An Indo-Portuguese casket

A rectangular Gujarati tortoiseshell casket of prismatic lid, a well-known shape often favoured for such objects. The chased silver mounts protecting the box’s angles mimic contemporary European wooden caskets reinforced with iron bars and coated in tooled leather or cuir bouilli. Its silver lid edges and horizontal band mounts are engraved with overlapping fish-scale motifs, flanked by fish-scale or feather friezes of decorated edges. Additionally the palmette-shaped corner brackets that raise the casket’s height while simultaneously protecting the fragile tortoiseshell edges, are decorated with foliage scrolls and animals on a European-style streaked ground. The raised square box lock, set on a pierced cartouche plate, features a lizard shaped latch characteristic of this particular production. Probably due to accidental damage shortly after completion, the casket lid was reinforced with a thin sheet of silver along its top length.

The bracket fittings, the lock and the hinges chased decoration of foliage sprays, birds and animals is, in is simplicity, somewhat reminiscent of European Renaissance decorative prints. Only the brackets shape reminds us of the sumptuary arts of the Deccan.

This rare and precious casket dating from the second-half of the 16th century, originally used as a jewellery box, is constructed out of golden and translucent tortoiseshell plaques without any of the darker markings characteristic of this exotic material as, unlike the majority of other known examples, the raw material for its making was selected from the turtle dorsal spotless scutes rather than from the densely patterned dorsal area.

The physical process to which the material was subjected in order to achieve large plaques of invisible joints and specific gauge is known as autografting. Contrary to previous assumptions it is possible to identify with certainty the specific turtle species that provided the raw material for this, as well as for all the other Gujarat, Cambay or Surat tortoiseshell caskets made using identical technique.[1] In fact, of two marine turtle species used in Asia for producing decorative objects, the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) and the hawksbill sea turtle (Eretmochelys imbricate), only the latter is viable for autografting.[2] These caskets are therefore free standing and do not require any metal elements to ensure functionality.[3] As such the metal fittings were often not made in Gujarat but in other Indian regions or even as far afield as China.[4]

One of the earliest specific documental references to Gujarati tortoiseshell caskets is to be found in the 1556 post-mortem inventory of Afonso de Castelo-Branco, Lisbon court bailiff: “one tortoiseshell casket mounted in silver worth 2,000 reais”.[5]

One casket of identical shape and European character as well as of similar chased silver decoration and corner brackets albeit made from mottled tortoiseshell plaques, formerly in the Alfredo Guimarães and Arthur de Sandão collections has been recently published.[6] One other identical casket but of more native silver decoration and exclusively made of hawksbill turtle ventral scutes belongs to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (inv. M.10&A-1945). The present casket, rare for its spotless tortoiseshell carcass, belonged to Luís Cristiano Cinatti Keil (1881-1947), son of the artist Alfredo Cristiano Keil (1850-1907), curator and interim director at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga and director at the Museu Nacional dos Coches. It would be inherited by his nephew, architect Francisco Keil do Amaral (1910-1975) and then by the latter’s son Francisco Pires Keil do Amaral (b.1935)