This design is a preparatory technical drawing for a patterned silk. It acted as instructions for the weaver about how to tie up the threads on the loom and then weave in the pattern. It is one of a group of 1577 such designs commissioned by a silk manufacturing partnership active in Lyon, the most prestigious centre of the silk industry in Europe from the 1660s onwards.

The partnership was called L. Galy, Gallien et cie from 1761 until the beginning of 1771 when the senior partner Louis Galy retired. Louis Gallien continued the business under the name L. Gallien et cie into the late 1780s, by which time he was specialising in plain rather than patterned silks. It was one of Lyon’s 400 manufacturing concerns mid century and it kept good records, noting on the back of the designs the company name, the number of the design, the date, and minimal instructions on how it should be woven. Such information allowed the manufacturers to go back to the original design work if they received requests for a reweave of the design.

The inscription on the back reveals that this design was completed on 10 February 1762 and was no. 668 in the archive of L. Galy, Gallien et cie. The stamp reveals that it belonged to an early 20th-century designer who may have used it as inspiration for his own designs. The curvaceous pattern is typical of this decade in French silk production, and according to the instructions on the back would have been woven in a monochrome or cameo effect and contained metal threads.