Strawberry Thief, 1883
William Morris
Thrushes steal fruit through a dense, endlessly repeating textile pattern.
Thrushes steal fruit among dense scrolling foliage in William Morris's most famous textile design. Drawn from birds raiding his own garden and printed by painstaking indigo hand-dyeing, its rich, rhythmic pattern remains a cornerstone of decorative art.
What you're looking at
The birds are thieves he watched. Thrushes raided the strawberry beds in his garden at Kelmscott and he drew them doing it. The printing was the hard part: he used indigo discharge, bleaching the pattern back out of a fully dyed cloth, which took him years to get right and made it his most expensive fabric.
On a Frame TV
About 3:2, and like all repeats this one has no composition to protect — the clean 16:9 crop costs nothing and can be taken from anywhere in the design. Dense, mid-toned and even: it behaves well in any light and works as a background rather than a focal point.
- 4K master file (3840px+)
- Samsung Frame TV–ready crop
- Phone wallpaper crop
- Printable art card
Public domain · one .zip, no sign-up
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Other works in the collection, starting with William Morris.
