Ben Nicholson first met Alaistair Morton, founder of Edinburgh Weavers, in the early 1930s. He was struggling financially as an artist and so was grateful for the work Morton passed his way, especially during the war years. Nicholson gave the original design for this fabric as a painting to Morton in 1940 accompanied by a letter in which he wrote, 'I wonder if you would like the enclosed piece of nursery realism for your realistic nursery? Tell me frankly if you don't like it, or if it is too much like the one you have ... I imagine it in a narrow white frame and hung low down'. Morton subsequently translated the painting into a repeat pattern for a nursery fabric.

Jake Nicholson, Ben's son by his first marriage to Winifred Nicholson, remembers that the animals in his paintings usually had names. 'Dogs were called Booboo or Ponto, and horses seemed to be George, or if they were roan coloured, Rufus, and they tended to be skittish. There was also a stag called Johnny and even a crocodile called Billy.'