William Morris's Windrush Chintz: History and Design

Windrush at a glance

The recorded facts, as they stand in the museum records:

• Designer: William Morris, according to the V&A and the Art Institute of Chicago.
• Firm: Morris & Co., 1883, according to the V&A.
• Maker: the Merton Abbey Workshop, credited by the V&A for two of the three V&A examples.
• Technique: block printing, on linen in one V&A example and on cotton in the others.
• Type: furnishing fabric, as the V&A describes it.
• Museum numbers: O270947, O166216 and O89394 at the V&A; 1972.389 at the Art Institute of Chicago.

One field is missing from every record supplied: what the 18 October 1883 date actually marks. The records give the date without saying whether it records the design, a registration or a first issue, and this page does not guess.

What the surviving examples look like

The V&A examples differ in colourway and in the marks they carry. Example O270947 is printed in yellow, white and dark brown and carries a Morris & Co. label; it is also stamped 'Regd Morris & Company 449 Oxford Street London'. Example O166216 is printed in light blue, white and two shades of brown and carries a label. Example O89394 is printed in shades of red and is stamped 'Regd Morris & Company'.

The V&A characterises Morris's designs generally as subtle, stylised evocations of natural forms rather than literal transcriptions. That is the museum's reading of Morris's design practice, and it is the closest the supplied records come to describing Windrush's imagery.

A plain limitation follows from this. The records supplied describe colours, stamps and materials, but they do not identify the plants or motifs in the pattern. No plant list can be given here without inventing one, so the botanical content of Windrush remains unlabelled on this page.

The date on the record: design, registration or first issue?

All three V&A records carry the primary date 18/10/1883. None of the records states which event that date marks. It could be a design date, a registration date or a first issue date, and the material supplied does not settle the question.

The V&A gives a production date range of 1883 to 1919 for two of its examples, O270947 and O166216. Together these two museum records show that the pattern was still being printed decades after its first recorded date.

What the records do not give is any detail about later reissues: who authorised them, when specific printings happened, or how the pattern changed over its production life. The V&A's production range and the Art Institute of Chicago's making dates imply continued production, but no reissue details are documented in the material supplied.

Who made it: Morris, Morris & Co. and Merton Abbey

The V&A records William Morris as the designer of Windrush, and records the pattern as designed by Morris for Morris & Co. in 1883. The Art Institute of Chicago agrees, crediting William Morris (English, 1834 to 1896) as designer, with production by Morris & Co., London, and Merton Abbey, London credited. It is fair to note that the V&A is the single supplied source for the Morris attribution on the British examples, with the Art Institute of Chicago as the second, independent record.

Production context helps place the date. According to the V&A, company production was consolidated at Merton Abbey in 1881, tapestry weaving was established there, and Morris appointed John Henry Dearle to manage production. The V&A also states that from the early 1880s onwards Morris's energies were focused on the production of textiles at Merton Abbey Mills. Windrush's 1883 date falls squarely in that period.

Maker credits differ across the examples. The V&A credits the Merton Abbey Workshop as maker for O166216 and O89394, while the record for O270947 credits no workshop maker beyond Morris & Co.

Why the river name: May Morris's explanation

The records supplied contain one documented statement about the pattern's name, and it comes from May Morris, not from William Morris. As recorded by the V&A, May Morris claims the pattern was named in memory of summer journeys along the Windrush valley.

No statement by William Morris himself about Windrush appears in the records supplied. If one exists, it is not in the material behind this page, and none is quoted here.

Where to see Windrush: the recorded examples

Four examples are documented in the records behind this page, three at the V&A and one at the Art Institute of Chicago. The table sets out what each record states, including where they disagree on material.

The material discrepancy is real, not a typo. The V&A calls O270947 block printed linen and calls O166216 and O89394 block printed cotton, and the Art Institute of Chicago calls its example cotton. Whether Windrush was printed on both fibres, or whether one record is imprecise, cannot be settled from the records supplied.

What the records leave open

A short list of what cannot be said about Windrush on the current evidence, so that the gaps are as clear as the facts:

• The event behind the 18 October 1883 date. The V&A records give the date without saying whether it marks design, registration or first issue.
• The material. One V&A example is recorded as linen, the other two as cotton, and the Art Institute of Chicago example as cotton.
• Any statement by William Morris about the pattern. Only May Morris's comment on the name is documented.
• The plants and motifs in the design. The records describe colours but do not identify the botanical content.
• The printing details. Beyond block printing, the records give no account of the process, the dyers or the number of blocks used.
• The reissue history. The V&A's production range and the Art Institute of Chicago's making dates imply later production, but no reissue details are documented.

Windrush among the river chintzes

Windrush belongs to a group of Morris & Co. printed textiles named for rivers. This page sits within the river patterns, a family of chintzes that also includes Kennet, Wandle, Lodden, Cray, Wey and Lea, each covered in its own profile.

Three of those neighbours have detailed histories on this site: Kennet, the printed cotton by William Morris, Wandle in detail, and Lodden in detail. Reading them alongside Windrush shows how the river naming ran through the firm's printed textiles in the 1880s.

If you want to see how Morris's printed designs work as prints, the Original Designs collection gathers reproductions of documented patterns in print formats.