The label on the back of the frame suggests the interesting possibility that this is the drawing room of Reginald Blunt's flat in Carlyle Mansions, which he occupied from 1908. He was born in 1857, and after embarking on a career in engineering, he abandoned that in 1897 to take up at the invitation of his friends William de Morgan and Halsey Ricardo (architect and partner in De Morgan's ceramics business) to become manager to the De Morgan Pottery in Fulham. He became a connoisseur and collector of ceramics, an interest enshrined in the volume on the Chelsea factory published to commemorate the important exhibition which he organised. Blunt was one of the most energetic pioneers of the movement to save the historic architecture of London from unfettered commercial development, concentrating his activities on his home ground, Chelsea, where he lived much of his life from the age of three. He founded the Chelsea Society and was largely responsible for the preservation of Thomas Carlyle's house in Cheyne Row, and he published extensively on old Chelsea. He died aged 87, in 1944.