William Morris Prints

William Morris prints from the original patterns

You can buy William Morris prints for sale directly through this pattern library, reproduced from public-domain museum scans of original historic wallpapers and textiles. Each piece of William Morris wall art retains the precise line work, repeating rhythms, and traditional colourways developed during the nineteenth century. Every order is printed and shipped by ArtsyWall as made-to-order wall decor for your living space.

The collection includes designs across block-printed wallpapers, printed cotton chintzes, and woven furnishings. You can observe how scrolling acanthus foliage, garden roses, and woodland birds interlock across balanced repeating grids. Rather than modern digital recreations, these prints show the hand-drawn contours and authentic character of the original production runs.

Browse the designs

You can explore every William Morris design in the library by name, botanical motif, colour, and production medium. Each design entry gives you the documented history of the pattern, including its release date, original fabrication method, and attributed designer. You also see the specific museum source scan and available colourways.

Recognized patterns like Strawberry Thief appear alongside lesser-known repeating textiles produced by the firm. The catalog displays patterns featuring willow boughs, honeysuckle vines, tulips, and intricate forest grounds. By studying the full layout and individual repeat structures, you can find the right composition, palette, and scale for your interior.

Who designed the patterns

While many people attribute every Morris pattern to William Morris, several artists created repeating patterns for the decorative arts business. Morris founded Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in 1861 with Pre-Raphaelite friends, reorganizing it in 1875 as Morris & Co. under his sole direction. He designed dozens of repeating wallpapers and fabrics, drawing inspiration from nature and medieval methods that defined the British Arts and Crafts movement.

Other artists made lasting contributions to the company catalog. John Henry Dearle began as an assistant in the Oxford Street showroom in 1878, trained as an apprentice under Morris, and rose to become head designer by 1890. Dearle designed celebrated patterns including Compton, Daffodil, Cherwell, and Seaweed, frequently incorporating Persian and Turkish motifs. May Morris took charge of the embroidery department in 1885, while Kate Faulkner contributed wallpaper designs. This site identifies the true designer for each pattern rather than attributing every work to Morris alone.

Print formats

ArtsyWall produces each order on demand in three distinct physical presentations. You can select Archival Paper prints, which serve as classic William Morris posters for custom framing. Archival Paper uses an unframed, heavyweight 340gsm 100% cotton rag paper with a textured watercolor surface, shipped rolled inside a secure tube.

For stretched presentations, you can select Premium Canvas or Framed Canvas. Both canvas options feature thick, acid-free archival canvas stretched by hand across solid wood bars, produced with giclée printing rated fade-resistant for more than 100 years. Premium Canvas arrives with a sawtooth hanger on the back. Framed Canvas places the canvas inside a wood floating frame that leaves a slender space around the canvas edges. It includes a pre-installed hanging wire and comes in six finishes: black, white, gold, silver, walnut, and oak.

Seamless pattern files

In addition to physical prints, you can download seamless William Morris pattern files directly from the collection. A seamless pattern file is a digital image containing one complete repeat tile of a historical design. When you place these digital tiles edge to edge horizontally and vertically, the borders match cleanly without visible seams.

Some patterns repeat on a straight grid, while others use a half-drop repeat where alternate columns shift downward by half the pattern height. Each digital file matches the repeat geometry of the original hand-printed work. Designers and makers use these repeat tiles for print-on-demand fabric, custom paper goods, digital illustrations, and architectural mock-ups.

How Morris patterns were made

The production processes at Morris & Co. relied on historic craft practices and manual printing. Morris began creating repeating wallpaper designs in 1862 with Trellis, which Jeffrey and Co. printed from hand-carved woodblocks starting in 1864. When Morris expanded into printed chintzes around 1868, he rejected commercial mechanized roller printing in favor of traditional hand woodblock printing.

Color was another crucial focus of the firm’s workshops. Between 1875 and 1878, Morris collaborated with silk dyer Thomas Wardle in Leek to revive natural organic dyes, rejecting synthetic aniline formulas. He revived indigo vats for deep blues, madder, kermes, and cochineal for reds, and walnut shells and roots for warm browns. In 1881, Morris relocated his operations to Merton Abbey Works along the River Wandle, using the river’s water for fabric dyeing, textile printing, and stained glass production.