William Morris Wallpapers of the 1860s and 1870s

Illustration: William Morris. Daisy wallpaper, 1864.

William Morris's first wallpaper designs started to appear in the 1860s. They came as a slightly later edition to the textile designs. Morris himself was not a big fan of wallpaper for interiors. He much preferred the idea of using hung textile work, such as tapestry or heavy fabrics framed as panels, which he saw as more traditional for interiors than the fairly recent wallpaper industry. Another reason was the difficulty in achieving a good and faithful reproduction of initial design work. Morris was a definite perfectionist and was not prepared to take on a medium if the results were to be less than perfect.

However, he was aware of the strong Victorian interest in wallpaper for financial and hygienic reasons, and though not always a pragmatist, he could usually be encouraged to when it concerned Morris & Co. It was felt increasingly in the 1860s and 1870s, that the home should be the centre of family life, but also the centre of a healthy family life. Wallpaper was seen as a much cleaner and perhaps more importantly, cheaper alternative to heavy dust laden tapestries and wall hangings.

Illustration: William Morris. Pomegranate wallpaper, 1866.

Morris's first commercial wallpaper designs, as can be seen in the first two illustrations shown in this article, Daisy and Pomegranate, were very much a case of stamped motifs on a fairly simple and plain background. Some of the motifs were actually reproduced from Morris's medieval style tapestry work, usually from incidental backgrounds or lower foregrounds where they were used to fill in spaces around the more important human figures. Incidentally, most of the figures in Morris's tapestries were produced by Edward Burne-Jones, while the backgrounds were very often Morris's own.

Both Daisy and Pomegranate were produced in the mid-1860s and reflect very much the simplicity of much of Morris's early textile work. In fact, many of the designs initially produced for textiles did end up as wallpaper patterns, with very few changes in the design, if any.

Today many would see this as a great opportunity to co-ordinate both textile and wallpaper so that a room would contain only one design throughout. However, Victorians would have been puzzled by this notion and would have seen it as a clear lack of imagination. They were more than happy to have up to half a dozen different designs within the same room, so there was little problem of the same Morris design in textile and wallpaper ending up next to each other.

Illustration: William Morris. Larkspur wallpaper, 1872.

By the 1870s Morris wallpaper design work had become much more accomplished,, confident and therefore much more complex. There is very little, if any plain background to be seen, and whereas the earlier examples were largely independently stamped on to a surface, the later examples are clearly intertwined with each other, making it difficult to see any obvious motifs.

The last three designs shown, Larkspur, Pimpernel and Chrysanthemum were all produced in the 1870s. They clearly show the confidence in the design work and the medium, and are therefore much more fluid and free form than the earlier, more tentative work of the 1860s.

Illustration: William Morris. Pimpernel wallpaper, 1876.

It would be tempting to see some of the fluid and meandering flower stems, rich, full flowers and languid leaves, as an indication of the roots of Art Nouveau. While there is a certain similarity in some of Morris work, it is also firmly rooted within both the British Arts & Craft movement and the styles and fashions of the mid-Victorian design world.

What makes Morris wallpaper design work stand out from others of the same era is the intensity of the compositions. There is a real observational passion for the natural world that is missing from so much of Victorian floral derived work. To Morris, these designs could not just be interpreted as 'pretty', or 'attractive', they were much more. They were indeed part of his life's work and passion. They were a record of the British traditional rural landscape, one of nature and human in a harmonic symbiosis. The intertwining of much of his floral work could be interpreted as a framework in which we are all a part, which is one of the reasons that Morris disliked geometry as a design tool, as he interpreted it as a man-made system for trying to quantify the natural world, rather than allowing the natural world to quantify itself.

Illustration: William Morris. Chrysanthemum wallpaper, 1877.

Of Morris's numerous passions and interests and his considerable and varied output of work, he will probably be commonly remembered for his nature based design work. These wallpapers of the 1860s and 1870s reflect an achievement, in not only wallpaper design but also design in general, that has rarely been matched or bested.

Further reading links:
William Morris: Patterns & Designs (International Design Library)
Designs of William Morris (Phaidon Miniature Editions)
William Morris Full-Color Patterns and Designs (Pictorial Archives)
William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Home
William Morris and Morris & Co.
V&A Pattern: William Morris (Hardcover with CD)
News from Nowhere and Other Writings (Penguin Classics)
The well at the world's end, a tale
William Morris (Temporis)
William Morris Tree of Life 20"x20"
William Morris on Art and Socialism
William Morris: A Life for Our Time
The Essential William Morris Anthology (12 books)
V&A Pattern: William Morris: (Hardcover with CD)
William Morris and Morris & Co
"Trellis" Wallpaper Design, 1864 Giclee Poster Print by William Morris, 36x48