'Bird' woven double cloth

William Morris designed the ‘Bird’ pattern in 1878 for use on the walls of the drawing room in his family home, Kelmscott House in Hammersmith, London. After Morris established Merton Abbey as the manufacturing based of Morris & Co. in 1881, ‘Bird’ was produced there in three different colourways.

This heavy woollen fabric is designed as a wall covering and, as Morris wrote to his friend Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle, its structure is only for curtains and hangings, not upholstery.