Unlike many Jewish ceremonial objects whose form is functionally plain, the besamim box became, from the medieval period onward, one of the most decoratively elaborate items of Jewish domestic ritual silver, and its most recognizable traditional shape, a miniature tower with a spire, crenellations and small bells or flags, is thought by scholars to echo either contemporary church spires and civic towers in the European communities where the form developed, or Jerusalem's Second Temple architecture as medieval and early modern craftsmen imagined it; accounts differ and the form's exact origin remains debated among scholars of Jewish material culture. Fruit and flower shapes, particularly the pomegranate with its associations of fruitfulness and the Torah's six hundred and thirteen commandments, developed alongside the tower form as an alternative popular in Sephardi and some Central European communities, and filigree work, wood, and other materials also appear regionally.
Because Havdalah is a home ceremony performed weekly rather than a synagogue rite, the besamim box functioned historically as a family's own decorative investment in ritual practice in a way comparable to Sabbath candlesticks or a Seder plate, an object commissioned, inherited and sometimes given as a wedding or bar mitzvah gift, and surviving examples in Judaica collections range from simple turned wood pieces to elaborate silver towers by named European silversmiths, reflecting both the wealth of the commissioning family and the regional decorative traditions of the Jewish community that made or bought them.