Trellis by William Morris

What Trellis shows

Trellis by William Morris presents a structured outdoor garden scene centered on climbing roses and garden birds. A pale gray-brown wooden framework with visible wood grain and peg joints runs across the design in a regular grid. Stout, mossy-green rose canes covered in sharp red thorns wind their way through this structural lattice. Broad clusters of serrated green leaves branch out across the timber bars, accompanied by open red roses with dark centers and rounded rose hips.

Several birds with bright blue plumage, spotted breasts, and banded wing feathers populate the vine. Some perch alertly on the wooden crossbars, while others reach toward the stems or flutter downward with spread wings. Small winged insects with slender bodies hover in the open gaps of the framework. The composition balances the rigid geometry of the square garden lattice against the natural, curving growth of the rose branches. A clean, light ivory ground sits behind the timber frame, giving the birds and foliage a bright, readable outline.

Who designed it and when

William Morris designed Trellis in 1862. It stands as an important early milestone in the history of decorative design. To understand where this work fits within his career, you can read our guide to William Morris and his life and work.

The design record lists the original creation year as 1862. The museum object scanned for this site carries an object date of 1864, showing that sources record slightly different dates for the design drawing and the later physical printing. The pattern is cataloged alongside hundreds of historic patterns in our index of every William Morris design. It sits among his most recognized nature studies, alongside later favorites like Strawberry Thief.

How it was made and used

Morris conceived Trellis specifically as a wallpaper. In the Victorian home, wallpaper served as the primary method for introducing repeating natural patterns to parlors, drawing rooms, and hallways. The design relies on a vertical and horizontal lattice that naturally reinforces the architecture of an interior wall while bringing the appearance of a sunlit garden indoors.

Historically, wallpapers of this era were hand-printed from carved wooden blocks using opaque, water-based distemper pigments. Each color in the pattern required a separate block and an individual press. The light ground, the gray tones of the wood, the green leaves, the red rose petals, and the blue feathers of the birds were built up layer by layer to form the complete repeat.

Colourways

On this site, Trellis is offered in one colourway: Ivory. This colourway is derived from a high-resolution public-domain scan provided by the Metropolitan Museum of Art under a CC0 licence.

The Ivory colourway features a soft, pale off-white ground behind the wooden framework. The trellis itself is rendered in muted grayish-brown planks with subtle grain markings. The rose vines show warm olive and sage greens dotted with brick-red thorns, leading to open red blossoms. The blue birds offer a vibrant focal contrast across the pattern, their feathers rendered in clear sky-blue and deep indigo tones.

Trellis as a print

Trellis is available as a print, printed and shipped by ArtsyWall. You can order it in three formats: Archival Paper, Premium Canvas, and Framed Canvas. If you prefer covering an entire room rather than hanging art, you can also find this design as peel-and-stick wallpaper on williammorriswallpapers.com.

On Archival Paper, the fine linework of the wooden grain and the sharp details of the bird plumage read cleanly against the matte cotton paper. On Premium Canvas, the texture of the fabric lends a woven, painterly weight to the climbing vines. In a Framed Canvas format, the floating frame separates the outer edge of the print from the wall, allowing the architectural grid of the trellis to act as an open window overlooking an active garden scene.