Writing box with Camões inscription
Not on view
This writing box belongs to the sixteenth-century world of Portuguese expansion into the Asia. It exemplifies the way Portuguese in Asia commissioned European-style furnishings using Asian materials and craftsmanship. This small cabinet, with a locking mechanism, served as a secure place to store confidential documents and correspondence as well as writing implements and sealing wax for its Portuguese owner. Whether at a company factory, or at sea, such a writing box provided safe, and portable storage. That it is embellished on all its visible surfaces with low relief carving, richly lacquered and gilded, underscores its importance to the owner as a prestige object.
