Cartoon design for ‘Medway’ printed cotton

Details

Date: 1885
Dimensions: 129.5 x 101.5
Object Type: design
Material: pencil and watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: A38
Artist: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1940

Pattern of red and white tulips and red tulips on winding stems against a blue background of interweaving sprays of delicate flowers, stems and leaves on white ground. This design was drawn by Morris as a pattern for cotton and linen. A related working drawing for this design is also in the collection (BlA453) and is annotated with instructions to block cutters. The design for Medway was also reused for wallpaper called ‘Garden Tulip’. The original design for ‘Garden Tulip’ is in Birmingham City Art Gallery (Inv. no: 1941p412).

Details

Date: 1881
Dimensions: 97.5 x 57
Object Type: design
Material: ink and watercolour
Catalogue number: A240
Illustrator: Morris, William, 1834, 1896

This large illustration is one of 17 (See A234-A242) used by William Morris to illustrate his lecture ‘Some Hints on Pattern Designing’ given at the Working Men’s College, London on 10 December 1881. The patterns derive mainly from plates illustrating similar motifs in the Egyption section of Owen Jones ‘Grammer of Ornament’. This particulalar illustration is a close copy of a similar motif in Jones’ ‘Grammer of Ornament’ from the Assyrian and Persian Art Section, pl.XII no 14.

Details

Date: 1881
Dimensions: 67 x 77.7
Object Type: design
Material: ink and watercolour
Catalogue number: A237
Illustrator: Morris, William, 1834, 1896

This large illustration is one of 17 (See A234-A242) used by William Morris to illustrate his lecture ‘Some Hints on Pattern Designing’ given at the Working Men’s College, London on 10 December 1881. The patterns derive mainly from plates illustrating similar motifs in the Egyption section of Owen Jones ‘Grammer of Ornament’. In fact this particulalr illustration is a close copy of a similar motif in Jones’ ‘Grammer of Ornament’ from the Egyptian Section, pl.IV no 16.

Details

Date: designed 1884, printed before 1940
Dimensions: 91.4 x 55.9
Object Type: wallpaper
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: B34b
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Manufacturer: Jeffrey & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs Edward Unwin, 1956

William Morris frequently used tulips in his design for fabric and wallpaper. Here the small wild tulips form a mid ground with a foreground of ribbons of larger peonies intertwining with scrolling stems. Morris’s daughter May wrote how the character of this design was ‘all “Kelmscott” to me: the peony and the wild tulip are two of the richest blossomings of the spring garden at the Manor”. Kelmscott Manor was the Morris family’s country home in Oxfordshire.

Morris registered the design for ‘Wild Tulip’ wallpaper on 21st November 1884. The repeat is 64.8 x 26.7. This example in orange is printed down the right edge ‘MORRIS & Co Ltd REGISTERED No 175’ and pencilled in the right margin: ‘Wild Tulip 162 (price) 8/6’. Number 162 is the Morris & Co. colourway number for the salmon pink version of this wallpaper, other colourways were also available.

Details

Date: 1896
Dimensions: 24.4 x 15.5
Object Type: photograph
Catalogue number: P897
Photographer: Walker | Emery | 1851 | 1933
Credit notes: Gift of Dorothy Walker

This photograph depicts the the Morris’s dining room at Kelmscott House in 1896, photographed by Morris’s friend and neighbour Emery Walker. A large seventeenth-century Iranian ‘vase’ carpet from Kerman hangs from the wall, now in the V&A. In front is an Italian cypress chest (now in the Fitzwilliam) laid out with various decorative items, including two nineteenth century Iranian brass incense burners in the shape of peacocks (now at Kelmscott Manor), two brass plates leaning against the wall, two Hispano-moresque plates lying flat, two brass candlesticks and a large Iranian lidded metal bowl in between.

The photograph was given to the Gallery by Dorothy Walker, Emery Walker’s daughter.

Details

Date: 1929
Dimensions: 26 x 18.5 x 1 cm
Object Type: book
Catalogue number: K936
Author: Image, Selwyn, 1849, 1930
Publisher: Sanders Philips & Co, The Baynard Press
Credit notes: Gift of Eleanor Pugh, 1963

Small 4to, quarter cloth with blue paper boards, inscription ‘A.H. Mackmurdo from S.I. Decr 15. 1929.’ on free front endpaper, hand numbered ‘4’, 22 collotype illustration plates.

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