Marigold

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 as sole owner. "Marigold" stes large single blossoms amid leafy meanders over a ground of smaller flowers. The forms demonstrate close observation of native flowers and the monochrome pattern was offered in blue (as seen here), dark red, or light brown. A belief in beauty, imagination, and order shaped Morris's work and the popularity of his designs helped to raise British production standards in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The cream area at the top of this sheet reveals the edges of the wooden blocks used to print the design.

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