Lounging in the window seat of her country house circa 1780, 12-year-old Elizabeth is working on her half finished sampler. Made using costly, brightly-coloured silk thread on linen, it is a fashionable scene of a shepherdess and her flock, beneath a verse from the Bible, an alphabet and rows of symmetrical patterns. Elizabeth is pleased with it, as is her governess, who has been employed to teach her the skills deemed suitable for wealthy young woman of the time.
