William Morris ‘Tulip’ Textile Yardage, Provenance

This is the William Morris “Tulip” pattern. It was first registered on the 15th of April, 1875.

This printing is dated to pre-1925 due to the company name printed in the selvage region, and sometime after 1905 due to provenance, color and printing style.

The fabric is referenced in "William Morris"  by Linda Parry; published for the William Morris exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London during 1996.

She writes about an earlier printing of this design, which is in the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow:

"Morris drew five textile designs in 1895, this is one of three...registered on the same day. All three are densely flourished with a repeating zigzag of wavy leaves, and show Morris's preoccupation with wallpaper design at this time. Despite the simplicity of the pattern, many colour trials were undertaken and a letter as early as 3 September 1875 refer to the 'dark outline of the tulip...."

Truly, this is a rare opportunity for discerning curators and collectors.

This exquisite William Morris 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. There are no holes or problems of any kind aside from two small areas of dark staining which may have happened during manufacture.  (Please refer to the photographs). One is approximately the size of an American dime and the other the size of a large pin head. They are aligned and these are located at both ends of the yardage, a few inches from the bottom.

We have not attempted to clean this piece of fabric. The stains may be removed by a talented conservator, but we cannot guarantee the results.

This exquisite yardage has been carefully stored away for decades and has never been on the open market prior to now.

This textile comes from the estate of Peter Hansen, designer to Gustav Stickley,

Indeed, authentic, this large textile sample is in a Morris pattern called “Tulip” and was originally registered by Morris in 1875, about a decade before his death. Please refer to the photographs.

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 as art in the world’s greatest museums.

These are obviously historic and important textiles and they are destined for discerning private or museum collections.

The selvage has the Morris & Company logo written on it.

The provenance and records come from the files of the two local ASA appraisers who handled Mrs. Hansen's estate.

The textile measures 45.5 inches or 115.57 cm in length. It is 38 inches or 96.52 cm wide. It is hand-hemmed along two sides.

 There is simply nothing like the colors and brilliance in this fine William Morris textile.