Casket (decorative box)
container, generally rectangular with a lock, for jewelry or trinkets
A casket is a decorative box or container that is usually smaller than a chest and is typically decorated. In recent centuries they are often used as boxes for jewelry, but in earlier periods they were also used for keeping important documents and many other purposes. Many ancient caskets are reliquaries, for both Buddhist and Christian relics.
A tall round casket is often called a pyxis, after a shape in Ancient Greek pottery; these were popular in Islamic art, often made from a section of the ivory tusk of an elephant.
The term "casket" overlaps with strongbox (or strong box), a heavily made box for storing or transporting coin and other valuables. These include more metal, in bands or as the main material, and are functional rather than decorative. Though caskets are often regarded as boxes for jewelry, at least until the Renaissance this was probably not a common use, as at least the most serious jewelry was kept in a strongbox.
History
Surviving caskets from early periods are often made using precious materials, especially ivory, around a wooden framework. In East Asia lacquer over wood is common. The house-shaped chasse is a very common shape for reliquaries in the Early and High Middle Ages, often in Limoges enamel, but some were also secular.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Casket (decorative box)” as container, generally rectangular with a lock, for jewelry or trinkets. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q639460. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Casket (decorative box)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.