This highly fashionable, expensive woven silk furnishing probably appealed to only a small number of rich clients with avant-garde tastes. Despite a lack of documentation, there is strong circumstantial evidence that this pattern was designed by E. W. Godwin. Between 1874 and 1876 the designer sold designs to the silk weaver Benjamin Warner (1828-1908), whose firm, Warner & Ramm, manufactured it. Furthermore, the motif of a stylised chrysanthemum flower head surrounded by three butterflies is taken directly from Japanese crests published at the time. A book of crests now in the Hunterian Collection, University of Glasgow, is known to have belonged to Godwin's wife, Beatrice.
As contractor weavers, Warner & Ramm would have sold their furnishings through a fashionable London shop rather than directly to the public. Benjamin Warner, the founder of the Warner firm, was trained at the Spitalfields School of Design. In 1870 he set himself up as a silk designer at 451 Bethnal Green Road, in the heart of the London silk industry. By 1874 he had opened a factory nearby. Known at first as Warner Sillett and Ramm, the firm soon became one of the leading manufacturers in the field.