William Morris and William De Morgan met in 1863 and there was a large degree of overlap in their design, production and sale processes. The Firm sold products of its own design and also those by De Morgan; by the 1880s De Morgan was the main supplier to the Morris shop. Despite Morris’s belief in the integrity of all stages of the design process, this pattern was created by De Morgan on an unmarked white ‘blank’, imported from the Netherlands. The sunflower’s central pistil shows De Morgan’s interest in geometry, with the repeating diamond shapes creating a sense of curvature and depth. Variations on this design were also produced in dark red and blue.
