William Morris's Willow Wallpaper Explained

Willow at a glance: designer, dates and technique

The clearest starting point is the object record. The V&A holds a specimen of Willow Bough wallpaper, a foliate pattern of intertwined willow leaves, green on pale-blue ground, museum number O78227. According to the V&A record for that specimen, William Morris was the designer, the wallpaper was produced in 1887, and it was printed by Jeffrey & Co. for Morris & Co. and first issued in 1887. The Met, for its part, holds a wallpaper titled Willow, designer William Morris, dated 1874, and a wallpaper titled Willow Bough dated 1887, both recorded as block-printed.

Those dates do not agree, and it would be misleading to smooth them over. A V&A wallpaper design article dates Willow to 1874, matching the Met's record, while the V&A's own object record for Willow Bough gives 1887. The relationship between the 1874 and 1887 datings is left open throughout this page, because the supplied records do not resolve it.

What the pattern shows

The V&A describes its Willow Bough specimen O78227 as a foliate pattern of intertwined willow leaves, printed green on a pale-blue ground. That is the extent of the securely described imagery: the records supplied mention willow leaves and no other motifs. Any fuller reading of the pattern would go beyond the evidence, so it is left out here.

A second V&A specimen, museum number O248728, shows the same design with a white background colourway, again dated 1887 and attributed to William Morris as designer. Comparing the two specimens gives a direct sense of how the pattern changes with its ground: the green leaves sit against pale blue in one and against white in the other.

The V&A states more generally that Morris's wallpaper designs centre on plant-based forms and are stylised evocations of natural forms rather than literal transcriptions. That framing helps explain why a pattern of leaves can carry a whole design, but it is a description of Morris's wallpaper work as a whole, not a documented comment on Willow itself.

One design or two? The dating question

The dating conflict is the main research problem around Willow, and it is worth setting out the positions side by side.

Read plainly, the records show an 1874 wallpaper called Willow and an 1887 wallpaper called Willow Bough, both attributed to Morris, alongside V&A specimens of Willow Bough dated 1887. Whether the 1874 Willow and the 1887 Willow Bough are the same design reissued under a new title, or two distinct designs, is not established by the evidence supplied. Neither the Met records nor the V&A records given here state a connection, so none should be assumed.

A separate small discrepancy concerns where the wallpaper was made. The V&A gives the place of production for O78227 as London, while for O248728 it gives England. The difference is minor but it is a reminder that the two specimens are catalogued as distinct objects.

Who designed it and who printed it

Attribution to William Morris is consistent across the records. The V&A record for Willow Bough O78227 gives William Morris as designer, and the museum's second specimen, O248728, carries the same attribution.

The printer is documented more narrowly. The V&A states that O78227 was printed by Jeffrey & Co. for Morris & Co., and first issued in 1887. That statement attaches to that specimen's record. The Met records supplied name no printer for either of its examples, so any printer claim for those objects would be an assumption rather than a documented fact.

This specimen-specific discipline matters because Morris & Co. designs were produced by a working firm, and the details of who printed what vary from object to object. The honest summary is that Jeffrey & Co.'s involvement is documented for one V&A specimen and not asserted for the rest.

How the wallpaper was made

The V&A states that its Willow Bough specimen was block-printed in distemper colours on paper, and the Met describes its 1887 Willow Bough in the same terms, block-printed in distemper colors. Block printing means the pattern was built up by pressing carved blocks carrying successive colours onto the paper.

Wallpaper was an early commitment for Morris's business. The Art Institute of Chicago notes that Morris made wallpaper one of the first things his new interior decorations company put into serial production in the early 1860s. By the time the Willow Bough specimen O78227 was printed in 1887, according to the V&A record for it, wallpaper had been part of the firm's output since those early years.

One documented specimen shows how the firm handled its stock. The V&A records that O78227 belongs to a pattern book called Volume 2, which contains 27 Morris & Co. items, and that the specimen is inscribed on the back in ink with title, number and price. Pattern books of this kind were working records for customers and the firm alike.

Where to see Willow: museum examples

The table lists each with what the record establishes.

The Met records supplied do not include object numbers for either of its wallpapers, so none are given here. If you want to cite the Met examples precisely, the museum's own collection records are the place to confirm those numbers. The V&A numbers, by contrast, are stated in the records above and can be quoted directly.

Willow among Morris's plant-based wallpapers

Set in the wider run of Morris's wallpapers, Willow is very much of its company. The V&A states that Morris's wallpaper designs centre on plant-based forms and are stylised evocations of natural forms rather than literal transcriptions, and a pattern of intertwined willow leaves fits that description exactly. The design takes one plant and lets it carry the entire surface.

The plant-form approach ran from the firm's earliest papers onwards.

For the complete run of papers, including the firm's better-known flower designs, the Morris wallpaper list gathers them in one place, with dates and makers where the records support them.

Related Morris designs with willow in the name

Two other Morris works carry willow in the title, and both are worth separating from the wallpaper. The first is Willow Bough itself, which has its own record and its own page: our guide to Willow Bough covers the V&A specimens, including the green on pale-blue example and the white-background version, in detail.

The second is Tulip and Willow, which is not a wallpaper at all but a block printed cotton designed by William Morris for Morris & Co., dated 1873 and held by the V&A under museum number O266146. The V&A record for the fabric states it was Morris's first design for a printed fabric, which makes it a significant object in its own right.

The firm's retail stamp survives on that cotton: the V&A records that the fabric is stamped Morris & Company 449 Oxford Street London W. It is a small detail, but it anchors the fabric to the firm's Oxford Street premises in the same way the pattern book inscription anchors the wallpaper specimen to its own working context.

Willow also stands among the firm's early papers such as Trellis, and its story is told in the story of Trellis, which covers the first years of Morris's wallpaper production. For a wider view of how individual designs fit together, the overview of famous Morris patterns is the natural next stop.