Before the advent of central heating, warmth was provided by open fires, braziers or solid-fuel stoves in the main living rooms of a house. To maintain a fire all day demands a certain level of skill - knowing when to add more fuel, when to poke the fire and when to leave it alone - and a range of specialist tools. Bellows like these were designed to add oxygen to a smouldering fire, encouraging it to burn more fiercely.

The opulent decoration of these bellows is achieved using boulle marquetry, named after its most famous proponent, André Charles Boulle (1642–1732), cabinet-maker to Louis XIV of France, although these bellows were almost certainly made in France between 1860 and 1880. The technique of boulle involves cutting patterns out of a sandwich of layers of brass or pewter and layers of turtle shell, to create both a dark motif with a light background and a light motif with a dark background. The contrast created by using metal and turtle shell is heightened by staining the shell or, as in this case, backing it with a coloured foil (here red). Detail was added to both the metal and the turtle shell by engraving, which was often filled with black or white mastic (though this has rarely survived centuries of wear and polish). These bellows have the same design on both sides, but while the front has a tortoiseshell background with brass motifs, the back has a brass background with tortoiseshell motifs.