Golden Lily Minor, Sanderson reprint

Details

Date: 1892
Dimensions: 37.7 x 125.7
Object Type: textile
Material: silk
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F320
Designer: Jack, George Washington Henry (1855 - 1931)
Maker: Jack, Annie Christian (1861 - 1942)
Credit notes: Presented by Miss J Jack and Miss M Jack, 1972

This embroidery, stitched by Annie Christian Jack and designed by her husband George Jack, has a folk-art quality. The design shows the main characters from William Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. The dancing figure of Oberon (left) bears an uncanny resemblance to William Morris. Titiana and Puck are to the right. Below is the inscription “Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight”.

The panel was designed as a piano frontal and is worked in split stitch, stem stitch, herringbone, long and short stitches, cross-bar with small diagonal stitches infilled with satin stitch, single chain stitch; metal beads used for Titania’s crown and blanket Stitch.

A very similar embroidery appears also as a bolster cover at Wightwick Manor, National Trust.

Details

Date: early 1860s
Dimensions: 185.5 x 66.3
Object Type: textile
Material: wool on linen
Technique: embroidery
Catalogue number: F390ii
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance of the MGC/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 1997

This embroidered hanging was designed by William Morris and probably hung in his first home, Red House in Bexleyheath. It was most likely stitched by a small team that may have included Morris’s wife Jane and her sister Elizabeth Burden. In the early days of their marriage Morris and Jane often worked on embroideries together. They enjoyed unpicking old pieces of embroidery that they admired to learn the different stitching techniques. Morris’s enthusiasm for medieval art is clear in his early embroidery designs, such as this one. The tree, banner and bird motif was inspired by an illustration in a fifteenth-century manuscript that he had been studying in the British Museum. The French inscription, ‘Qui Bien Aime Tard Oublie’, translates as ‘who loves best forgets slowly’ and is taken from Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem ‘Parliament of Fowls’. It simple terms it means ‘one never forgets true love’.

The embroidery was one of a set of identical hangings installed at Penkill Castle in Ayrshire, Scotland by the late 1860s. The castle belonged to Alice Boyd, mistress of the painter William Bell Scott, who was closely connected to Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite circle. In a letter to Boyd in 1868, Rossetti referrers to the embroideries as “the Topsaic tapestries” a reference to Morris’s nickname ‘Topsy’. The hangings were likely an early product produced by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co after it was founded in 1861. A very similar pattern can be seen on the hanging in the background of William Morris’s only easel painting, ‘La Belle Iseult’, painted in 1858.

Details

Date: early 1860s
Dimensions: 185.5 x 127.5
Object Type: textile
Material: wool on linen
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F390i
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance of the MGC/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 1997

This embroidered hanging was designed by William Morris and probably hung in his first home, Red House in Bexleyheath. It was most likely stitched by a small team that may have included Morris’s wife Jane and her sister Elizabeth Burden. In the early days of their marriage Morris and Jane often worked on embroideries together. They enjoyed unpicking old pieces of embroidery that they admired to learn the different stitching techniques. Morris’s enthusiasm for medieval art is clear in his early embroidery designs, such as this one. The tree, banner and bird motif was inspired by an illustration in a fifteenth-century manuscript that he had been studying in the British Museum. The French inscription, ‘Qui Bien Aime Tard Oublie’, translates as ‘who loves best forgets slowly’ and is taken from Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem ‘Parliament of Fowls’. In simple terms it means ‘one never forgets true love’.

Details

Date: designed 1883
Dimensions: 106 x 99.7
Object Type: textile
Material: printed cotton
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: F306
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Presented by Whitworth Art Gallery, 1969

This fragment of ‘Borage’ in green on natural ground, designed by William Morris, was given to the Whitoworth Gallery, Manchester by the firm Wardle and Co. and later transferred to the William Morris Gallery. Thomas Wardle was a master dyer who worked with Morris to perfect the dyes used for his textiles, his firm also manufactured Morris & Co. textiles before Morris moved his production in-house to Merton Abbey in 1881. This pattern was designed in 1883 and thefore post-dates Wardle & Co’s period of production for Morris & Co.

