This embroidered silk panel is not complete, but it was probably intended when finished for one of the sides of a wooden casket. Such panels would have been worked by a young girl, of about the age of 11 or 12, as the culmination of her needlework education, which would have begun with samplers, and the decoration of small objects like pin cushions. She would embroider a series of small panels drawn or printed with pictorial scenes, which would then be sent to a cabinet maker to be made up into a casket, the edges bound with braid. The caskets were fitted with a variety of drawers and compartments, suitable for keeping jewellery, writing equipment and letters, needlework tools, tiny toys or keepsakes. They often had one or two secret drawers, for their young owners' most precious or private possessions.