Snakeshead by William Morris

What Snakeshead shows

Snakeshead by William Morris presents a dense, rhythmic arrangement of botanical forms anchored by the nodding blooms of the fritillary. The fritillary, commonly called the snake’s head fritillary, was a wildflower Morris remembered from the damp meadows around Oxford. In this pattern, the characteristic bell-shaped blossoms appear in bold shades of deep red and cream, positioned upright and pendant across alternating registers.

Beneath and around the primary blossoms, stylized clusters of leaves fan outward in pale cream and soft sage green. Slender trailing stems weave between larger central palmettes, while tiny delicate florets and buds fill every pocket of the dark ground. The composition relies on strong vertical symmetry within each cluster, balanced by horizontal continuity across the repeat. Unlike open trellis patterns, the background here remains tightly covered with fine linework, creating an energetic and continuous textile surface.

Who designed it and when

William Morris designed Snakeshead in the late 1870s. Historical records present a slight difference in dating: the design record dates the pattern to 1876, whereas text from the Cleveland Museum of Art dates Morris’s work on the design to 1877. To explore where this pattern fits among his other creations, you can browse every William Morris design in our library, or read about his career in our guide to William Morris.

During this time, Indian silks were widely imported into Britain and held great favor in fashionable London circles. Morris studied these imported goods carefully. He adopted their comparatively small, dense motifs and intense color schemes, combining those foreign textures with native British flora. While later designs like Strawberry Thief introduced pictorial birds and garden strawberries, Snakeshead remains purely focused on formal botanical rhythm.

How it was made and used

Snakeshead was created as a printed cotton textile. The museum example preserved by the Cleveland Museum of Art is printed on plain weave cotton, produced in Walthamstow, England, in the early twentieth century. The repeat measures approximately 8.9 by 11.5 inches, an intimate scale designed for interior drapery and upholstery.

The pattern achieved its visual depth through careful block printing techniques. Strong reds and deep dark tones were fashionable during this brief period in English decoration before consumers drifted back toward paler pastel shades. Producing these rich shades on cotton cloth required specialized dyeing methods that Morris revived to replace harsh synthetic aniline dyes with traditional colorants.

Colourways

On this site, the pattern appears in one colourway named Indigo. This title is the site’s own descriptive label taken from the museum scan rather than an original Victorian trade name.

The Indigo colourway features a deep, near-black navy ground that emphasizes the bright foreground details. Crimson and deep wine-red tones articulate the prominent central fritillary petals and accent pods. Soft parchment cream highlights the outward-curving acanthus sprays, while muted moss greens and pale slate blues shade the foliage and lower bells. The high contrast between the pale leaves and dark ground gives the dense repeat remarkable clarity across a room.

Snakeshead as a print

Snakeshead works well as framed wall art because of its disciplined repeat and balanced symmetry. On Archival Paper, the textured 100% cotton rag surface absorbs the deep indigo background and enhances the warm cream tones of the foliage. Premium Canvas wraps the design neatly around solid wood bars, highlighting the tactile appearance of the original printed cotton cloth. Framed Canvas places the pattern within a floating wood frame, available in black, white, gold, silver, walnut, or oak, which separates the dark edges cleanly from your wall.

All prints are printed and shipped by ArtsyWall. If you are decorating an entire room rather than hanging a single print, you can also find this design as peel-and-stick wallpaper on williammorriswallpapers.com.