Strawberry Thief
designer William Morris (British, 1834–1896)
c 1936
- Medium
- plain weave cotton, discharge printed
- Classification
- Textile
- Dimensions
- Overall: 88.3 x 99.1 cm (34 3/4 x 39 in.)
- Culture
- England, Merton Abbey, 20th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Textiles
- Credit line
- Gift of Mrs. Henry Chisholm
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Perhaps the most recognizable of Morris’s textiles, Strawberry Thief celebrates the thrushes in Kelmscott Manor’s garden. May Morris remarked, “You can picture my Father going out in the early morning and watching the rascally thrushes at work on the fruit beds and telling the gardener who growls, ‘I’d like to wring their necks!’ that no bird in the garden must be touched.” With Strawberry Thief, Morris perfected the indigo-discharge process, which required the entire cloth to be dyed blue before it was bleached and block printed, in this case with more colors than any of his other textiles.
