Support: The support is a 2 x 2 plain-weave, processed, linen canvas stretched with horizontally oriented warp threads over a 2 ¾" wide x ¾" thick, butt joined, expansion-bolt corner, 6-window stretcher with two vertical cross bars and one horizontal cross bar. The warps are stretched vertically, and the tacking edge is stapled with Monel staples.

Ground or Support Preparation: The canvas was primed by the artist and/or her assistant. It appears to have been lightly sized with a dilute protein size of rabbit-skin glue and then primed with lean, unsanded coats of lead white and zinc white in linseed oil in alternating coats.

Design Layers: The paints are applied generally as single-layer, thinly applied, matte, stiff, vehicular paste consistencies with canvas support surface texture occasionally visible. After an initial exhibition and subsequent spray varnishing in New York, the artist requested that the painting be returned to Abiquiu, where she overpainted all of the white background paints with a second application of basic lead white. In UV-excited auto-fluorescence, lead white appears to dominate the darker shades. The artist has used linear brushwork at the margins of forms, frequently leaving unpainted primed canvas visible between forms and further emphasizing edges with a ridge of slightly raised paint.

Surface Coating: The work was varnished while in New York under the direction of Edith Halpert at the Downtown Gallery. This was against the artist's instructions, as O'Keeffe had asked her agent, Doris Bry, not to have the work varnished because she was not satisfied with the white background color (see Georgia O'Keeffe Catalogue Raisonné entry 1263). After the 1955 exhibition, Halpert returned the work to the artist in Abiquiu, where she painted additional white wall paint directly over the varnished surface, leading to adhesion issues at stretcher bar edges and in other random areas.

Framing, Backing, and Hanging Hardware: Work is installed in a micro-environmentally controlled Georgia O'Keeffe/George Of-designed, "L" profile, painted aluminum microclimate frame. The frame has a gasketed secondary backing basswood strainer, gasketed Optium glazing, and Rhapid gel RH buffering sheets behind corrugated MicroChamber board dust covers to maintain a 45% relative humidity and activated charcoal-zeolite VOC scavenger. Glazed with non-reflective, conductive Optium acrylic glazing.

The work is complete, currently considered stable, and the media is secure. At some point historically, perhaps after some water-leak damage, the canvas was mounted to a new stretcher and the dimensions of the canvas expanded, with retouched edges.

The travel history of this work, however, suggests that canvas vibration excursions during transit and handling will aggravate adhesion of paint layers at or near raised cracks and areas of weakened white paint adhesion, resulting in larger cracks and new flake losses. It is also likely that vibrations during motor transport will result in some powdery abrasions at the frame rabbet, producing powdery white displays in the frame space behind the glazing.

Care should be taken not to twist or rack the painting during removal from the crate or in handling, as this will aggravate cracks and lifting paints at the stretcher bar creases. There are stretcher bar creases and associated cracks on the viewer's bottom, left, and right margins of the canvas. But there are many other raised cracks that are associated with thickened slubs in the canvas and/or thick applications of background white paint (and associated layers). All cracks have been consolidated, flattened, and often filled and inpainted using Aquazol polyoxazoline polymers with molecular weights of 50K and 200K, along with localized heat and pressure. These treatments generally occurred following the 2011–2012 European exhibition. The cracks have remained stable since that time.

Also in 2011, the work was subjected to a fine black soot at the Rome venue. The work was cleaned overall using a sodium citrate solution buffered to pH 6.0 and cleared with water and odorless hydrocarbon mineral spirits. The heaviest regions of soiling remain deeply stained in the porous paints.