Casket with scenes from the Story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba 1670s British This casket, the largest in the Metropolitan Museum’s collection of embroidered boxes, contains a multitude of objects, from glass bottles, which were typically fitted into boxes of the period, to a large array of sewing implements and materials, including 25 paper thread winders made from folded playing cards, several ivory thread winders, a bodkin, three ivory embroidery tools, a spool of gold filé thread, a silk tassel, several loose skeins of silk thread, a silk needle case, and a piece of detached buttonhole

Casket with scenes from the Story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba 1670s British This casket, the largest in the Metropolitan Museum’s collection of embroidered boxes, contains a multitude of objects, from glass bottles, which were typically fitted into boxes of the period, to a large array of sewing implements and materials, including 25 paper thread winders made from folded playing cards, several ivory thread winders, a bodkin, three ivory embroidery tools, a spool of gold filé thread, a silk tassel, several loose skeins of silk thread, a silk needle case, and a piece of detached buttonhole stitch fabric. Some of the objects clearly do not match the casket’s seventeenth-century date. Thread, both dyed silk and metal varieties, was purchased by weight, and the number of objects devoted to the organization of threads speaks to the value of this material. Decorated boxes intended to store sewing implements, among other things, were known on the Continent as well as in England; several seventeenth-century Dutch cushion-shaped containers survive, and seventeenth-century genre paintings confirm their practical use as supports for completion of a decorated casket or cabinet would have been considered the culmination of a young woman’s education in needlework skills, and a few boxes have survived that can be firmly attributed to schoolgirls. Martha Edlin’s dated embroidered objects form the most complete record we have of one person’s output in the seventeenth century (Victoria and Albert Museum, London), although professional contributions at any point in the work would certainly have been possible. The exuberance of the decoration and the rather indiscriminate combination of materials and techniques suggest that this casket is the work of an amateur. Contrast this with the cabinet illustrating scenes from the Life of Joseph (MMA, ), which was executed in a single technique (laid and couched silk) and precisely and evenly worked on all fa

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