The idea of decorating wood with inlay of bone or ivory in dense patterns originated in the Middle East, and the idea most likely spread through Italy from Venice, the Adriactic port with the strongest links with the Eastern Mediterranean. This type of work has often been referred to as alla certosina and associated with Carthusian monks. In more recent years it has been identified with the term found in 16th-century inventories, casse alla veneziana, or boxes in the Venetian style. This chest once belonged to Jules Soulages (d. 1856) of Toulouse, whose highly important collections of Renaissance items were acquired piecemeal by the South Kensington Museum from the late 1850s and throughout the1860s.