Casket, Italian ? German ?, 1200-1300, wood and leather

Wood covered with embossed leather (cuir bouilli): the front, back and sides are decorated with conventional scrolling foliage forming circular compartments, which are occupied by grotesque birds and animals. The flat panel at the top of the lid is similarly ornamented, and is surrounded by a beveled border with floral scrollwork; the edges of the lid are enriched with a wavy pattern. The casket has three long hinge-bands of brass, with pierced ends, and a lock and angle-pieces of the same metal. It is divided into four compartments and is lined with paper covered with a printed pattern of foliage.

Notes by W.A.Thorpe c1959:
7767 - 1863

CASKET. Wood carcase covered in one layer of boiled leather formerly light brown in colour now (1957) dark brown, or sable, with tooled decoration.

Rectangular plan (ichnography [a groundplan, horitzontal section of a building]), with fielded lid.

Three hinge-sides of leather, travelling from the rear of the lid and terminating on the front of the lid in shaped openwork foliations. Lateral rides broken at the rear, the lower members replaced in a slightly different position by iron hinges of strap form retaining both members. Central side (latten) attached to a lower hinge member of iron. On the front of the box, two foliated terminals of latten carried on fore-rides fastened near the front of the under side. Latter lock with four sloping sides. On the fore corners of the box, and on the right-hand near corner, as of on the right-hand fore-corner of the lid and on the rear-corners of the lid, are latten tracery bands those on the other corners being long wanting and represented by scars.

Leather of the exterior decorated in low smooth relief against a darker stippled ground. On the lid, within sloping borders of broad[?] scrolled fronds, the flat panel top contains six stem roundels in two rows, each containing a creature or creatures in the Romanesque style, as follows:-




REAR ROW:

Left: an unicorn salient to the left, the head addorsed.

Middle: a sphinx sejant, facing right.

Right: a griffin passant left.

FRONT ROW
(upside down from the front)

Left: a lion passant

Middle: a goat salient

Right: a pair of eagles addorsed, the heads confronting

Round the sides of the lid, a vermiculated border.

Round the sides of the box, 15 similar stemmed roundels, space for the sixteenth rounded **** insufficient and filled as necessary with broad scroll work.


LEFT END:

(rear to front)

1. Rear: A griffin passant left
2. Middle: An unicorn passant left, the head addorsed
3. Front: A lion passant left

FRONT

(left to right):

4. Left: As 2
5. Left-Middle: As 3
6. Middle: monster sejant, capped and winged, occluded by the lock.
7. Right-Middle: a goat salient left, the head addorsed
8. Right: As 3

RIGHT END

(front to rear)

9. Front: As 2
10.Middle: a monster sejant capped and winged
11.Rear: As 3

REAR

(right to left)

12. Right: As 10
13. Right-Middle: As 3
14. As 7
15. Left-Middle: Monster occluded by hinge
16. Left: space-filling scroll

Base plain

Interior of lids lined with soft leather much worn of crimson colour, a small portion covered with lighter crimson lining with traces of foliage gift. The under-lining original or pristine.

Interior of box partitioned, with three square wells in front and one long well at the rear; Plain crimson lining, as lid, almost wholly covered by later and gilt paper lining with gilt foliage decoration

NORTH GERMAN; 13th or 14th centuries

Height: 3 ½ inches (9cm)
Width: 9 inches (23cm)
Depth: 6 ¾ inches (17.5cm)

Museum Negatives: -

No. 16809 - one end
No. 16810 - general new showing top
No. 20330 - front
No. 34488 - top only

General Remarks

Not certainly intended [?] original for hinges. The shapes appear

1. Manufacture of casket about 13th - 14th centuries in a Romanesque style probably under time-lag.
2. Latten mounts with hinges then attached[?] affixed about 15th century.
3. Lower (iron) member of central hinge dating about 17th century
Lateral lower iron hinge members of later date.

7767-1863