Trellis

William Morris

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This was William Morris's first wallpaper design, conceived in 1862 shortly after the formation of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company. The pattern communicates an essential naturalism, weaving a vine-like rose bush through a trellis. The imagery was inspired by a trellised rose in Morris's garden at the Red House, Bexleyheath, Kent. The architect Phillip Webb, who designed the latter house, also collaborated here by designing the blue jays. Delays in production meant that the pattern became the third that the company offered for sale, in 1864. Here, a gray trellis, pink roses and blue birds are printed against a cream ground. The company also offered variation with blue or gray backgrounds from 1868.

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