Willow (Sage)
1874 · Block-printed wallpaper on paper · Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
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About this work
- Artist
- William Morris (1834–1896)
- Year
- 1874
- Medium
- Block-printed wallpaper on paper
- Original size
- 75 × 51.5 cm
- Collection
- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
- Movement
- Arts and Crafts
Here William Morris's 1874 Willow is printed tone on tone, darker green leaves on a muted sage-green ground, making it the quietest version of the design in this group. The Cooper Hewitt describes the leaves as set in a serpentine arrangement, the branches winding up the sheet rather than running in straight bands. Morris advised clients that where walls were to be kept quiet they should choose a pattern that works all over without pronounced lines; this low-contrast colourway shows how one design could be tuned for that purpose. The sheet, block-printed on paper, shows a few small losses at its edges from age. It is in the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
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
Tone-on-tone green willow on sage is calm enough for a bedroom, home office or reading nook with wood furniture. Pair it with Willow (Blue) as a quiet pair at 12×18 in natural wood.
Style, size & framing detail
- Style
- Arts and Crafts pattern
- Era
- 19th century (1874)
- Orientation
- Portrait
- Mood
- decorative, classic
- Rooms
- bedroom, home office
Size. We'd hang this one at 12×18. 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.
