The illustration is copied from the photograph that Bedford took of the original work of art, in this case, an Indian embroidered shawl. Bedford began working as a lithographer in the 1840s, before he took up photography. From about 1850, he was employed by Day & Son, ‘lithographers to the Queen’, and worked on some of the most important illustrated art books of the nineteenth century. Probably acquired by the Royal Library in the nineteenth century