textile hangings for the walls of his own home. That judgement did not stop him designing papers, or stop Morris & Co. selling them, but it is a useful corrective to any assumption that wallpaper sat at the top of his own hierarchy of wall decoration.

Surviving examples in museum collections

Four documented specimens of Willow Bough can be cited. Three are at the V&A and one is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Each is listed below with the details its own record provides.

The Volume 2 pattern book is the most informative of the V&A holdings, because it keeps O248728 in the company the paper was originally sold in: a bound set of 27 Morris & Co. patterns. The O78227 specimen is the most telling about trade practice, since its ink inscription on the back records title, number and price, the way a stock sheet would be marked. The price value itself is not given in the record.

Willow and Willow Bough: two different designs

The titles cause confusion, so it is worth separating them. The Metropolitan Museum of Art also holds a wallpaper titled Willow, with William Morris recorded as designer, dated 1874 and block-printed, on a sheet measuring 25 3/4 x 17 13/16 in. That is an earlier design from a different period than Willow Bough of 1887.

Whether the Met's Willow of 1874 is the same design as Willow Bough or a distinct pattern is not resolved in the records consulted here. What the dates alone establish is that two willow-titled Morris wallpapers existed thirteen years apart. For a fuller treatment of the earlier design and the differences between them, there is a dedicated comparison of [Willow vs Willow Bough](L5), and a page on [Willow](L6) in Morris's work more broadly.

The practical point for anyone cataloguing or buying: a willow-leaf Morris wallpaper dated 1874 is Willow, and one dated 1887 is Willow Bough. Checking the date against the museum records settles most cases.

What the records do not tell us

A page built from museum records should be honest about their limits. For Willow Bough, the gaps are these:

• No registration date for the design is available, so the relationship between the design date and the first issue of 1887 cannot be stated precisely.
• No documented statement by Morris specifically about Willow Bough appears in the evidence consulted.
• The attribution rests on the V&A and Met object records; no other attribution source is present in the evidence consulted.
• No plant species beyond intertwined willow leaves is identified in the records, and no later reissue information is available.
• No maker other than Jeffrey & Co. is named in the records used here.
• The price inscribed on the back of specimen O78227 is recorded as existing but its value is not given.

None of these gaps undermines the core facts. The design, the designer, the date, the printer, the technique and the surviving examples are all documented. The gaps concern the margins around those facts.