Little is known about Anne Allen aside from the fact that she created nine series of exquisite ornament etchings after the designs of her husband Jean Baptiste Pillement. (For two other examples of his work, please see the paintings Landscape with Ruin and Landscape with Cattle hanging nearby.) Here the chinoiserie designs catered to eighteenth-century taste for the exotic, but also, as the extended title reminds us (New Suite of Notebooks of Chinese Designs for the Use of Designers and Painters), served as sources of inspiration for artists. The flurry of brown ink marks in the left margin of the title plate suggests that an artist was testing out his or her pen before copying these arabesque compositions.