Earthenware flatbacks and figurines for mantelpiece decoration were first produced in Staffordshire in the late 1830s. The earliest datable pieces appear to have been of the young Queen Victoria who was crowned in 1837. Images of royalty proved a lucrative market and between the late 1830s and the turn of the century a host of figurines were produced, celebrating figures in the royal family, politics, the navy, the Church, popular fiction, sport, circus and the theatre. The poses were frequently copied from engravings, but this figurine of Falstaff was copied from an earlier figure, made by the Derby factory, of James Quin (1693-1766) as Shakespeare's corpulent Falstaff, the character who appears in both the Henry IV plays and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Quin was Britain's foremost actor after the death of Robert Wilks in 1732 and before the London début of David Garrick in 1741, and could command extremely high salaries wherever he appeared. His fame would have ensured that he was remembered by many in the 19th century when this was made, but this figure probably sold well because it was of Falstaff rather than because of the fame of its original subject, Quin.