Scribe's Box

This box is an extraordinary example of luxury woodwork production in Spain under the Nasrid dynasty (1232-1492). Probably used by a scribe to store writing implements, it conforms to a tradition of wood inlay that can be seen on a variety of Islamic objects and furniture pieces, such as doors and mosque pulpits.

Small tassels of ebony, colored wood, and bone are used to fill the elaborate star-shaped patterns decorating the surface. The stars are distributed in square and rectangular compartments surrounded by frames of varying widths filled with combinations of geometric motifs.

The Nasrids, best known for their luxurious palace at the Alhambra, were the last Islamic dynasty to rule Spain before the Christian reconquista, or recapture, of the Iberian peninsula, which was completed in 1492 by Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile.