Ever since their marriage in January, 1909, Maxwell and Constance Armfield worked in close collaboration with one another. Shortly after this work was created, the International Studio magazine featured a three page article on the embroidered work that the Armfield’s had exhibited with the National Society of Craftsmen; this was held at the New York Arts Club on Gramercy Park, where they had a studio apartment and re-established their Greenleaf Theatre during much of the First World War. It is likely that this picture featured in this 1916 exhibition, which was rapturously reviewed in the press. That December, Armfield was recorded by his wife as covering the bare rooms of their apartment with flowers, while she made samplers and cushions and gave a course of eight lectures on English embroidery, and he painted murals, canvases, tempera panels and made wall-hangings and embroideries. She particularly noted some “wonderful embroidered flowers on black silk – a jewelled blaze of colour”, which appeared on the cover of the December 1916 issue of the fashionably progressive American Ladies Home Journal. The following year, they began making embroidered hangings on a larger scale, as screens and wall and table covers.