This tile showing Priscilla Hopkins (1754-1784) as Lavinia in Titus Andronicus by Wiliam Shakespeare is one of a series of late 18th-century tiles of actors and actresses produced in Liverpool by John Sadler (1720-1789). Sadler experimented with transfer-printing on white glazed delftware tiles, transferring images from engraved copper plates to tiles, using enamel colours that were fixed during low-temperature firing.

Actors and actresses could become extremely well known in the18th century, when theatres, concert halls and pleasure gardens were the major forms of public entertainment. Engravers regularly produced images of paintings of the most popular performers, so the ability to reproduce engravings on ceramics was a lucrative development. Since the engravings were transfer-printed, the original images appear on the tiles in reverse.

Born in London, the younger daughter of actors William and Elizabeth Hopkins, Miss Hopkins first appeared on the London stage in April 1773 when she read an address at her parents' benefit performance of As You Like It. She became a full-time actress at Drury Lane in the 1775-1776 season, aged 17. Her first marriage was to the actor William Brereton was followed, after his death, by marriage to the famous actor John Philip Kemble. They married on 8 December 1787, and that evening she appeared on stage at Drury Lane in The West Indian. Her acting of comic roles was considered better than that of tragic ones but she was never especially praised by critics and retired from the stage in 1796, aged 38.