Strawberry Thief
Thrushes stealing strawberries in Morris’s garden became one of his best-loved patterns. It was printed using the laborious method of discharging indigo.
The pattern is built as a mirrored repeat – look for where it starts again.
William Morris designed the Strawberry Thief pattern in 1883. He was an English designer, poet and socialist and one of the leading figures of the Arts and Crafts movement, which sought to restore the value of craftsmanship in an age of industrial mass production. Morris ran his own firm, Morris & Co., which made textiles, wallpapers, furniture and stained glass. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has a large collection of his work.
The pattern shows thrushes picking strawberries among flowers and leaves. The birds are depicted in pairs, facing each other, with strawberries in their beaks. The background is a deep dark blue, and the flowers, leaves and birds are in white, yellow, red and green. Morris was inspired by the garden at his home, Kelmscott Manor, where thrushes ate the strawberries.
The pattern is built as a repeat, that is, a pattern that recurs. It is mirrored, so that the right half is a reflection of the left. This gives symmetry and calm, while the curving stems and the movements of the birds bring it to life. Morris took great care that the pattern would work when repeated over large surfaces.
The fabric was block-printed by hand at Morris’s works at Merton Abbey outside London. Morris used a difficult method known as indigo discharge. The whole fabric was first dyed blue with indigo. A bleaching agent was then printed on the areas where other colours were to go, removing the blue there. After that the other colours, such as yellow and red, were printed with natural dyes. The process took a long time, and the fabric was therefore expensive.
Morris was interested in old techniques and natural dyes. He disliked the synthetic dyes that had become common in the 19th century, finding them harsh and prone to fading unattractively. He experimented for a long time to achieve good results with indigo and other natural colours.
The pattern has been interpreted as an image of nature and the garden as a harmonious world. It reflects Morris’s ideas that everyday objects should be beautiful and well made. At the same time his products were expensive and could be bought only by a well-to-do public. This was a contradiction of which Morris himself was aware, since he wanted art to be for everyone.
Strawberry Thief became one of Morris’s most popular patterns and is still in use. It has been printed on fabrics, wallpapers, clothing and objects. The pattern has become a symbol of the Arts and Crafts movement and of British design. Morris’s ideas influenced later movements, including Art Nouveau and modernism.