Daisy

William Morris

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

William Morris designed forty-one wallpapers and five ceiling papers, working from 1862 with Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company and from 1875 with Morris & Company. "Daisy" was his second design, but the first pattern the company produced. Small light red and brown flowers are supported by green leaves, forming a repeating pattern against a cream ground. The artist was influenced by medieval "millefleurs" tapestries, early printed herbals, and a textile he found in an illuminated copy of Froissart's "Chronicles." He also looked closely at native flowers. A belief in beauty, imagination, and order shaped Morris's wallpapers. Their commercial success raised the standards of British wallpaper design and production in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art