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William Morris: The History of Strawberry Thief

Strawberry thief has been a timeless classic for over 100 years

The history of Strawberry Thief dates back to 1883, and it remains one of the most popular British fabric designs today. William Morris, a British writer and designer, was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts and methods of production. He was a founding and prominent member of the celebrated Arts and Crafts movement. One of his most popular textile designs is the Strawberry Thief, which he worked on for several months before finding a way to successfully print it. The fabric was intended to be used for curtains or hung along walls, a medieval style of decoration which the artist advocated. The pattern was based on the thrushes that would steal strawberries from the kitchen in his country home at Kelmscott Manor and was therefore imbued with nostalgic sentiment.

The Design and Production Process

The main subjects in the Strawberry Thief pattern are the thrushes that frequently stole the strawberries in the kitchen garden of Morris's countryside home, Kelmscott Manor, in Oxfordshire. The fabric was block-printed using natural dyes, including alizarin (red), weld (yellow), and indigo, in a process known as discharge printing. The entire piece was first dyed in indigo, then bleached blocks were applied, and colours were added in. This process would have taken days to complete, making Strawberry Thief one of Morris & Co.'s most expensive cotton fabrics. However, customers were not put off by the high price, and the fabric proved to be one of Morris's most commercially successful patterns.

Influence and Legacy

Morris's love of indigenous, commonplace flowers, fruit, and fauna is evident in his early textile and wallpaper designs. He also drew inspiration from the Italian textiles of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that he studied at the South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria and Albert Museum) when designing the Strawberry Thief pattern. Today, the fabric can be seen on various products, including wallpaper, dishtowels, shower curtains, and tea cups. It even has its own Wikipedia page and spinoff video game. The design has attained extraordinary commercial success since its release in the late nineteenth century and continues to sell widely, with English department stores having featured it in several high-end fashion collaborations.