Much of the decoration in Mughal and other Indian courts was provided by patterned textiles, both on the floor and the walls, as well as in the colourful dress of the courtiers. This elegant embroidered panel would have been hung on a wall or perhaps used as a curtain over a window. The design, of a flowering plant placed within an arched niche, is typical of Mughal production in the seventeenth century, and variations of it can be seen in all media from architecture to manuscript painting.

This hanging was made by professional male embroiderers from Gujarat in western India, an area famed even today for its fine embroidery. The craftsmen were of the Mochi community, originally workers in leather, who adapted the chain-stitch they used to decorate shoes and horse-trappings to embroidery on cloth. Their work was so fine that it was sought after by the Mughal court and also traded to Europe through the East India Company in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The fineness of the work on this piece, and the beautifully dyed silk threads, using indigo and expensive lac dye, indicate that it was almost certainly used at the Mughal court.