This ‘coffer’ is one of an original set of four display cabinets on oak stands (its stand is now missing). The set was made for William Beckford (1760–1844), probably to his own design, for Lansdown Tower, Bath. Beckford was the son of an immensely rich and highly cultivated sugar-planter, and himself became one of the most important collectors and patrons of his generation. His most famous creation, the extravagant mock-Gothic Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire, was built from the late 1790s on the site of his father’s mansion Fonthill Splendens. In 1823, however, Fonthill Abbey and its contents had to be sold to pay off Beckford’s accumulated debts. Beckford afterwards moved to 20 Lansdown Crescent in Bath. About a mile uphill from the house he built Lansdown Tower in neo-Renaissance style to house his re-growing art collection. He collaborated with his architect H. E. Goodridge to design the interiors and furnishings, including the set of coffers on stands, which stood in the corners of the ‘Scarlet Drawing Room’. They housed some of Beckford’s most precious works of art, their sober, ginger palette serving as a foil to the glittering objects of gilt metail and colourful hardstone that they contained. In 1841 the coffers were altered for Beckford by the Bath cabinet-making firm of English & Son. It is likely that they had also made the coffers in their original form, about ten years earlier.