Charles Harrison Townsend is best known as an architect who designed some spectacular churches, in addition to secular buildings such as the Horniman Museum and the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. This design for a woven double cloth is partly based on a Persian motif, hence the name `Omar' (probably after the 11th century Persian poet Omar Khayyam, whose work was popular in Britain in the later 19th century), but it also has some of the characteristics of British Art Nouveau. Yet Townsend, as a member of the Arts & Crafts movement, would have rejected any connection between his work and continental Art Nouveau.