Elaborately carved overall with panels of floral and foliate decoration within beaded borders of foliate scrolls and flower heads and coloured to resemble ebony, the lockable lid with shaped brass hinges opening to reveal a carved sandalwood interior with a central lift-out tray and with pierced decoration. The front with two drawers with brass handles and key escutcheons. The box with shaped brass stud decoration and banding and with brass carrying handles to the sides. Raised on a carved, shaped apron and four claw and ball feet.

Nagina is a small town in Uttar Pradesh, Eastern India. The forests in the region provided rich supplies of fine timbers such as ebony and also woods to fuel furnaces for metalwork. The carvers were Muslims, artisans from Multan who had been brought to Nagina's arms manufacturers for the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. Their carved designs were therefore restricted to geometric patterns and foliage. Articles were certainly being made in the region in the mid 19th century and products were marketed to Western clients via showcase events such as the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. Some of the carved boxes produced were sent to Delhi, to be further decorated with locally-produced ivory miniatures.

Jaffer discusses the products of this region and illustrates several examples of work from the Victoria and Albert Museum with carving comparable to this box. (Amin Jaffer, 'Furniture from British India and Ceylon, A Catalogue of the Collections in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum (London, V&A Publications, 2001), pp.264-266 and see V&A accession numbers 01172(IS), 01169(IS) and 01168:1 to 3/(IS)).

Although the Nagina carvers worked extensively in ebony, they also created items in other woods which were more abundant to meet market demand and to maintain profitability. In a compilation of technical knowledge from Muslim migrant carpenters, known as the Lakṛī kā kām, the practice of how to stain lighter woods was described in detail: sandalwood or rosewood were dyed with a mixture of 'madder (majīth), oak nuts (māzū), copperas (hīrā kasis), and fungal rust (zangār). Prepared over the course of three days, the dye would allow carpenters to make “ordinary” woods appear “as dark as ebony.' (see Amanda. Lanzillo, “Migrant Carpenters, Migrant Muslims: Religious and Technical Knowledge in Motion.” Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India, 1st ed., vol. 5, University of California Press, 2023, p. 108).

According to Prakash, 'By the late nineteenth century Nagina's ebony goods were famous throughout North India. Best known among them were ornately carved boxes for ladies' toilet articles, oblong containers for quill pens and ink, and a variety of delicately chiselled combs'. Sanjeev Prakash. “The Woodcarvers of Nagina.” India International Centre Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 4, 1985, pp. 373–84.

See also Sir John Loader Maffey, A monograph on wood carving in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (Allahabad, 1903), p. 18-22 for discussion of Nagina carving.