A postcolonial subversion of Britain’s beloved Strawberry Thief pattern to document imperial thievery

A series of textile patterns as beautiful and as uncomfortable as the history they carry: Each piece depicts a former imperial colony or territory, replacing William Morris's English garden with the flora and fauna the British Empire destroyed or exploited in that region

— by CPYC

Pattern Catalogue

Each pattern documents a territory colonised by the British Empire through the species its occupation damaged or destroyed: birds now endangered or extinct, plants cleared or exploited for plantation monocultures, ecosystems that have never recovered, cultural meanings erased. The format is William Morris's iconic Strawberry Thief, turned back on the colonial wealth that produced it.

I'm adding to this as I learn. Each edition begins with research into a region's ecology, its colonial history, what was taken and what remains. Some of that research is documented here too, visually processed and catalogued.