A delicious array of fruit hangs before us. See pomegranates, cut open to reveal a host of arils, as well as lemons, peaches, and oranges, all impossibly dangling off the very same branches. Reality and gravity here are happily suspended for a short while in this edenic scene of growth and abundance.
Fruit was one of the earliest designs William Morris made for Morris & Co. You can see this in the flat treatment of the branches and leaves, giving it an artful simplicity. Fruit or ‘Pomegranate’ (its other name at the time) was chosen as the wallpaper in Jane Morris’ bedroom at Kelmscott House, where she lived with Morris in Hammersmith, London.