Morris Restoration Projects
Morris & Co. Heritage Restoration Projects
As one of the leading British heritage brands, Morris & Co. has had the honour of restoring historic manors and National Trust houses with original nineteenth century design techniques.
Crafted with the utmost care, our designers have faithfully revived worn wallpaper, brightened spaces with our reimagined fresh new colourways, all while staying true to the historical style found within each estate.
Many of these grand houses were built back in the nineteenth century, soon after William Morris first founded Morris & Co. back in 1861. Even during the early years, Morris’ wallpaper designs were highly sought after and he was commissioned to decorate a variety of prestigious projects including Kensington Palace and these three houses below.
Here, we have curated three of our restoration projects across England at Kelmscott Manor, Standen House and Wightwick Manor. These heritage sites all required intricate care and attention to detail to refresh the authentic Morris & Co. wallpaper, which had been damaged or faded over the past century.
Kelmscott Manor, Cotswolds
Fans of Morris will know that Kelmscott Manor was William Morris’ family summer home. The fifteenth century manor is a Grade I listed farmhouse that Morris described as a house “grown out of the soil” as it boasted such harmony between the interiors and the beautiful gardens.
To this day, the house contains one of the most fascinating collections of Morris and his contemporaries’ from the Arts & Crafts movement textiles, carpets, ceramics and wallpaper.
Morris & Co. were approached to assist with the restoration project to faithfully restore every touch of Morris within the house. We used historic imagery to replicate how the manor looked when Morris and later when his daughter, May Morris lived there, up until her death in 1938.
In order to revive these archival wallpaper patterns, Morris & Co. provided hand printed block wallpapers - following the traditional nineteenth century style - using the original printing blocks lovingly preserved in our archive.
This covered several rooms with Lily Wallpaper from 1874 hand printed in William Morris’s bedroom, Fruit from 1864 on the walls of Jane Morris’ bedroom and Daisy from 1864 hanging in the corridor between bedrooms.
We also reproduced textiles from the original documents held within our archive for The White Room made out of another historic pattern, Rose & Thistle from 1881.
Standen House, Sussex
Standen House is one of the finest tributes to the Arts and Crafts workmanship, decorated throughout with authentic Morris & Co. wallpaper.
Designed by Philip Webb, the nineteenth century National Trust site boasts original Trellis wallpaper along all the corridors of the beautiful space.
In 2015, we were invited to restore this archival wallpaper by crafting a faithful digital version of the design to seamlessly blend modern and historical design techniques.
It was part of a major restoration project to the house and five acres of land to revive Standen House for visitors to see it in its prime.
The left side shows the existing block printed version with the digital version in middle and right.
Wightwick Manor, West Midlands
For our most recent project at Wightwick Manor, a nineteenth century National Trust site in Wolverhampton, Morris & Co. was brought in for a lengthy restoration project from 2022 to 2024.
A wall lined with Willow Boughs wallpaper had been damaged by salts, causing the colour to fade and leaving even the plaster beneath damaged.
In order to revive this beautiful original wallpaper, they had to replace an entire section of the plaster with breathable lime plaster, which took two years to dry.
We managed to conserve as much of the authentic original hand-printed wallpaper as possible, with the new hand block printed iterations alongside it. Now, the updated section seamlessly blends with the authentic original due to our attention to detail with colour matching to the existing wallpaper.
