Chests and Coffers
Before modern travelling requisites were known and in the days when journeys were few, the leather-covered coffer contained the whole travelling outfit of perhaps some noble lord and his household. There were also large coffers covered with leather used as permanent receptacles of clothing, covered with ornamental embossed leather work, some very decorative. There were smaller coffers, too; possibly they were jewel caskets in their day. There are others which may have been presentation cases, for their decoration is especially elaborate. In making these continental craftsmen seem to have excelled. In the Victoria and Albert Museum there is a curious German casket of wood covered with leather, strongly bound with iron, having three immense hasps from which locks once hung, altogether too massive for the little casket. One would think such precautions were of not much avail against theft, for the box itself could be removed readily! There is another charming little casket, with a circular or dome-shaped top, decorated and banded, a veritable prototype of the tin trunks generally in use a quarter of a century ago. There is also a remarkable piece, a wood box covered over with leather embossed by the cuir boulli process. The chief design takes the form of two armed horsemen, surrounded by grotesque ornament on the top, on the sides being hunting scenes, episodes of the chase. This curious example of the work of seventeenth-century artists in leather measures 16½ in. in length by 12½ in. in width. Another typical piece, of a highly decorative allegorical character, is a rectangular coffret with arched lid, the ornament being in colours and gilt. On the front is a knight and a lady, on the lid two paladins mounted on griffins, two savages with clubs and shields, and two images of the sun, these typifying the story of the delivery of a captured lady by a knight.