This hand-coloured woodcut by Albert Schmidt, a German publisher of popular prints and playing cards, was printed in about 1700 in Augsburg, Germany, and coloured later by hand with watercolour. It represents a scene in a drawing room with a woman and children engaged in sewing, embroidery and lace-making while a servant offers the lady of the house refreshments from a tray of fruit and a lidded jug. It was made as a scene for the biblical story of The Legend of the Prodigal Son, and is one of a series of six relating to this story. Sheets like this relating to various biblical stories were probably the basis for an early form of German Toy Theatre.

The series also includes a sheet of characters, with four boars and a trough. From the way the characters are portrayed and set out on the sheet it appears that it was meant to be cut up and used in performance in conjunction with a text. It is unlikely that the images were meant for one static three-dimensional image like a 'Nativity', but rather for performance.