Zika and Lida Ascher were Czech émigrés who moved to London in 1939, setting up a small textile production company. In 1945 Ascher commissioned a number of leading modern British painters, sculptors, graphic artists and theatrical designers who would incorporate all the verve and vitality of the modern art scene in designs for headscarves. The brief was relatively simple, contributors were asked to produce designs, in any medium colour or size, for a 90 centimetre silk or rayon square. Artists could choose their own subject matter; it was left to Ascher to choose the design which best typified each individual style.

The family group and mother and child, which had captured Moore's imagination since his early visits to the British Museum reflect his own personal experience of maternal devotion but also became evocative symbols of the ideal domestic relationship, providing a sense of community, parental unity and stability after the dark days of the war. This sense of the innate ability of humanity to survive even the most atrocious of events would continue to influence Moore's work and would prove enormously popular with both the popular and specialist press.