AN ENGLISH WOOL AND LINEN EMBROIDERY HANGING, CIRCA 1860

Despite being known most predominantly for his fashionable and influential designs for textiles, wallpaper and rugs, William Morris started his artistic endeavors with embroidery. Morris married Jane Burden in 1859, who was to become an accomplished artist and favorite model of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood in her own right. In the early years of their marriage, the two lived at Red House in Bexleyheath, and were known to work on embroidery together. The couple's fascination with the historical and medieval even led them to collect and dismantle existing embroideries to hone their technique. It is likely that this design was inspired by an illustration in a fifteenth-century manuscript in the collection of the British Museum. The French inscription, ‘Qui Bien Aime Tard Oublie’ is taken from Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem ‘Parliament of Fowls’. The initial iteration of this early embroidery would have hung at Red House and was likely stitched by William, Jane and possibly her sister Elizabeth Burden (see the William Morris Gallery, cat. no. F390ii).
Another identical wall hanging was installed at Penkill Castle in Ayrshire, Scotland, the home of Alice Boyd (1825–1897), artist and member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle. In a letter from Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) to Boyd in 1868, the embroidery is likely mentioned as 'the Topsaic tapestries', which references William Morris's nickname 'Topsy' (see O. Doughty and J.R. Wahl, The Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Oxford, 1965-67, II, pp. 675-676). The embroidery design was likely produced and sold in the early days of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. after it was founded in 1861, and potentially shown at the 1862 International Exhibition (see A. Mason, William Morris, London, 2021, p. 277).