Details

Date: designed 1883
Dimensions: 22.9 x 19
Object Type: textile
Material: printed cotton
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: F305
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Whitworth Art Gallery, 1969

This fragment of ‘Borage’, designed by William Morris, was given to the Whitoworth Gallery, Manchester by the firm Wardle and Co. and later transferred to the William Morris Gallery. Thomas Wardle was a master dyer who worked with Morris to perfect the dyes used for his textiles, his firm also manufactured Morris & Co. textiles before Morris moved his production in-house to Merton Abbey in 1881. This pattern was designed in 1883 and thefore post-dates Wardle & Co’s period of production for Morris & Co.

Details

Date: designed 1883
Dimensions: 22.9 x 88.3
Object Type: textile
Material: cotton
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: F303
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Presented by Whitworth Art Gallery, 1969

This fragment of ‘Borage’, designed by William Morris, was given to the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester by the firm Wardle and Co. and later transferred to the William Morris Gallery. Thomas Wardle was a master dyer who worked with Morris to perfect the dyes used for his textiles, his firm also manufactured Morris & Co. textiles before Morris moved his production in-house to Merton Abbey in 1881. This pattern was designed in 1883 and thefore post-dates Wardle & Co’s period of production for Morris & Co. This example is overprinted with a number, possibly the pattern number 720/8605 and a date 19-6-24.

Details

Date: designed 1883
Dimensions: 21 x 62.2
Object Type: textile
Material: cotton
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: F302
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Whitworth Art Gallery, 1969

This fragment of ‘Borage’, designed by William Morris, was one of a number of examples given to the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester by the firm Wardle and Co. and later transferred to the William Morris Gallery in 1969. Thomas Wardle was a master dyer who worked with Morris to perfect the dyes used for his textiles, his firm also manufactured Morris & Co. textiles before Morris moved his production in-house to Merton Abbey in 1881. This pattern was designed in 1883 and thefore post-dates Wardle & Co’s period of production for Morris & Co.

Details

Date: design reg 5 October 1875, manufactured c.1875-81
Dimensions: 49.5 x 37.5
Object Type: textile
Material: cotton
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: F296
Attributed designer: Faulkner, Kate
Manufacturer: Wardle and Co. (1872 - 1908)
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Whitworth Art Gallery, 1969

This fragment of ‘Carnation’ printed cotton was in the collection of Thomas Wardle, a master dyer who manufactured Morris & Co. textiles before William Morris moved production in-house to his factory Merton Abbey, Surrey. The pattern was designed by Kate Faulkner. The partial stamp of Morris & Co., 26 Queens Square, Bloomsbury is visible on the selvedge.

Details

Date: 1960s
Object Type: textile
Material: cotton
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: F271d
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Miss Frances J Lefroy bequest, 1965

Powdered was designed by William Morris as a wallaper in 1874. It was later adapted as a fabric c.1902. It takes it name from the relatively informal arrangement of meadow flower sprigs- unconnected by a linking devices- over the surface of the paper. Among the six flowers featured, rose, speedwell, pansy and cornflower have been identified.

Powdered is one of several mid-1870s designs featuring willow foliage, a favourite motif which Morris drew with endless inventiveness.

Details

Date: 1874-1876
Dimensions: 86.3 x 628.7
Object Type: textile
Material: wool on linen
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F140c
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Maker: Johnson, Florence
Maker: Bell, Margaret (1820 - 1886)
Credit notes: Presented by Sir Hugh Bell, Bart., 1953

This embroidery was part of a frieze of five parts commissioned by Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell and his wife Margaret for the dining room of Rounton Grange, Northallerton, Yorkshire. The panels depict the story of The Romaunt of the Rose by Geoffrey Chaucer and were based on original pictures drawn by Edward Burne-Jones c.1874-76 (see D187). The exquisite embroidery was executed by the wife and daughter of Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, Margaret Bell and Florence Johnson, respectively.

Object Type: textile

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