Playful in prayer? A miniature tabernacle

This miniature tabernacle – a portable shrine – is a boxwood microcarving which is as much a virtuoso plaything as an aid to devotion. Made in the northern Netherlands around 1510, this extraordinary object comes apart in three main sections, unfolding like a flower to reveal tiny carved scenes telling the life of Jesus Christ. Dora Thornton, Curator of the Waddesdon Bequest at the British Museum, explores this miniature tabernacle, revealing the intricacies and mechanisms of this incredible piece of carved boxwood. The Waddesdon Bequest is a collection of medieval and Renaissance treasures bequeathed to the British Museum by Baron Ferdinand Rothschild in 1898. It was redisplayed in a new gallery in June 2015: