'The Plum Tree' embroidered panel

The embroidery was designed by John Henry Dearle and purchased as a kit from Morris & Co by Lady Helen Lucas Tooth. Lady Helen completed the embroidery for the drawing room of her daughter's house at Somerfield Keynes near Cirencester.

The design features a plum tree with two birds, convolvulus growing around the tree trunk and clumps of flowers including primroses, crocuses and sunflowers. The embroidery has been worked in coloured silks on a cream silk background with long and short stitch, stem stitch and blanket stitch.

John Henry Dearle joined Morris's employment in 1878 as an assistant in the Oxford Street showroom of Morris & Co., before being transferred to the glass painters' studio and becoming an apprentice tapestry weaver. He eventually went on to become Art Director of Morris & Co. upon Morris’s death in 1896. After many years of training alongside Morris, Dearle began creating distinctive patterns in his own right.