Honeysuckle (Sage)
1883 · Block-printed wallpaper on paper · Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
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About this work
- Artist
- May Morris (1862–1938)
- Year
- 1883
- Medium
- Block-printed wallpaper on paper
- Original size
- 92 × 56.5 cm
- Collection
- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
- Movement
- Arts and Crafts
Apricot and orange honeysuckle flowers tumble along twining brown stems through grey-green leaves, the whole spread over a soft sage-green ground. This wallpaper was designed in 1883 by May Morris, William Morris's younger daughter, when she was twenty-one; it is a different design from her father's Honeysuckle textile of 1876, a distinction the V&A notes in its own records. Two years later she became director of the embroidery department of her father's firm, and her designs were often misattributed to him. The Cooper Hewitt describes the paper as an all-over pattern of meandering honeysuckle flowers and foliage, closer to the loose growth of a garden climber than to a formal repeat. This tall block-printed sample is in the Cooper Hewitt.
This print fills the sheet edge to edge with the pattern, cropped from a high-resolution museum scan of the original, so it reads like a panel of the wallpaper or fabric. The exhibition poster shows the whole sample. The design is in the public domain.
Where it works
Apricot honeysuckle trailing over sage green is soft and garden-like for a bedroom, guest room or conservatory wall. Pair it with Honeysuckle (Rose), her father's design, at 24×36 in natural wood.
Style, size & framing detail
- Style
- Arts and Crafts pattern
- Era
- 19th century (1883)
- Orientation
- Portrait
- Mood
- decorative, classic
- Rooms
- bedroom
Size. We'd hang this one at 24×36. Prints at 12×18, 16×24, 24×36 in — 12×18 for a shelf, desk or a gallery-wall grid; 16×24 above a desk, console or in a hallway; 24×36 as the statement piece above a sofa or bed.
Framing. Printed edge to edge: a slim black or natural wood frame right to the pattern, or let the canvas wrap do the framing. Also available gallery-wrapped on canvas, ready to hang with no frame.
Pairing. Hangs alone or as a matched pair; three or more prints are 10% off.
