This furnishing fabric, originally a chair seat cover, was printed using an engraved copper plate. The introduction of copper-plate printing in the 1750s meant new possibilities in the development of printed textile design, allowing a fineness of detail and delicacy of drawing which had not been achieved in earlier wood-block printed textiles.

Francis Nixon was a pioneering printer who, at the Drumcondra Printworks near Dublin in 1752, was the first to use copper plates successfully. By 1757 he had moved to England, joining George Amyand in his calico-printing factory at Phippsbridge in Surrey. The partnership continued until their deaths in the mid 1760s, and the firm continued as Nixon & Company, until 1789.

China blue, which has been used here, was a complex process for printing with indigo known abroad as 'English blue'. It gave beautiful fast blues, but by a technique that could not be used with those needed for other colours, so 'pencilling' (hand-painting) of indigo was still needed for polychrome designs. The indigo was printed directly onto the cloth by plate or block as a finely-ground paste. The cloth was then immersed alternately in baths of lime (to dissolve the indigo) and iron-sulphate (to reduce it) as many times as was necessary to achieve the desired strength of blue.