A coffer (or coffering) in architecture, is a sunken panel in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault. A series of these sunken panels were use as decoration for a ceiling or a vault, also called caissons, or lacunaria, while a coffered ceiling was sometime called a lacunar. The stone coffers of the ancient Greeks and Romans are the earliest surviving examples. Wooden coffers were first made by the crossing the wooden beams of a ceiling in the Loire Valley châteaus of the early Renaissance.