This plate was produced by Parrott & Company in Burslem, Staffordshire, in a range of ware inspired by the successful play Sweet Nell of Old Drury, originally produced at the Haymarket Theatre on 30 August 1900 by the husband and wife team of Julia Neilson (1868-1957) and Fred Terry (1863-1933). The couple married in 1891 and Sweet Nell was the first of several romantic-historical dramas with which they became indelibly associated. Although they toured extensively, they also had annual six-month seasons from 1905 until 1913 at the New Theatre, and they successfully revived Sweet Nell at the Strand Theatre in 1915. Fred Terry's great-nephew Sir John Gielgud once recalled that Terry and Neilson ‘took the theatre dreadfully seriously. This made them extremely good in rubbish. They performed in very fustian plays’.

Parrott & Company was established by Arthur William Parrott and his brother Charles Henry Parrott in about 1921 in the Albert Street Pottery, Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. It was amalgamated with Burgess and Leigh at the beginning of World War Two. Charles retired and moved to Ilfracombe but Arthur continued in the business.