Princely inventories of the sixteenth century occasionally refer to pieces of furniture, like tables and cabinets, covered with glass, but very few examples actually survive. The museum has this virginal and a casket, both probably from Austria or southern Germany. They are decorated with strips of glass and glass-paste tableaux that resemble examples made in about 1600 in the ducal workshops of Schloss Ambras, near Innsbruck, in Austria. Possibly intended primarily for display in a Wunderkammer or as a property in a masque, the instrument was nevertheless designed to be played. A plucked string still produces a strong, full sound in the tradition of the Flemish virginals. This glass-covered virginal has no known parallel among keyboard instruments, and its maker and provenance remain a mystery. Being a highly decorative and mysterious object, it has acquired a number of romantic associations. These range from Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia to Queen Elizabeth I of England, whose glass virginal was seen by Paul Hentzner, a German traveller, at Hampton Court in 1600. However, what Hentzner saw was also decorated with jewels, the royal cipher and verses in Latin, none of which this instrument has.