Tulip and Willow

Large flowers open among sweeping sprays of narrow leaves in Tulip and Willow. The blossoms catch the eye first; the foliage carries it onwards, bending around the flowers and joining one part of the pattern to the next. William Morris designed this furnishing textile in 1873. Its history extends beyond that date: an early commercially printed fabric became a design that could be printed again using the indigo techniques developed at his Merton Abbey works. ^[1]

The blue-and-ochre example illustrated here makes that combination of strong flowers and continuous movement particularly clear. Pale petals stand out against a dense blue field, while long leaves fill the spaces between them. This reproduction preserves the broad pattern well, but its cloth's exact manufacture date and museum accession have not been established. Its colours should therefore be enjoyed as those of this example, without treating them as a record of the first printing. ^[2]

Within William Morris's work, the design offers an unusually clear meeting of drawing and manufacture. It belongs to an early stage in his development of printed fabrics, yet it also survived into a later phase of production. Following that history reveals why a satisfying flower pattern and a satisfying printed colour were separate problems, and why Morris became so absorbed in the work of the dyer. ^{[1] [3]}

Flowers held together by movement

The flowers have several different kinds of presence. Some face us almost squarely, with their petals arranged around a small circular centre. Others turn sideways, opening around darker, elongated centres. The alternation prevents the cloth from looking like rows of identical floral badges. A blossom can act as a firm stopping point, then send the eye outwards along a petal or stem towards the next one. ^[2]

Fine dark strokes give the pale petals their internal structure. They gather closely near a flower's centre, lengthen across its surface and break against the more irregular outer edge. Their effect is graphic: they make the forms legible without turning the flower into a fully modelled botanical portrait. Ochre edging sharpens the pale petals against the blue, while small curling tips add a different, tighter movement beside the broad open flowers. ^[2]

The willow foliage supplies a more persistent rhythm. Long leaves taper to points and grow in closely spaced groups along arching branches. A single spray can seem almost feather-like, but the leaves repeatedly change direction as the branches bend. They make the background active without giving every small element the same prominence as the flowers. Between a broad bloom and a narrow leaf, Morris has a useful contrast of scale as well as shape. ^[2]

Stems cross the surface in long curves. In the illustrated example, pale, ochre-edged stems swing across blue branches, making it possible to follow one line briefly before another interrupts it. The layering creates depth through overlap, while the emphatic outlines keep the whole arrangement close to the surface of the cloth. Even where the foliage is busiest, the flowers remain distinct. ^[2]

Look from a flower near the centre towards its counterpart further down the cloth and the repeating organisation becomes apparent. Yet the route between them is busy enough to delay a simple count. The eye finds recognisable units, loses itself in the leaves, then recognises the flower again. That balance between recurrence and diversion gives the pattern much of its energy. It remains intelligible at a glance and offers more to follow at close range. ^[2]

The title names the principal botanical ingredients; it does not turn the design into a scene of tulips growing beneath a particular willow tree. There is no horizon, garden bed or single viewing position. Flowers and foliage have been selected for what they can do across a continuous surface. Their apparent growth belongs to the organisation of the pattern. The result rewards botanical recognition, but it also rewards looking at the intervals, crossings and changes of direction between the plants. ^[2]

An early fabric with a longer working life

The V&A places Tulip and Willow after Jasmine Trellis in Morris's early printed-textile work. Its account begins with the firm's 1868 experiments at Clarkson's in Lancashire, where older white-ground chintzes were copied by block printing. Morris subsequently worked with Thomas Wardle at Leek from 1875; the move to Merton Abbey followed in 1881. Tulip and Willow thus originated before he had his own consolidated textile workshops. ^[3]

Two accounts describe early manufacture and Morris's response to colour. The William Morris Gallery says that Clarkson's first printed Tulip and Willow with aniline dyes. The V&A specifically reports his disappointment with the effect of Prussian blue. These statements identify different aspects of the early manufacturing history: Prussian blue and aniline dyes are distinct, and neither name means indigo. They should not be compressed into one chemical explanation for every early example. ^{[1] [3]}

