Willow and Willow Bough

A willow leaf gives William Morris plenty to work with: a long tapering outline, a flexible stem and a tip that can turn back on itself. In two wallpapers he made these small differences carry the movement of an entire surface. Willow dates to 1874; Willow Bough followed in 1887. They share a subject, but their leaves, branching rhythms and balance of foliage against background make them distinct designs. The William Morris Gallery identifies the earlier pattern as a simpler, stylised treatment and the later one as a more naturalistic development. ^{[1] [2]}

Look first at the relatively flat, pointed leaves of Willow, then at the curled leaves of Willow Bough. The change is more than an increase in detail. The earlier design lets individual sprays stand apart; the later one draws the eye through a busier exchange of stems, overlaps and turning tips. In the Cooper Hewitt's green Willow specimen and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's cream-ground Willow Bough, the same tree becomes two different kinds of decorative movement. ^{[3] [4]}

Both belong to Morris's wallpaper work, where a growing plant has to become a repeat that can extend across a wall. Their interest lies in the passage between those two conditions: the recognisable leaf and the organised surface. Comparing them also reveals how much a colourway, a surviving sheet or a later printing can change our impression of a familiar pattern.

Willow: room around the leaves

In the Cooper Hewitt specimen, catalogued as Sidewall, Willow, 1874, slender leaves fan out from curving stems over a pale blue-green ground. The leaves are green, with darker internal lines marking a central vein and short side veins. Their pointed ends turn in different directions, but most retain a narrow, lance-like shape. The repeated sprays curve past one another without becoming a solid mass. Between them, pieces of background open into small channels and wider pockets. ^[3]

Following one spray is an easy way into the design. A stem bends; leaves project to either side; a longer leaf carries the movement onward. Elsewhere, a cluster faces back towards it. The branches do not all travel upwards like plants in a botanical plate. They turn across the sheet, allowing the eye to move sideways as well as along a stem. The pale intervals matter because they keep these movements legible. The foliage has enough separation for its repeated shapes to register clearly.

The specimen's worn edges and tears make another distinction visible. This is a surviving piece of paper, with a physical boundary, while the design seems capable of continuing beyond it. Leaves cut by the edge invite us to imagine the next length. Its damage belongs to this particular object; it does not form part of Morris's repeat. The Commons catalogue transcription identifies the sheet as Cooper Hewitt accession 1980-73-15, measuring 75 × 51.5 cm. Those are the dimensions of the retained specimen, rather than a measurement of a complete repeating unit. ^[3]

A different Willow at the V&A, E.488-1919, has grey willow leaves above a pale underlay of little circles or stylised flowers. That description complicates the idea that Willow always means green leaves over an entirely blank ground. The V&A dates its specimen to 1874 and places it in a Morris & Co. pattern book. Its listed 68.5 × 53.3 cm dimensions explicitly refer to the volume. Comparing those figures directly with a loose sheet would therefore compare two different things. ^[15]

The William Morris Gallery's B69 offers a further version: colourway number 60, using related tones against a coloured background. The Gallery describes the early colour treatments as tonal, with colours on white introduced later. In this arrangement the foliage and ground remain close enough in hue to produce a quieter contrast. A pattern can have clearly defined leaves without making every leaf leap forward. ^[1]

Willow Bough: leaves that turn and overlap

The Met's Willow Bough, accession 23.163.4k, makes the change of design particularly clear. Here brown stems branch across a cream ground. Green leaves spread, bend and overlap, their dark markings gathering into short groups of parallel strokes. Some leaves end in a strong hook; others lift away in a broader curve. Instead of Willow's comparatively even, pointed leaf shapes, the eye meets a more varied sequence of narrow profiles, broad faces and folded ends. The museum dates the sheet to 1887. ^[4]

The brown stems provide a second rhythm beneath the greens. At a crossing, it is possible to follow one branch past another, then lose it briefly behind a leaf. A curling tip may seem to point towards a neighbouring spray, even though the two belong to different branches. These small connections make the foliage feel denser than a simple count of leaves would explain. The movement depends on changes of direction and the way one shape interrupts another.

Yet the cream ground remains active. It appears in irregular spaces between the stems and in narrow slivers beside hooked leaves. Those gaps prevent the green from settling into an undifferentiated field. The eye alternates between reading individual leaves and noticing a larger diagonal sweep. Near the right edge of the Met sheet, the printed Morris & Company name also survives in the margin: a reminder that this flowing foliage was sold as a manufactured furnishing material. ^[4]

The William Morris Gallery describes Willow Bough's structure as a diagonal branch pattern. That is a useful starting point for looking, although the design does not announce itself as a set of bare diagonal stripes. The smaller branches and curling leaves complicate the main direction. Its greater naturalism is relative to Willow: both designs reorganise a tree's growth into shapes that can return at regular intervals. Neither offers a literal view of a particular branch suspended against the wall. ^[2]

One catalogue discrepancy deserves care. The Met's explanatory text calls the earlier Willow an 1885 design, although the William Morris Gallery dates it to 1874 and the V&A gives 1874 for E.488-1919. The dates used here follow those specific 1874 records; the Met's securely identified Willow Bough remains dated 1887. The distinction between the patterns is clear even where the accompanying chronology is inconsistent. ^{[1] [4] [15]}

A riverbank memory and an organised pattern

Willow Bough has a particularly appealing account of its connection to observed nature. A V&A gallery label quotes May Morris remembering a walk with her father beside a small stream running into the Thames. He pointed out the differences among the leaves, and the wallpaper followed soon afterwards. This is May's retrospective family recollection, encountered through the museum's quotation, rather than a contemporary drawing note establishing the exact day or sequence of design work. ^[5]

The detail that matters is variety. In the Met sheet, the leaves do not all present the same face or turn with the same force. Looking at those differences makes May's account more useful than a general statement that Morris loved nature. It directs attention towards the leaf as something observed in changing positions. The pattern then gives those positions a recurring relationship: a broad curl here, a narrower leaf beside it, a spray turning back across a stem.

