Strawberry Thief

[1] It takes as its subject the thrushes that Morris found stealing fruit in his kitchen garden of his countryside home, Kelmscott Manor, in Oxfordshire.

In May 1883 Morris wrote to his daughter, "I was a great deal at Merton last week ... anxiously superintending the first printing of the Strawberry thief, which I think we shall manage this time."

This pattern was the first design using the technique in which red (in this case alizarin dye) and yellow ( weld ) were added to the basic blue and white ground.

Customers were not put off by the high price, however, and Strawberry Thief proved to be one of Morris' most commercially successful patterns.

This printed cotton furnishing textile was intended to be used for curtains or draped around walls (a form of interior decoration advocated by William Morris), or for loose covers on furniture.