In the last 20 years of the 19th century it became fashionable in interior decoration to divide the wall into three sections: the dado which ran around the room from the skirting up to a height of 3 or 4 feet, then the filling which was an all-over repeating pattern and above this, a frieze on the upper part of the wall up to the ceiling or cornice (a moulding between wall and ceiling). Like this example, the frieze often had a bold pattern.

William Shand Kydd (1864-1936) had worked for the wallpaper manufacturer Hayward & Son before setting up his own wallpaper business in London in 1891. In the early years he designed most of the papers himself. They were highly praised at the time for their originality, confident design, and beautiful colouring. The company became very successful and supplied papers to the most fashionable London furnishing shops.

This frieze was produced by printing the outlines of the pattern from a carved wood block, and then filling in the colour using stencils. Stencils had been used to apply colour to wallpapers in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. In the 1880s it was reintroduced to commercial wallpaper production by Hayward & Sons. Shand Kydd learned the technique when he worked for the company and went on to use it for many of the wallpapers and friezes produced by his own firm.