That distinction also preserves the work of the printer. Morris supplied the pattern, but an early cloth depended on Clarkson's production methods. Later printing at Merton Abbey belonged to another workshop setting. Describing the textile as a Morris design is accurate; imagining that he personally printed every surviving piece would obscure the skilled work through which the design became furnishing fabric. The history of Morris & Company includes these changing relationships between designing and making. ^{[1] [3]}

The William Morris Gallery's specimen, F3, provides a particularly useful point of reference. The Gallery catalogues it as linen, designed in 1873 but printed after 1883, using indigo discharge and block printing. Its date records two events separated by at least a decade. The design's survival made further manufacture possible; the later cloth is evidence of that renewed production, rather than an untouched remnant of the original experiment. ^[1]

Reading the blue through the dyer's work

Indigo discharge begins with a different idea from drawing blue flowers onto a light cloth. Colour is established in the fabric and then removed selectively to create parts of the pattern. In its account of Strawberry Thief, the Huntington describes cloth going into indigo vats before a discharge agent was applied with woodblocks. Additional colour required further preparation and treatment. This helps explain the method named in the Gallery's Tulip and Willow record. ^[4]

The distinction matters when looking at pale petals against a dark field. A light shape may be created by taking colour away, rather than by covering blue with an opaque white. A printed outline can therefore represent a controlled change in the cloth's colour, not merely a mark resting on top of it. The visible arrangement of light and dark is also an arrangement of manufacturing operations. The block thus helped determine both the shape and its contrast with the surrounding field. ^{[1] [4]}

Morris's own explanation of indigo appears in his 1893 essay Of Dyeing as an Art. He describes making indigo soluble by removing oxygen, working the fabric in the prepared vat, then exposing it to air. Oxidation restores the blue colour and makes the indigo insoluble again. Repeating the treatment builds the required depth. For a reader accustomed to imagining dyeing as putting cloth into blue liquid, this account changes the picture: the desired blue depends on a managed transformation. ^[14]

He also emphasises experience. Getting a vat to work was, in his view, especially demanding; a short verbal account could make the procedure seem easier than it was. His interest lay in a craft in which the worker had to recognise and control changing conditions. That perspective helps explain why colour could occupy so much of his attention even after a pattern had been successfully drawn. The designer's contour was only one stage in producing a convincing coloured surface. ^[14]

Morris distinguishes indigo from dyes that require a mordant, a substance used to help the colour become fixed to the fibre. In his account, madder reds and weld yellow depend on such preparation. He describes printed cotton being treated with different mordants before entering a single dye bath, so that different parts emerge in different colours. A printed mark could determine how a later treatment would act. The colour seen at the end need not have been the colour of the material originally applied by the block. ^[14]

This is useful background for Morris's printed fabrics, but his essay was written twenty years after the design of Tulip and Willow. It explains the principles and preferences of an experienced dyer looking back on his craft. It does not identify every substance used in the first printing, or prove that an unidentified blue-and-ochre reproduction was made by a particular sequence. Keeping the general explanation beside the exact object record lets each do its proper work. ^{[1] [2] [14]}

What Morris wanted from colour

In Of Dyeing as an Art, Morris attacks the separation between the commercial dyeing trade and the artistic judgement of colour. He acknowledges the scientific achievement behind aniline dyes while condemning their effects on the textiles he saw around him. His language is deliberately combative. It records his aesthetic and commercial criticism, rather than offering a neutral verdict on every synthetic dye or every later development in chemistry. ^[14]

His positive account is more revealing than a simple preference for muted tones. He wanted dyes capable of bright colour and of being modified without becoming muddy. He arranged his discussion around blues, reds, yellows and browns, then explained how mixtures and successive treatments could produce greens, purples and darker shades. Natural dyeing, as he understood it, offered a substantial range of effects. It was not a rule that a textile must look faded or brown to possess artistic value. ^[14]

