In contrast to traditional stained glass, which was coloured with metallic oxides when molten, this fragment was made using a technique introduced to England in the early part of the 14th century. This consisted of painting a compound of silver on the back of the glass. After firing in a kiln, the silver compound would turn yellow. Many panels from the 14th and 15th centuries are decorated simply in yellow (silver) stain and highlighted with a brown–black pigment. Since the technique reduced the amount of leading required, it allowed greater freedom of composition.

This fragment shows the head of a woman. She is wearing a headdress with an ermine trim. This would indicate that she was either a woman of royal birth or the Virgin Mary, who would also wear such regal clothing. Not enough survives for us to identify what type of image this woman would once have been part of. It is likely that it came from a church.

The religious conflicts that affected the British Isles in the 16th and 17th centuries had a devastating effect upon the decorative arts and furnishings of the Christian church. As a result, much of the glass from this time survives only in a fragmentary state.