Merton Abbey

PHOTOGRAPHS OF MORRIS AND COMPANY

Merton Abbey

Block-printing chintzes at Merton Abbey. Photographed in the 1900s.

On the left, a workman is hanging up lengths of newly-printed chintz. On the right, printers are working at long benches in front of a row of windows. Some of the carved pear-wood printing blocks can be seen on a bench in the foreground. After dyeing and printing, the final, outdoor process in the manufacture of chintzes was ‘crofting’. As described in a Morris & Co. booklet of 1911, this entailed spreading ‘the cloth on the grass with its printed face to the light, so that the whites may be purified and all fugitive colour removed in nature’s own way … the meadows round the works in fine weather are bright and gay with long strips of many-coloured material stretched upon the buttercups and daisies.’