Exploring 17th-Century Embroidered Boxes

This is a recording of a live event, recorded on Wednesday 25 March 2026

With RSN Curator or Textiles, Dr Isabella Rosner.

Toward the end of their needlework education, many well-off girls in circa 1650-1700 England embroidered tabletop boxes called cabinets or caskets. These boxes held everything from sewing and writing supplies, to gems and jewellery, to tiny treasures in secret compartments.

Embroidered boxes are informative, thought-provoking tools through which to understand girls’ embroidery education and spaces of ownership. In this lecture Dr Isabella Rosner will survey the history of these early modern caskets and cabinets, focusing on the variety of extant boxes, their compositions, and how they served as instruments of ownership, privacy, and agency for their makers and owners. Isabella will also reveal embroidered casket panels from the RSN’s own collection.

Image credit: Cabinet with personifications of the Five Senses, 17th century, The Met Collection