Pattern 135: "Arcadia", wallpaper. May Morris, c. 1886.
Printed: Jeffrey & Co.
Image: Cooper Hewitt

May Morris designed three wallpapers for Morris & Co. in the mid-1880s. Arcadia is the last one, both chronologically and for this account. The other two are Honeysuckle, 1883, and Horn Poppy, 1885.

Honeysuckle: https://twitter.com/EveryMorris/status/1148271711630110720

Horn Poppy: https://twitter.com/EveryMorris/status/1227656638716432384

Of the three, Arcadia and Horn Poppy have more in common. Both are flowing meander patterns with a spiky or fibrous quality to their motifs. That quality makes them stand out from works by William Morris and other Morris & Co. designers.

For example, compare Arcadia and Horn Poppy to William Morris designs of the same period like Fritillary (1885) or Lily and Pomegranate (1886).

May Morris clearly had a distinctive style, and one which was not closely related to her work as an embroidery designer - her father's Lily and Pomegranate looks more like Morris & Co. embroidery designs of the period than any of her wallpapers do.

Like Horn Poppy, Arcadia would have been a fairly simple paper to print. Despite the complexity of its detailing, it required a maximum of only three colors, and many versions were printed with only two.

A c. 1900 Morris & Co. catalogue and one of the c. 1918 Brooklyn Museum sample books both list four colorways for Arcadia, a number borne out in available samples like these from the Cooper Hewitt.

Although the two blue samples shown in this thread are different tones, it seems likely that that is a divergence in photography and image coloring rather than colorways. It's likely that the teal-toned version above is more accurate, given its similarity to other period papers.

My ko-fi: http://ko-fi.com/smleonard 

Object links:

Cooper Hewitt
Large blue sample
https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18343643/
Smaller samples not indexed

Brooklyn Museum sample book
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/97901