Fruit (Black)
1862 · Block-printed wallpaper on paper · Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
📦 Free shipping on every order, arriving in 4–9 business days with production included. Express ($14.90) at checkout arrives in 4–6 business days.
About this work
- Artist
- William Morris (1834–1896)
- Year
- 1862
- Medium
- Block-printed wallpaper on paper
- Original size
- 68.5 × 57 cm
- Collection
- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
- Movement
- Arts and Crafts
The same fruiting branches as the blue colourway, here printed on a near-black ground, so the pomegranates, lemons, oranges and peaches glow in green, pink and soft gold against the dark. William Morris's Fruit, also called Pomegranate, belongs to his first group of wallpapers of the 1860s, made while he was still learning how to turn his drawings into print. After failed experiments printing in oil colour from zinc plates, he had traditional pearwood blocks cut and passed the printing to Jeffrey & Co. of Islington, which eventually printed all of his papers. The design was produced in several colourways from the start; the dark ground here makes it the most dramatic. This sheet still carries the firm's name printed in its selvedge and entered the Cooper Hewitt in 1935.
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
Fruit and leaves glowing on a near-black ground make a dramatic piece for a dining room, dark kitchen wall or moody library. Hang it with Fruit (Blue) as a pair at 16×24 in black.
Style, size & framing detail
- Style
- Arts and Crafts pattern
- Era
- 19th century (1862)
- Orientation
- Portrait
- Mood
- decorative, classic
- Rooms
- kitchen, dining room, study or library
Size. We'd hang this one at 16×24. Prints at 12×18, 16×24 in — 12×18 for a shelf, desk or a gallery-wall grid; 16×24 above a desk, console or in a hallway.
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.
