CASSONE  , in

furniture, the Italian name for a marriage coffer . The ancient and once almost universal European custom of providing a bride with a chest or coffer to contain the household linen, which often formed the major part of her dowry, produced in Italy a special type of chest of monumental size and artistic magnificence . The cassoni of the people, although always large in size, were simple as regards ornament; but those of the nobles and the well-to-do mercantile classes were usually imposing as regards size, and adorned with extreme richness . The cassone was almost invariably much longer than the English chest, and even at a relatively early period it assumed an artistic finish such as was never reached by the chests of northern Europe, except in the case of a few of the royal corbeilles de mariage made by such artists as Boulle for members of the house of France . Many of the earlier examples were carved in panels of geometrical tracery, but their characteristic ornament was either intarsia or gesso, or a mixture of the two . Bold and massive feet, usually shaped as claws, lioncels, or other animals are also exceedingly characteristic of cassoni, most of which are of massive and sarcophagus-like proportions with moulded lids, while many of them are adorned at their corners with figures sculptured in high relief . The scroll-work inlay is commonly simple and graceful, consisting of floral or geometrical motives, or arabesques . The examples coated with gilded gesso or blazoned with paintings are, however, the most magnificent . They were often made of chestnut, and decorated with flowers and foliage in a relief which, low at first, became after the Renaissance very high and sharp . The panels of the painted cassoni frequently bore representations of scriptural and mythological subjects, or incidents derived from the legends of chivalry . Nor was heraldry forgotten, the arms of the family for which the chest was made being perhaps emblazoned upon the front . These chests rarely bear dates or initials, but it is often possible to determine their history from their armorial bearings .