The history of Pimpernel

How the common perennial got its panache: William Morris’ Pimpernel 

Beyond the spiralling stems and tulip heads, see if you can spot it: The Pimpernel. But what was it about this modest common wildflower that captured William Morris's imagination?

Dramatic, bulbous tulip heads, heavy in full bloom, undulate in near perfect symmetry along a vertical axis. Stems spiral, encircling the giant flowerheads, with long, tapering leaves curling and interlocking to weave the design into a cohesive whole.

This is Pimpernel, designed by William Morris in 1876. Curiously though, these showpiece tulips are not the namesake of Morris’s design. Look closely, and you’ll spot it: The Pimpernel. A small, low-growing, unobtrusive, British native plant.

The Original Pimpernel

William Morris was 42 years old when he designed Pimpernel for wallpaper, making it in three colourways of blues and greens. It’s safe to assume it’s one of his favourites: He chose it as his wallpaper for his dining room at Kelmscott House in London’s Hammersmith.

At this stage of his career, Morris was established, and he was understood as a preeminent figure in the decorative arts (even the term 'Morrisonian' had become a known term in the Victorian interiors trade). He designed Pimpernel at a moment in his life when he was ferociously prolific in designing wallpaper (which was a phase roughly between 1876 and 1883), where he designed some of his most famous wallpapers like 'Larkspur' (1872), 'Jasmine' (1872), 'Willow' (1874), 'Marigold' (1875), 'Wreath' and 'Chrysanthemum' (both 1876–87).

Pimpernel wasn’t just a professional evolution for Morris, the design has with it the broader marks of artistic shifts happening in Victorian London. By this point, the Aesthetic movement was in full swing, emerging in the 1860s, evolving from the Arts & Crafts movement into a mode of thinking that was more about ‘Art for Art’s Sake’, that gave way to more exuberant expressions and immersive visual experiences, suggested in Pimpernel’s almost psychedelic, sensorial linework.

Influenced by International design

This evolution of Pimpernel’s especially bold linework too can be attributed to the impact of East Asian art, which became a sensation in London, most notably during the 1862 International Exhibition. This event introduced Chinese and Japanese porcelain, ceramics, ivory carvings, and cotton tapestries to London's elite.

Morris may have drawn further inspiration from the flat floral motifs found in Japanese robes, the Japonsche rock, known for its tsujigahana technique (meaning ‘flowers at crossings’), which could have influenced this increasingly flat, dramatic, and simplified colour and line evident in Pimpernel.

Further connections between the East Asian influence with Pimpernel can be drawn since William Morris’s daughter, May Morris (an established designer in her own right at Morris & Co.) spoke about how Pimpernel papered in their Hammersmith dining room decorated with “treasures from the East.” 

We can also glean some insight into Morris’s own thinking, by something not so obvious: the name. Calling it after a common British wildflower, over the clear subject of the design – the tulip – speaks volumes about Morris's artistic ethos.

Pimpernel is untethered to art historical movements unlike the tulip (that’s so closely associated with European traditions like the Dutch still life, as well as the perfected realism of the French trompe l’oeil; the latter of which was particularly fashionable during Morris’s time). Instead, the Pimpernel was a modest British flower, much more every day and familiar with the lives of the Victorian public.

This is reiterated across his artistic practice, right from his first wallpaper design Daisy (1864), where it’s the small, low growing, common daisies – where it’s the floral understudies of the work – that are the namesake of the design. You can apply these subtle artistic choices to Morris’s more widely held beliefs – like his preference for the honesty of craftsmanship over perfected realism, as well as his socialist views of anti-elitism, favouring those often overlooked in society.