Casket

On view in gallery 154, first floor

Silver caskets of this type were produced in pairs from the seventeenth century as components of large toilet services that also included a mirror, hair and clothes brushes, an ewer and basin, candlesticks, scent bottles, powder boxes, and scissors. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, caskets were also being made and marketed as independent objects in their own right, designed to contain everything from manuscripts to jewelry.

Renaissance-style caskets similar to this one were praised by contemporaries in 1851 as "an admirable specimen in the Cinquecento style, engraved with much delicacy," and another that "would do honor to its renowned Florentine prototype." These caskets were tour-de-force accomplishments of the gold- and silversmiths who made them.