Iconic designs REVISITED

WILLOW BOUGH & STRAWBERRY THIEF

Kelmscott Manor

Imagine the garden at Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire, where William Morris lived with his wife Jane and daughters, Jenny and May, from 1871 until his death in 1896. It must be June because strawberries are ripening and thrushes are flying in and helping themselves to the fruit. William is resigned, but his gardener is hopping mad, as May Morris describes: “You can picture my father going out in the early morning and watching the rascally thrushes at work on the fruit beds, and telling the gardener – who growls ‘I’d like to wring their necks!’ – that no bird in the garden must be touched.” The experience is relived in fascinating pattern repeat on the Strawberry Thief design. Morris enlisted the help of his architect friend Philip Webb to draw the birds, including the guilty ones with fruit hanging from their beaks.

Strawberry Thief was registered as a design in 1883, and cut into blocks of pear wood and hand-printed using natural dyes including indigo which Morris described as “the only real blue dye”. An early