Coromandel

During the Victorian period, coromandel was regarded as one of the most exotic and expensive decorative woods used in luxury cabinetmaking and box manufacture. Its dense structure and strongly figured appearance, with dramatic contrasts between dark and lighter streaks, made it especially effective as a veneer on dressing cases, jewellery boxes and other luxury objects, particularly when combined with brass inlay, gilt fittings or richly coloured interiors.

The historical use of the name ‘Coromandel’ has not always been botanically precise, and the term has sometimes overlapped with names such as calamander, East Indian ebony and Macassar ebony. In nineteenth-century cabinetmaking it was generally used for richly figured, dark-striped ebony-type timbers associated with India, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.