William Morris registered the design for ‘Sunflower’ on 7 January 1879. The wallpaper incorporates a central sunflower head, with tulips, small flowers and a grape vine. The monochrome colourway and the vine gives the design a classical aesthetic. The firm produced it in a variety of colourways, mainly in yellow or green hues, and was one of their cheapest wallpapers making it best seller. Morris & Co. also produced the design in in oil colour on an embossed, foiled and lacquered gold background, which sold for 6 times the price. The repeat is 47 x 53.3 cm. The original design is in the collection of the William Morris Society (C4). This later version in brick red on olive grey-green has a label ‘Sanderson Wallpapers British Made’. Arthur Sanderson acquired the woodblocks from Morris & Co. when they closed in 1940 and continued to print using their name. This has the Morris & Co. diamond-shaped English Registry mark on the right edge, along with ‘MORRIS & COMPANY’ and the pattern number 138790 and price 38 shillings.
In Morris’s lecture ‘Making the Best of It’ (1880), he sets out his ideas on the most attractive flowers for the garden, of sunflowers he says “though a latecomer to our gardens, is by no means to be despised, since it will grow anywhere, and is both interesting and beautiful, with its sharply chiselled yellow florets relieved by the quaintly patterned sad-coloured centre clogged with honey and beset with bees and butterflies.”
