Strawberry Thief by William Morris

What Strawberry Thief shows

Strawberry Thief by William Morris is a repeating pattern of birds feeding on fruit amid a dense bed of foliage. Morris based the motif on garden thrushes that snatched fruit from the kitchen garden at Kelmscott Manor, his Oxfordshire country home. Paired songbirds perch along curving leafy stems, some facing inward with ripe strawberries caught in their beaks while others turn outward with heads tilted upward.

The layout forms a medium-scale symmetrical repeat of woodland plants. Around the birds, deep red strawberries hang from slender runners alongside five-petaled white and pale blossoms. Larger stylized flowers with rounded, cup-like petals anchor the vertical rhythm, balanced by sprawling leafy fronds in muted green and silvery blue-gray. The ground is a dark blue that sets off the bright red berries, cream highlights, and warm golden-buff plumage of the thrushes. If you enjoy Morris’s botanical studies, you can explore his other florals like Rose alongside every pattern in our catalog of every William Morris design.

Who designed it and when

William Morris designed Strawberry Thief in 1883. He registered the pattern with the British Patents Office in the same year, following months of experimental work. In May 1883, Morris wrote to his daughter that he was spending days at his workshop anxiously superintending the very first printing run.

Morris’s daughter May Morris recalled how her father observed the thrushes early in the morning in the kitchen garden at Kelmscott Manor. When the gardener complained and spoke of wringing the birds’ necks, Morris insisted that no bird in the garden be harmed. That affection for the countryside thieves inspired Morris & Co. to produce what became one of the firm’s most commercially successful printed patterns. You can read more about its background in our guide to Strawberry Thief.

How it was made and used

Morris produced Strawberry Thief using the discharge printing method combined with indigo vat dyeing. He had admired indigo dyeing for years and first attempted the process in 1875. He did not master it until after 1881, when he moved production to his textile works at Merton Abbey near Wimbledon.

The process required workers to dye the entire plain weave cotton cloth solid blue. Next, a bleaching agent discharged the blue dye from specific areas of the pattern, leaving white spaces. Woodblocks then printed the colors back onto the fabric: red from alizarin dye, yellow from weld, and green produced by overprinting yellow onto the original indigo. Because the steps took days to finish, Strawberry Thief was one of the firm’s most expensive cotton textiles. Morris intended the fabric for interior furnishings, including curtains, loose furniture covers, and lengths draped along walls.

Colourways

This site presents two scans under the Indigo colourway, drawn from museum holdings. The primary Indigo scan shows the historic dark blue ground filled with green leaves, soft blue-gray foliage, pale blooms, and deep red strawberries. A second museum scan preserves the same Indigo composition with slightly different lighting and tone across the cotton ground.

Sources differ on the date of surviving fabric specimens. While the design dates to 1883, the Cleveland Museum of Art object was printed around 1936 at Merton Abbey on plain weave cotton. The scan from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum records a specimen of the 1883 design measuring about 32 by 92 centimeters.

Strawberry Thief as a print

Our prints are printed and shipped by ArtsyWall in three formats: Archival Paper, Premium Canvas, and Framed Canvas. You can also explore peel-and-stick options via our sister site for Strawberry Thief wallpaper.

Framed on a wall, Strawberry Thief commands attention through its symmetrical geometry and energetic birds. The dark indigo background creates deep contrast, allowing the golden-feathered thrushes, creamy flowers, and scarlet strawberries to stand out across the room. In a floating frame, the dense leaf vines gain clean visual borders that highlight the balanced repeat of the branches.