The wooden structure of this casket is entirely covered with glass rods, strips of flattened glass and lamp-worked figures and ornaments. The elaborate decoration includes several scenes from the Bible, built up of lamp-worked figures and foliage, interspersed with pieces of mineral, all stuck onto the frame with a resinous material and backed with fine silk.
Such fine lamp-worked scenes were first developed by Venetian glassmakers on the island of Murano. However, the style of our casket is particularly close to some lamp-worked panels in the collection of Schloss Ambras, the castle of Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol. These panels can already be identified in the 1596 inventory of Ambras.
Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol (1529-1595) built the extensive Ambras castle on a mountain top overlooking Innsbruck. A true “Renaissance prince” and an enthusiastic patron of the arts and sciences, Ferdinand amassed a large collections of artefacts for which he built a special display room.
At Ambras, Ferdinand also ran a glass workshop from 1572 until 1591 which he manned with Venetian craftsmen from Murano. They introduced lampworking, a technique that used heat from a lamp to melt and shape the glass. It is most likely that our casket was also the work of the Venetian craftsmen working at Ambras in the Tyrol. Inside, the casket has several compartments with mirror-covered lids which were probably used to store precious objects such as jewellery.