Morris explained that transformation in Some Hints on Pattern-Designing, delivered in 1881. His recurring frameworks included the diagonal branch and the diamond-shaped net; his advice for wallpaper was to disguise the repeat, distribute the design evenly and avoid unintended lines across the wall. He also wanted the suggestion of growing forms, with one member appearing to spring convincingly from another. The lecture does not name Willow or Willow Bough, but it supplies a vocabulary for examining them. ^[16]

The comparison makes his problem tangible. In Willow, you can follow relatively clear sprays and enjoy the intervals between them. In Willow Bough, a leaf's curl redirects attention into a neighbouring cluster, making the branching framework harder to isolate. One can read this as a different balance between construction and concealment, without assuming that the later design simply corrects the earlier one. The two patterns offer different pleasures of looking.

Colour changes the space between branches

Green foliage on a light ground is only one part of this history. A Morris & Co. sample book at the William Morris Gallery, BlB90, dated about 1913–17, retains Willow in several colourways: greens on white, yellows on white, pinks on a paler pink ground, turquoise tones and grey foliage over mottled blue-grey. It also records white and grey over a beige silvered ground. Willow Bough appears separately, including green and brown on cream, versions on pale green or pale blue, and gold, pale gold and yellow on white. ^[17]

These alternatives change how quickly the eye distinguishes plant from ground. Close tones can make the branches seem woven into one continuous surface. A light background can sharpen their silhouettes and make each gap easier to read. A pink or metallic treatment also loosens the connection between the represented plant and its expected outdoor colouring. The branch remains recognisable through outline and rhythm even when its palette invites a different response.

The V&A's Willow Bough, E.558-1919, is green on pale blue, quite different from the cream background of the Met example. It is catalogued as block-printed in distemper colours on paper, with Jeffrey & Co. as printer and Morris & Co. as publisher. The reverse retains the title, number and price in ink. These commercial details belong beside the natural subject: someone had to identify the colourway, print it and supply it to a customer. ^[5]

The sample book likewise asked buyers to quote a name and number, and warned against cutting its patterns. It preserved distinctions that a loose modern use of “Morris willow” can obscure. Willow and Willow Bough were named designs offered in multiple treatments, rather than one fixed green image. Their separate entries allowed customers to choose both the pattern's structure and its colouring. ^[17]

From drawing to printed paper

The division of work matters. Morris supplied the design, Jeffrey & Co. printed historical wallpaper specimens, and the Morris firm published or sold them. The Met records all three roles for its Willow Bough. Calling it a Morris design identifies its author; it does not mean that Morris personally printed that sheet. The relationship between design and manufacture is part of the wider history of Morris & Company. ^[4]

A drawing and a printed sample preserve different stages of the work. The 2018 Spanish exhibition dossier William Morris y el movimiento Arts and Crafts en Gran Bretaña lists a Willow Bough design of 1887 from the Whitworth, in pencil and watercolour on paper. A separate entry lists a Willow Bough wallpaper from the William Morris Society, printed with wooden blocks by Jeffrey & Co., measuring 85 × 48 cm. The checklist distinguishes these objects; it does not establish that the drawing's exact colours or every mark passed unchanged into that particular print. ^[18]

Their pairing helps explain what a design drawing can preserve. Pencil and watercolour allow an arrangement to be worked out on a sheet. A printed paper shows that arrangement translated into repeatable areas and lines. Even without a complete technical record for the transition, the difference between the two objects prevents the finished wallpaper from seeming to have emerged directly from a riverside walk. Observation supplied material for a process of selection, arrangement and manufacture. ^[18]

Later printings and a Japanese adaptation

Surviving rolls carry the patterns beyond their original dates. The William Morris Gallery's Willow B69 was printed by Jeffrey & Co. before 1940 and presented by Francis Leach in 1956. The Gallery connects it with the family of Frederick Richard Leach, the Cambridge master decorator and stained-glass designer who worked for Morris & Co. That history places the roll within a network of decorative work, although it does not identify a particular room in which this piece was hung. ^[1]

The Gallery's Willow Bough B22 has a different history. Arthur Sanderson & Sons printed it after 1940 and presented it in 1950. The firm had acquired Morris & Co.'s designs and printing blocks when the company closed in 1940. Thus “1887” dates the design, while “after 1940” dates this roll's manufacture. A later printing can preserve an earlier designer's pattern while remaining a material product of another workshop and period. ^[2]

A more recent adaptation makes that distinction especially visible. In its Japanese announcement of 30 May 2023, Sangetsu introduced the Morris Chronicles collection, developed with Sanderson Design Group. For its Willow Boughs wallpaper MCW101, the company described deliberate attention to effects resembling pooled ink, uneven printed coverage and a matte finish. It also explained its use of a clear white background to bring out the greens. These are the manufacturer's stated choices for a modern product, rather than evidence about the composition of Victorian distemper. ^[19]

The announcement shows that adaptation can involve the appearance of making as well as the arrangement of leaves. A modern wallcovering may evoke the small variations associated with block printing while using them as a designed surface effect. Against the white background, the green foliage becomes part of Sangetsu's proposed contemporary interior. Willow Bough’s branch structure remains recognisable, while this new version acquires a ground, finish and material identity of its own. ^[19]