Peacock and Dragon (1878): Art, History and Details

Peacock and Dragon (1878) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is William Morris (British, 1834–1896).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Morris sought to produce textiles that could function as he imagined medieval wall hangings had, bringing warmth to stone-cold rooms. Boldly designed with soothing colors in thick wool, Peacock and Dragon is the closest Morris came to achieving this ideal. In the same year he designed this textile, Morris visited the shop of the London dealer Vincent Robinson, where he saw a room re-created from Damascus, “all vermillion and gold and ultramarine, very beautiful, and is just like going into the Arabian nights.” It partly inspired the exotic motifs seen here. This design was one of the most popular among Morris’s customers; it was available in five colorways.

Object facts

• Title: Peacock and Dragon
• Date: 1878
• Creator attribution: William Morris (British, 1834–1896)
• Culture: England, Surrey, Merton Abbey
• Type: Textile
• Technique: weft-faced compound twill; wool
• Dimensions: Overall: 206.6 x 174.7 cm (81 5/16 x 68 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1953.330

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Philip White

Further reading listed by the museum

• Korkow, Cory. "Textiles." IN William Morris: Designing an Earthly Paradise. Cory Korkow and Victoria Hepburn, 8-23. Cleveland, Ohio : Cleveland Museum of Art, 2017.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.