Featured The best "Anglo-Indian box" paper I've ever read

Before and after restoration.

 

looks like a different box altogether !!!!!!

 

Thank you These photos were taken at night, I hoped they would show the carving but I don't think the do. Again before and after

 

Dust busted and wood properly oiled? Nice!

 

No oil, just dry cleaned the carving and sanded the sadeli, fixed the crack and addressed the missing bitts. Oh and turned 4 new feet from horn.

 

Better you than me!

 

Hi Raver, couldn’t agree more. I just bought an ebony Galle Sri Lankan box for £25. The quality of some of these boxes is just amazing.

 

I’ve found that searching on eBay for arts and crafts boxes and even bog oak sometimes brings up some great finds at reasonable prices as people don’t know what they’ve got and certainly don’t know they are Indian.

 

I’ve just bought a beautiful silver tea set. It wasn’t cheap but the price I got it for was very reasonable. Collecting silver on line is very tricky as it could be plated or of low grade. I use a very good seller in the U.K. called Peter Lancaster https://www.peterlancasterantiques.com/indiansilver. He knows his stuff and his prices are reasonable. The items on his website may be on the high end but he also has an eBay store and is open to offers. My advice would be to start small with what you like and go from there.

 

Wow, that's a real winner. £25!!! I would like to see a pic, these go for very big money. Well done you, I've only managed to find 4 over the years without spending the going rate.

 

I'm sure soon you will be on the other end of a bidding war with me for a "vintage carved box" if we haven't already

 

As wooden Anglo-Indian items have become harder to buy I have started to buy metal wear but silver is too expensive for me and not knowing if it's platted or even silver at all, the risks outweigh the reward because I don't know what I'm doing.
I am starting to research Persian items, I think that's the next big thing. Some of the lacquer work, paintings, metal wear, ect are really undervalued. The only thing I'd say is the info isn't yet common knowledge or even available at all.

 

It’s not the best quality I’ve seen and there are no porcupine quill interior decorations but still nice. It was in a vintage auction with a couple of other items. The Chinese box is a very cheap one but apparently the egg is Limoges porcelain but I’ve no idea what that is or if it’s worth anything

 

Anyway back to the beginning. Thanks for uploading the article. It’s really interesting and a great read. There is one book I would love to get my hands on and it’s https://www.amazon.co.uk/Furniture-British-India-Ceylon-Collections/dp/1851773185 but as you can see it’s out of print and extortionate. .

 

I hope you know how fantastic and rare and expensive that Ceylonese carved ebony box is, it's hard to gauge the size and what the condition is but at least 20x what you paid but could be 60x in a London high end antique shop, that is where they all end up. What a find..

 

Best price I can find is £220 for the book https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/furniture-british-india-ceylon/author/amin-jaffer/

 

I'm glad you found it informative, it's not often you read an article where it compares what high end items cost the rich back then and what people earned at the same time.

 

I thought it was a good find but probably didn’t realise just how good until you said. Thanks for confirming

 

BTW "there are no porcupine quill interior decorations" it shouldn't have any porcupine quills, it might have some ivory inlay in the lid or a tray or just nothing inside, these boxes are so rare and so sort after and by the looks of the photo yours is a very good example. I have 4 Ceylonese carved ebony boxes in my whole collection, 1 writing slope + another 3 boxes, these are very very expensive to buy retail if you can even find one for sale at all.
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5803872

 

Wow. I really didn’t know they were that rare. