This is a fine example of a Burmese pictorial textile hanging known as a kalaga. The owner would have used it either as a decorative wall hanging, a room partition, or as a screen hung outside the house on festive occasions. This one is decorated with embroidered stitch-work and appliqué of coloured textiles (partly painted) on a red wool ground.

This kalaga illustrates episodes from a popular legend known as Manohari, based on the Malaysian and Indonesian Panji legends and plays, which were also current in Burma. In the scene depicted here, the heroine, Princess Manohari or Dway Mai Naw, prepares to leave court and flee to the country of her birth to escape being offered as a sacrifice. Behind her is a court scene in which she and her princely husband are shown in happier times, seated in state attended by two ministers. The costumes of the figures are depicted in the stylised tradition of Burmese theatre and relate to fashions worn in the Mandalay Court of about 1880. The kalaga itself dates to the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Britain controlled the whole of Burma by 1885. The extravagant style of kalagas appealed to Burmese and Europeans alike and their popularity soared in the mid 19th century. The donor of this kalaga obtained it from a British architect who worked in Burma in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.