WORKBOXES AND GLOVE BOXES

Moving on to the larger affairs, there are, of course, all the workboxes, with their fascinating array of ivory, bone or mother-of-pearl accessories : everyone should have one of these if only to get a glimpse of what the needlewoman used in other days. Then there are glove boxes, some covered with fancy paper and frills, others painted like the powder boxes. Oval ones, for bands of ribbon, are I believe called band or “brides boxes” and were filled with ribbons. With all these boxes it is very necessary to inspect the hinges—superfluous advice, one would have thought, but many a pretty box has been brought home, only for it to be found that the weak hinge could not be repaired.

Have a look, too, at all those little boxes in red lacquer from China and Japan, and also those made in imitation of them by industrious Victorian fingers in stamped sealing wax. Sometimes these are made so that they can carry a small album of photographs. Then there is a sort of wooden box which was quite overlooked until quite recently, but is now being looked for by some collectors. These are made of box or yew or some other yellow hardwood and are transfer- printed, like pottery, with views and pictures. They come in many shapes, even round wool or string boxes.

Antique Collector Magazine

KNIFE BOXES

You may at some time or another have seen a box with holes for knives or with the insides ripped out, and fitted up as a stationery cabinet. In fact, they make very practical ones, and can look very handsome on a writing table or desk. They usually went in pairs, though when you find them so they are apt to be expensive. A fairly plain singleton, from Regency days, should be obtainable for five pounds or so.

In case you wonder why people should have used such elegant receptacles for knives, you may like to know a little more about them. You will notice they have locks, and in fact this gives a clue. Silver cutlery was very valuable in the eighteenth century and it would have been asking for trouble to send it out to the kitchen with the rest of the washing up. So these knives were washed in the pantry or dining room and stuck into the holes in these cases—you could spot blank spaces at a glance.

TOBACCO BOXES

You could make an enormous collection of the different sorts of tobacco boxes. First, there are those very heavy ones in lead, like that shown in our picture. It has a negro’s head on the lid for a knob, a favourite device, and a lion’s head at each end. There are others with lions and other animals or a portrait of Nelson or Wellington. Some have scenes stamped on the sides in relief, and usually show traces of colour: once upon a time they must have been brightly painted. Quite another type of box is the one with the cribbage score board on top, which I bought for 25s. not very long ago. This is in what appears to be an Eastern variant of pewter, and the lid, which fits right down to the feet, is twice as heavy as the lower part. No doubt this, as well as the English lead one, had a metal plate inside to press the tobacco down. From the decoration of leaves and scrolls it seems to be Chinese in origin: I wonder if the Oriental metalsmith had the least idea why the exporting merchant wanted those cribbage peg holes punched in the top!

Brassfounders have been well to the fore with tobacco boxes, and in fact many a one thought to be antique has been sent here by the enterprising Dutch within the last fifty years. Some of these are oval, some long and narrow, while others can be in the shape of books or birds, particularly the owl. From Holland, too, come many of those in delftware, the lids painted with pictures of men smoking.

A close relative of the tobacco box is the tinder box, not so easy to find now, especially with its “stroker” in the form of an animal or bird. They are usually in iron or brass, and often engraved and occasionally you will come across one of the “pistol” boxes, shaped like a pistol and actually behaving like one as it fires a little charge of gunpowder to ignite.

I suppose one has to call Doulton’s contribution jai,rather than boxes, but pottery tobacco boxes there are, with an inner lid to press down the tobacco just as with the metal boxes.

TUNBRIDGE WARE

Boxes, large and small, are among the very many things made of Tunbridge ware, a kind of wooden mosaic work, or,, more accurately, marquetry. You will recognize it b seeing articles with pictures made from tiny pieces of different coloured and stained woods. It must have been a highly laborious process, for all these little squares are the ends of slips of wood selected for their colours which have been glued together in blocks to make up the desired pattern. These blocks were sawn across the end in sheets, and this artificial veneer was then mounted on the carcase of the piece. The work gets its name from the place of manufacture, in Kent, where it was made throughout most of the nineteenth century. Some pieces show views, others arebuilt up in “cube marquetry” patterns, while there is another class which has a “marbled” effect, the veneer being built up at random from different coloured wood shavings.

There is another and much rarer sort of marquetry made, not of wood, but of straw, by French prisoners of war near Peterborough during Napoleonic times. About six thousand men were imprisoned there, and to eke out their slender resources they made these items from the local straw, selling them to visitors to the prison. Best quality straw was dyed in colours and pressed, then it was slit into tiny pieces with a special tool (a lady in Hertfordshire I know still has one of these), and glued on to the carcase of the article, like a mosaic. These pieces, when in good condition, are worth a good deal of money now, and there is, or was, a collection of them in the Peterborough museum.

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All Sorts of Boxes Collection continue…