Certosina in the context of Carthusian

A casket is a decorative box or container that is usually smaller than a chest and is typically decorated. In recent centuries they are often used as boxes for jewelry, but in earlier periods they were also used for keeping important documents and many other purposes. Many ancient caskets are reliquaries, for both Buddhist and Christian relics.

A tall round casket is often called a pyxis, after a shape in Ancient Greek pottery; these were popular in Islamic art, often made from a section of the ivory tusk of an elephant.

The Embriachi workshop (Italian: Bottega degli Embriachi) was an important producer of objects in carved ivory and carved bone, set in a framework of inlaid wood. They operated in north Italy from around 1375 to perhaps as late as 1433, apparently moving from Florence to Venice about 1395. They are especially known for what are now called marriage caskets or wedding caskets, hexagonal or oblong caskets about a foot across, with lids that rise up in the centre. Their output of these was probably made for stock rather than individual commissions, and filled a market for gifts for betrothals and weddings. They sold mirrors framed in a similar style, though fewer of these have survived, and religious pieces both small and in a few cases very large.

The workshop takes its name from Baldassare Ubriachi or Baldassare Embriachi, variously described as a nobleman, merchant and diplomat, or an "international man of business and politics". He was presumably not a carver himself, but supplied the capital, and no doubt was involved with negotiating the larger sales to courts and nobles north of the Alps; some documentary records of this survive. His two sons eventually carried on the business, also probably never carving anything themselves.

Intarsia is a form of wood inlaying that is similar to marquetry. The practice dates from before the seventh century AD. The technique inserts sections of wood (at times with contrasting ivory or bone, or mother-of-pearl) within the solid wood matrix of floors and walls or of tabletops and other furniture; by contrast marquetry assembles a pattern out of veneers glued upon the carcass.

Certosina is a variant also using pieces of ivory, bone or mother of pearl. Intarsia is mostly used in Italian, or at least European work. Similar techniques are found over much of Asia and the Middle East.