The Omega Workshops were founded in 1913 by the British designer and painter Roger Fry (1866-1934). Motivated in part by the commercial success of several European artist workshops such as the Weiner Werkstätte, Fry brought together a group of artists to design furniture, pottery, glass, textiles and entire schemes of interior decoration. Believed to have been printed in France by Besselièvre, Omega textiles, which included hand painted batiks, machine printed linens and hand-tufted rugs were progressive in style, mirroring contemporary aesthetic preoccupations within the fields of painting and sculpture.

Drawing upon his fine-art background, Fry believed that Omega's textile designs should err on the side of spontaneity, reflecting an expressive quality that only the artist's hand could invoke. One of just six printed linens produced by Omega, Maud (probably named after Lady Maud Cunard), was available in four colour ways. The striking design is attributed to Omega's co-director, Vanessa Bell (1879-1961). Whilst it may have proved a touch too extrovert for everyday fashions, Fry wore Maud pyjamas in 1918 to a party for the Ballet Russes, and Duncan Grant (1885-1978) used Maud within his costume designs for Cocteau's experimental production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in 1914.