Casket of incised and pierced beechwood, with pent lid. The decoration takes the form of pierced letters, the forms outlined with scored line.

Casket or box of incised and pierced beechwood. (Restored with pinewood),.
The gabled lid, hinged at one end, rests on a rectangular box with a post at each corner into which the sides are tenoned. At the top of each side is a scalloped and incised 'barge board' which continues the slope of the lid. The whole is pierced with inscriptions (probably simulated), seperated by incised leafy stems and geometrical designs. One end of the lid is incised with the intials S I D (Sigríòur Jónsdóttir [?]) and carries a small wire hook which must have engabed with a staple on the body of the casket (a section is missing at the point where the staple would have been). The other end of the lid has been replaced in pinewood. In the middle of one of the lond side of the roof is a vertical sliding panel that covers a finger-hole that allows the lid to be lifted more easily.
FRAGILE. HANDLE WITH CARE.

In 1871 the designer William Morris (1834-1896) made a first voyage to Iceland. He became a great admirer both of Icelandic literature (the Norse Sagas) and of Icelandic crafts. In 1884 Morris was invited to join the South Kensington Museum's Committee of Art Referees. He advocated the collecting of Icelandic woodwork and textiles and in the following two decades the Museum (which only received its new name of the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1899) collected a good representation of Icelandic arts. Morris admired them for their robust, formalised design.

722 & A-B -1902