'Honeysuckle' embroidery

Jane Morris was a skillful embroiderer but this is one of very few surviving pieces that can be definitively attributed to her hand. She worked it with her elder daughter, Jenny, basing the design on an original 1876 design by William Morris.

The design was sold through the Royal School of Art Needlework in London in the late 1870s. This version was exhibited at the first Arts and Crafts exhibition in 1888. Later it was sent by May Morris, the younger daughter of Jane and William Morris, to Paris for the Louvre exhibition of British and Irish decorative work in 1914. The remains of the exhibition label was stitched to the reverse.