Silk and satin playbills and programmes were commonly produced in the 18th and 19th centuries to mark special evenings at the theatre, often lavishly fringed and sometimes even illustrated with an engraved image. They are rarely produced nowadays, and if attempts to make them occur today, they are usually made of a synthetic fabric and rarely of silk.

This luxuriously fringed programme was produced to mark the opening in 1907 of the Grand Theatre of Varieties, Birmingham, in Corporation Street where it had been built in 1883 as the Grand Theatre. When it was reopened as the Grand Theatre of Varieties it became yet another Moss Empires Theatre, one of the chain of Variety Theatres owned and run by Sir Edward Moss and Oswald Stoll who merged their businesses in 1898. When they opened a new theatre, they invariably mounted a Grand Opening Night featuring a luxurious silk programme, and a star attraction - in this case, the popular magician Chung Ling Soo.