'Pimpernel' wallpaper

The period between 1876 and 1883 was the most prolific of William Morris’s career as a producer of wallpaper. During this time the spontaneity of his earlier patterns gave way to a new formality. ‘Pimpernel’ was designed by him in 1876 and registered as a pattern on 29th February 1876. The pattern is formed of large, sensual tulips and their curling leaves, punctuated by small blue pimpernel flowers.

The pattern has more in common with wallpapers from the aesthetic period than Morris’s typical Arts and Crafts style. Morris’s younger daughter, May Morris wrote in 1936 how the wallpaper “is specially adapted to rooms of dignified proportion. Familiar to me in greens, as we had in the high Adams dining-room at Hammersmith that my father managed to “make the best of” with Rossetti pictures and treasures form the East.” ‘Making the Best of It’ was the title of one of William Morris’s lectures on what makes good design.