This fashionable Victorian printed furnishing cotton is a typical example of the most expensive and popular form of summer furnishing available in the mid-19th century. The cotton would have been used for curtains and loose covers on chairs and beds.

This cotton was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851 by Jackson and Graham, the most popular high-class furnishing shop in London throughout the mid-Victorian period. This cotton was also selected for the exhibition False Principles in Design (cat. 11) at the Museum of Ornamental Art, Marlborough House, London, in 1852.

This was one of four examples of cotton singled out by Henry Cole (1808-1882) as poor design because of their 'direct imitations of nature'. The entry in the catalogue to the False Principles in Design exhibition explains his reasons for selecting this piece: 'the ground, which should be light in a chintz, [is] entirely obscured by the pattern. General want of repose.' In his introduction to the section on chintzes Richard Redgrave (1804-1888) stresses the need for 'lightness and elegance of form and colour' for summer use cottons. For him this pattern was too dark, too dense in motif and too three-dimensional to be acceptable.