He paid attention to what happened after manufacture, too. He considered how colours appeared under candlelight and how they altered with age. His essay explicitly admits that natural dyes fade: he preferred the way he believed good examples changed, rather than claiming that they remained eternally untouched by sunlight. That admission is important when looking at historic fabric. A pleasing surviving colour may be an aged colour, and the appeal of a reproduction cannot establish the unfaded appearance of the cloth. ^[14]

Tulip and Willow makes these concerns tangible. The flowers need enough contrast to hold their shape, while the smaller leaves need enough variation to stay readable within the field. A change in the relationship between blue, pale petal and warm edging can change what comes forward first. Colour is part of the design's hierarchy. The later printing history shows that the arrangement of forms could remain usable while Morris and his workshop sought different means of realising its colour. ^{[1] [2]}

A pattern made for a textile surface

Morris's 1893 essay Textiles supplies another way to understand the drawing. He argues for clear form and strong construction combined with abundant detail. He also distinguishes the demands of cloth, which may hang in folds, from decoration spread flat against a wall. A pattern has to remain effective when the material interrupts it. His preference for a large structure with broken detail is particularly helpful when looking at these broad flowers surrounded by many smaller leaves. ^[15]

At a distance, the flower heads provide an immediately readable framework. Closer up, strokes within the petals and repeated pointed leaves divide the larger masses. If a fold conceals part of a blossom, another pale head remains visible elsewhere; if the small detail merges, the sweeping branches still convey movement. These are ways to read the design's organisation, rather than evidence that the unidentified illustrated cloth once hung in a particular room. ^{[2] [15]}

In the same essay, Morris says that block printing allows considerable use of hatching and dots. Such marks can articulate a form while respecting the printed surface. The fine lines across the petals here do exactly the sort of explanatory work he valued: they tell us how the petals turn and separate. They do not require a cast shadow or an illusion that a real flower projects into the room. ^{[2] [15]}

His strongest general principle is that the designer should understand the material's capabilities and the process that will carry the design into it. The limitations should suggest possibilities. Applied to Tulip and Willow, this gives the printing history a direct visual relevance. A sharply conceived flower still depends on the process retaining the relationships between its contour, internal strokes and ground. Drawing and dyeing meet in the clarity of those relationships. ^[15]

Beside the more elaborate Merton prints

The later Strawberry Thief and Evenlode show how much could be built upon indigo discharge. The Huntington's account of Strawberry Thief follows the blue ground with block-applied discharge, then mordant and dye treatments for additional colours. Its succession of washing, preparing and colouring makes the accumulated labour understandable. Each additional treatment had to preserve the clarity of what had already been made. ^[4]

Cincinnati Art Museum's explanation of Evenlode specifies thirty-three printing blocks. It describes a dark green background made by colouring the cloth blue and overprinting with yellow, alongside a combination of resists, printed colour and discharge. Resist keeps colour from reaching a protected area; discharge removes colour already present. Their coexistence in a later fabric shows why a decorative surface may conceal a particularly intricate sequence of operations. ^[16]

The comparison gives Tulip and Willow a useful place within Morris's textiles. Its relatively direct encounter between large flowers and running foliage need not be judged as an incomplete version of a later, busier print. It offers a different visual balance. The open flower heads make strong landmarks, while the willow leaves supply continuity around them. Later technical possibilities enlarged the workshop's choices; they did not make every earlier arrangement artistically obsolete. ^{[2] [4] [16]}

A later Tulip and Willow print makes this particularly clear because it carries an earlier design into the indigo workshop. Here the new technique served an existing pattern. Innovation could mean revisiting a useful composition as well as devising another one: these flowers and leaves offered an arrangement worth returning to. ^{[1] [2]}