This is a rare and wonderful small sample of a wool and mohair woven William Morris woven pattern called “Violet and Columbine.” It was first registered in 1883.
This woven textile sample dates to circa 1917 due to both label and provenance. The label is both printed and hand-lettered. It states that this is the 1/300 referring to the first run sample out of 300 in ink, handwriting. The width of the woven fabric measures 72 inches wide and the price of the Violet and Columbine handwoven cloth was 55/-yard. This label is a magnificent piece of William Morris history.
Truly, this is a rare opportunity for discerning curators and collectors. 
This exquisite William Morris woven textile is in magnificent condition overall. Considering age, this historic piece of fabric is in excellent condition.
The colors are vivid. The fabric is strong. The fabric sample has one area where there is a clipped area of damage in the lower half. The area is not completely through and there is no hole. This is quite small and does not appear to be from insect damage because of the clean edges. If you look closely this is only in one place, on one of the blue petals of the flower. We have not attempted to clean this piece of fabric. There are no stains nor other damage. This is a sample from the William Morris company from the turn of the last century. It would have been used so that customers could choose their colors and style of fabrics and wallpaper.
This exquisite fabric sample that is nearly a century old, was carefully stored away for decades and has never been on the open market prior to now.
This textile sample comes from the estate of Peter Hansen, designer to Gustav Stickley. Indeed, this is authentic.
This textile comes to us from the direct descendant of the Peter Hansen estate. Peter Hansen was the furniture designer for Gustav Stickley. His wife, Ruth, was an artist and also worked as a draftsman for Stickley.
The provenance is that the samples were first gathered by Peter and his wife when they decorated their home in upstate New York. This was during the time when they worked for Stickley, sometime around 1905.
The remainder of the Morris collection may be seen online at the Cranbrook Art Museum, located in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. That particular donation consisted of the many rare William Morris wallpaper samples and all came from this very same estate. The items listed here on The Gilded Griffin are the textiles that were not donated to the Museum, but items that remained in Mrs. Hansen’s possession until her passing.
The Morris wallpaper samples are discussed in the Cranbrook Art Museum blog, dated October 3, 2014. The author of the entry is Shelley Selim, 2013-2015 Jeanne and Ralph Graham Collections Fellow. She writes:
“Cranbrook Art Museum holds seventy-two wallpaper samples in its collection, which were donated by Mrs. Olive Hansen in 1991. Peter Heinrich Hansen, Mrs. Hansen’s father-in-law, was a German immigrant who in 1904 was hired as a designer-draftsman by none other than Gustav Stickley, one of the American Craftsman style’s greatest furniture makers (and like Morris, an ardent socialist). When Hansen and his wife, Ruth, who herself worked for Stickley as an architectural draftsman, were redecorating their home in upstate New York, they ordered wallpaper samples of every pattern made by Morris & Company –the design firm founded by William Morris–and never threw them away.
You can read more about the design, implementation, and social context of William Morris’s wallpapers on the Victoria and Albert Museum website. And for more on Morris’s influence on George Booth and the foundation of Cranbrook, you can check out this great gallery guide written by a former Art Museum fellow, which I’ve scanned and uploaded here.”
On occasion, early William Morris yardage and samples such as these come to auction at such fine auction houses such as Christie’s or Bonhams and are found displayed in the world’s greatest museums. This particular pattern is found at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
These are obviously historic and important textiles and they are destined for discerning private or museum collections.
There are four William Morris textiles from the Hansen estate.
The provenance and records come from the files of the two local ASA appraisers who handled Mrs. Hansen's estate.
We have dated this particular sample in particular based on its original label. This is a woven wool and mohair sample with its original Morris label attached; stapled onto the fabric. To note, the original staple that secures the label is period (staplers were commonly sold by the turn of the last century).
The address on the label reads 17 George Street, Hanover Square. According to “Morris and Company in the Twentieth Century” by Linda Parry in a lecture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, February 1985:
“In 1917 the shop was moved to more fashionable premises at 17 George Street, Hanover Square and the range of services offered was increased. As well as a full cleaning service for carpets, tapestries and textiles, antique textiles and furniture were sold. The catalogue boasted 'Morris & Co. have good facilities for purchasing genuine old furniture of Tudor, Jacobean, Queen Anne and Georgian times and have generally got a selection of picked pieces, at very moderate prices, to choose from'. Many items anonymously passed through the salerooms today may well have been restored and re-upholstered in the Morris workshops. Despite the catalogue's words 'at very moderate prices' such stock increased the firm's exclusiveness. May Lea, one of the company's curtain makers, remembers not daring to enter the George Street shop, seeing it as a place only for illustrious and wealthy clients.”
During 1925, the Morris Company name was changed to Morris & Co. Art Workers Limited.
This century old textile sample measures 13.25 inches or 33.65 cm in length. It is 5.25 inches or 13.33 cm wide. There is simply nothing like the colors and brilliance in this fine William Morris textile.
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