Designed by Joseph Nash, this is one of the set of views published with accompanying text as Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition. The prints used the newly available technique of colour lithography to record scenes from the popular 1851 Exhibition. This particular scene shows the Tunisian exhibit, Tunisia being one of few African countries represented at the Exhibition. Exhibits were selected by the bey, Mushir Basha, and included a Bedouin tent. The wealth of material displayed and the charisma of the exhibitors, Hamda Elmkadden and his assistant Saido Belais, ensured that the exhibit proved ‘one of the most remarkable features’ of the Exhibition.

Following the Exhibition, a government grant was awarded to a committee headed by Henry Cole to purchase items from the Exhibition to form the basis of a Museum of Manufactures (later the V&A). These were selected on the basis of the extent to which they exemplified ‘some right principle of construction or of ornament, or some feat of workmanship’. Thirteen textiles items were chosen from the Tunisian exhibit for ‘exhibiting the good taste, and true principles which are found even in the humblest works of the Arab tribes’.