The casket was designed by Oliver Messel for André Ernest Grétry's 18th century opera, Zémire et Azor, which was performed by the Bath Festival Society in 1955. Besides creating spatial structures, designing also means creating down to the finest detail, like this casket, which has to fit into the period feel and add a sense of opulence or fantasy. That does not mean using opulent materials. Here, a wooden box has been covered with very dark green velvet, trimmed it with strips of paper doily painted gold, with a cluster of chandelier drops on the top, surrounded with more painted gold doily. Messel frequently used chandelier drops in his costumes and accessories. The side handles are furniture fittings and the decorative feet may have come from another period box.

The use of dark green velvet is particularly subtle. Designers often avoid using black on stage, as it absorbs all the light, creating a 'black hole' without shape or form; black velvet is particularly notorious for creating this effect. The solution is to use the darkest shade of another colour, often blue or green, which do not absorb all the light and so still retain the shape of an object.

Oliver Messel (1904-1978) was Britain's leading theatre designer from the early 1930s to the mid 1950s, working in every aspect of entertainment - ballet, drama, film, musical, opera and revue - as well as in interior decoration and textile design. His lavish, painterly and romantic designs informed by period styles, were perfectly in tune with his times and earned him an international reputation. By 1960, however, Messel's style had become unfashionable, having no sympathy with the new 'kitchen sink' school of theatre. He increasingly concentrated on non-theatrical painting and designing and eventually retired to the Caribbean, where he began a new career designing and building highly idiosyncratic luxury villas.