This is the only repeating pattern designed by William Morris in collaboration with Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones. Burne-Jones’s work record for 1875 lists his drawings of the two mermaids, which were incorporated in Morris’s designs of scrolling foliage and flower-heads. Although the fabric was never woven, both Morris and Burne-Jones made use of the design for other works; the background pattern became the ‘Wreath’ wallpaper of 1876 and the mermaid figures were adapted by Burne-Jones for both gesso panels and paintings in the 1880s. The uppermost of the two mermaids – the one holding two fishes – is a re-working of Burne-Jones’s painting “The Sea Nymph’ (1878-1881). The design may have been intended to decorate the room in Burne-Jones’s house at Rotingdean which he furnished as a tavern nicknamed ‘The Merry Mermaid’. See also a pencil version, WMG A32a.
