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Was William Morris the Forefather of Grandmillennial Style? These Morris & Co. Patterns Make the Case

The company’s release of archival patterns—plus a new, animal-inspired design—reminds us why the British artist remains a go-to
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Coinciding with the relaunch of 100-plus fabrics and wallpapers, Morris & Co. is debuting Owl & Willow, a mural-like wallpaper panel that incorporates many of Morris’s chief inspirations.Photo courtesy of Morris & Co.

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Grandmillennials and Neo-Victorians, rejoice. In celebration of its 160th anniversary and the reintroduction of more than 100 archival designs, Morris & Co. is proving once again why its verdant, intricate creations have been designers’ mainstays for more than a century.

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“William Morris didn’t follow fashion, so his work—and the broader work of those who designed for Morris & Co.—was informed by a combination of the study of historical examples: the belief in expressing beauty through the signature of the individual artist, and faith in the transformative power of the making process,” Morris & Co.’s archivist Keren Protheroe tells AD PRO.

The high priest of handcraft and British heritage design, Morris evaded trends yet remained at the forefront of technical innovation. “Morris loved the visible print mark of a wooden printing block and the textural qualities of vegetable-dyed cloth,” notes Protheroe. “Pattern meeting pigment meeting substrate, each element adding a layer of narrative and resonance to the product.” Original patterns are, therefore, recolored to suit the current generation but are otherwise unchanged.

Illustrating the designs’ timelessness, the company’s anniversary collection relaunches a whopping 42 fabrics and 67 wallpapers. Making its debut is Owl & Willow, a mural-like wallpaper panel that encompasses many of Morris’s chief inspirations, namely medieval tapestries, animals at play, and natural scenes evoking the gardens and English countryside that surrounded him.

Below, Protheroe shares the eight designs that have come to define Morris & Co., plus some of the storied destinations where one can find them.

Strawberry Thief (1883) by Morris & Co.

Photo courtesy of Morris & Co.

Trellis (1864) by Morris & Co.

Photo courtesy of Morris & Co.

Strawberry Thief (1883)

“Who can’t relate to Morris’s half-vexed, half-charmed, and visually compelling retort to the mischievous thrushes he caught stealing strawberries from his garden in Oxfordshire? Before Morris, manufacturers prided themselves on creating ever more complex chemical colors to create highly naturalistic floral patterns on cloth. The hours Morris spent working with the Macclesfield silk dyer Thomas Wardle to perfect the indigo vat-dyeing process were rewarded in the production of this three-colored best-seller—Strawberry Thief was the first Morris textile to include yellow and red.”

Trellis (1864)

“The first-ever designed Morris wallpaper, though not the first to be put into production. Inspired by the trellis in the garden at Red House in Bexleyheath, it’s an early and essential example of Morris’s ability to represent the natural world as buzzing with life, organically flowing but never sentimental.”

Pimpernel (1876) by Morris & Co.

Photo courtesy of Morris & Co.

Willow Boughs (1887) by Morris & Co.

Photo courtesy of Morris & Co.

Pimpernel (1876)

“Tiny pimpernel flowers punctuate a pattern of giant flower heads. The blue colorway (as opposed to the yellow alternative) furnished William Morris’s own dining room at Kelmscott House on the north bank of the Thames at Hammersmith in London. Today one of the best-selling Morris & Co. wallpapers is made using a technique to re-create the block-printed mark of the original.”

Willow Boughs (1887)

“‘A keenly observed rendering of our willows that has embowered many a London living room,’ said May Morris when she described this much-loved Morris wallpaper in a 1930s letter to a friend. Said to be influenced by a father and daughter strolling along the banks of the River Thames, and today vibrantly recolored as part of the Pentreath collection.”

Acanthus (1875) by Morris & Co.

Photo courtesy of Morris & Co.

Golden Lily (1899) by Morris & Co.

Photo courtesy Morris & Co.

Acanthus (1875)

“The big repeat wallpaper that looks great in small rooms. It was first printed in shades of brown and red in the year that Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. was reconfigured with Morris alone at the helm and renamed Morris & Co. Today it can be found in one of the guest bedrooms at Wightwick Manor, one of Morris & Co.’s most interesting commissions. Built in 1887 for Theodore Mander, a Wolverhampton industrialist (in paint and varnish) and his Canadian wife Flora, both of whom had a great love of the finer arts.”

Golden Lily (c. 1899 and then 1964)

“Designed by William Morris’s protégé, John Henry Dearle, who originally trained as a tapestry weaver at Morris’s Merton Abbey workshop, later creating wallpaper and textile designs that rivaled Morris’s own work. There are two 19th-century versions of Golden Lily, one with a spotted ground and flowery infills, the other with color-block flowers and linear details. In London’s youthquake of the 1960s, a fashion for ornate Victoriana captured the counterculture imagination. There is a famous photograph of Beatle George Harrison sporting a stylish Golden Lily jacket.”

The Brook (2015) by Morris & Co.

Photo courtesy Morris & Co.

Honeysuckle & Tulip (1876) by Morris & Co.

Photo courtesy of Morris & Co.

The Brook (2015, based on an 1891 original)

“If you visit William Morris’s Oxfordshire home, Kelmscott Manor, you can see his first attempt at a woven tapestry. Finished in 1879, it is a remarkable achievement given the exceptional difficulty of mastering what Morris termed ‘the noblest of all weaving arts.’ The Brook is an adaptation by Morris & Co. designer Alison Gee of a much later set of tapestry panels. It is based on the Holy Grail tapestries that were woven at Morris’s Merton Abbey Mills workshop between 1891 and 1894 for an important commission at Stanmore Hall. The verdure panels capture a familiar medieval scene of deer grazing in the forest.”

Honeysuckle & Tulip (1876)

“Many of Morris & Co.’s clients were aristocratic and used to having silks rather than wallpapers to adorn their walls. Richly embossed papers, woven and printed silks, and stamped velvets offered sensory alternatives to Morris’s thickly pigmented papers. Given that Morris perfected the art of vegetable dyeing with Macclesfield silk weavers, it’s no surprise that Honeysuckle, one of Morris’s earliest printed textiles, was created as a printed silk, a linen, and a velveteen. An alternative Morris & Co. velvet was used to line a first-class cabin on the Titanic.