William Morris and Colour: The Natural Dyes Behind His Palette

The short answer: a revival fought for, not inherited

The V&A dates the beginning of Morris's natural dye work to 1875, when, keen to re-establish the use of natural dyes, he began working with Thomas Wardle, the owner of a dyeing works in Leek, Staffordshire. That partnership marks the first point at which his interest in vegetable dyes becomes a documented practice rather than an ambition.

Six years later the campaign reached its practical goal. The V&A records that experiments using indigo started in April 1881 at Morris's workshop in Queen Square in London, and were successfully printed after he moved into his factory at Merton Abbey, Wimbledon, in June of the same year. Owning the works mattered: dyeing experiments could finally be run in-house, on Morris's own blocks and cloths.

The result of this shift is visible in the fabrics themselves. The V&A attributes the muted or natural colouring typical of Morris's designs to the use of vegetable rather than synthetic dyes, which is the clearest single statement linking his palette to his dyeing practice.

Starting with chemical blues: Clarkson and the first printed fabrics

The baseline Morris was reacting against was chemical. According to the V&A, the first printed fabrics made by Morris's company, in 1868, were copies of 1830s white-ground chintzes, produced at Clarkson in Lancashire using blocks rather than the modern roller method. At that stage Morris's firm had no print works of its own, so outside manufacturers set the terms of production.

Morris's first actual textile design, Jasmine Trellis, made between 1868 and 1870, was shaped by those terms. The V&A notes that it was simplified to suit the palette of the mostly chemical dyes Clarkson used in its manufacturing process. In other words, the design bent to the dye, not the dye to the design. For more on how his printed, woven and embroidered fabrics fit together, see the guide to Morris textiles.

His second textile design, Tulip and Willow of 1873, fared better but still frustrated him. The V&A records that he was happier with the design although he was disappointed by the crude effect achieved with Prussian blue dye. The V&A also explains the practical reason: Morris originally commissioned Thomas Clarkson of Bannister Hall, one of the leading manufacturers of printed textiles, to print the fabric because he had no means to do it himself, and they used chemical, aniline dyestuffs. Bright chemical blue on a carefully drawn pattern was exactly the effect he did not want.

Leek, 1875: Morris and Thomas Wardle experiment with natural dyes

In 1875 Morris spent time with Thomas Wardle at his print works in Leek, Staffordshire, experimenting with natural dyes. According to the V&A, it is likely that Tulip and Willow was attempted then, which would mean the design that had disappointed him in aniline blue was revisited with vegetable dyeing in mind. The museum record says attempted, and it stops short of confirming the outcome, so the safest reading is that a natural-dye version was tried rather than proven.

Wardle's work for Morris produced at least one identifiable result. The V&A identifies Marigold, of 1875, a dense pattern that Morris also used for wallpaper, as the first textile likely to have been printed by Wardle. The design exists in both mediums, which makes it a useful marker of how the dyeing experiments fed into Morris's wider pattern work.

The blue dyes continued to bother him even at Leek. The V&A records that a letter from Morris to Wardle at the time complains yet again about the blue dyes. The full text and exact date of that letter are not established in the material used here, so its contents beyond that summary cannot be quoted. What the letter shows is persistence: four years after Tulip and Willow, the problem of blue was still live.

Merton Abbey and indigo discharge: Bird and Anemone

The technique Morris wanted was indigo discharge, a method in which the cloth is dyed with indigo and the pattern is printed onto it so that the dye is discharged, leaving the pattern in the ground colour. The V&A states that Bird and Anemone was one of three monochrome patterns designed especially by Morris to be printed by this method, which had preoccupied him since 1875. The identity of the other two patterns is not established in the records used here.

The V&A dates the breakthrough precisely: experiments using indigo for these designs started in April 1881 at the Queen Square workshop in London, and were successfully printed after Morris moved into his factory at Merton Abbey, Wimbledon, in June the same year. The sequencing matters, because it shows the method was solved by moving production, not by redesigning the pattern.

The V&A holds a Bird and Anemone example that shows the method and the natural palette together. It is a furnishing fabric, block printed cotton, British, designed by William Morris for Morris & Co., with a primary date of 1882, and its cotton ground was dyed with red madder, a natural red plant dye, with the pattern surface printed later. Here, in one object, is the natural dye campaign in material form: madder for the ground, indigo discharge for the pattern, produced at Morris's own works.

Where the record is uncertain

Several points in this history are disputed between records, and the honest answer is to set the positions side by side rather than smooth them over. The main uncertainties are listed below, each with its source.

• Production date of Bird and Anemone. The design date and the production dates do not fully agree, so 1882 should be read as the primary recorded date rather than a settled fact.
• Production date of Tulip and Willow. The V&A lists the fabric with a primary date of 1873, but a production date of 1883 also appears in its record. The design clearly dates to 1873; when the surviving cloth was printed is less certain.
• The blue dye on Tulip and Willow. One V&A account says Morris was unhappy with the crude effects of the bright blue used and identifies the dyestuffs as chemical anilines. Another V&A account says he was disappointed by the crude effect achieved with Prussian blue dye. Both accounts agree on the reaction; they differ on the dye named.
• Who wove Kennet. The V&A lists Kennet as a furnishing fabric, hand-loom jacquard-woven silk, designed by William Morris as a printed cotton in 1883 and registered on October 18th, 1883, manufactured by Merton Abbey or by an outside contractor. The same record notes it was possibly woven for Morris & Co. by the Macclesfield textile firm J. O. Nicholson. The V&A explains the context: the acquisition of Merton Abbey in 1881 enabled production to move in-house, but initially, with no facilities to weave commercial quantities of cloth, Morris relied on outside contractors. Both possibilities remain open.

None of these uncertainties overturns the main narrative. They concern dates of production and the names of contractors, points where Victorian manufacturing records are often incomplete. The pattern of the story, chemical beginnings, natural-dye experimentation at Leek, indigo discharge at Merton Abbey, is consistent across the sources.

Why the dye question matters for Morris's work

The dye evidence explains the colour character of Morris's designs. According to the V&A, his designs were usually in muted or natural colours because of the use of vegetable rather than synthetic dyes. That is a production fact with a visible consequence: the same drawing dyed with aniline blue, as on the Clarkson Tulip and Willow, looked crude to Morris, while the same kinds of forms in vegetable-dyed madder and indigo, as on Bird and Anemone, achieved the effects he wanted.

Contemporary use confirms the appeal of the finished fabric. The V&A records that in the first half of the 1880s the Earl and Countess of Carlisle, who were friends with Morris and his wife, used his richly coloured Bird and Anemone. A design printed by the indigo-discharge method at Merton Abbey found its way into the interiors of close friends, which says something about both the fabric and the social world Morris worked in.

Morris's own words on colour and craft come from his writing on design rather than on dyes specifically. These quotations concern wallpaper design, not dyeing, so they should not be presented as statements about natural dyes. They do, however, show the principle behind the whole campaign: honest materials and processes over imitation, a principle that the rejection of aniline blue and the pursuit of indigo discharge both served. The same honesty of construction runs through Morris's pattern structure, where the flat repeat is built to work with the printing process rather than against it.

That is the practical meaning of Morris's natural dyes. They were not a decorative preference but the condition under which his designs worked as he intended. The dates to hold on to are 1875, when the Wardle experiments began, and 1881, when Merton Abbey made the method his own.