Working from 1882 until his death in 1941 Sidney G. Mawson was a landscape painter and lecturer in textile design at the Slade School of Art in London. As a designer of textiles and wallpaper, he had a long and successful career due to his ability to change to suit the fashions of the times and the individual tastes of manufacturers.
His first known textile designs, for Thomas Wardle in the 1880s, follow Morris's work quite closely but by the end of the century he drew the more stylized floral designs in vogue at that time. Within a few years he had begun to produce naturalistic patterns in bright colours and these proved to be his most individual and successful work.
Much of his later work was printed by Morton Sundour Fabrics and sold through Liberty's. One design, "Pleasaunce" was the printer's most popular pattern.
Mawson sold designs to many other leading British manufacturers and his "Chatsworth" roller printed cotton design made by Turnbull & Stockdale for Liberty's has been on continuous sale since its design was registered in 1909.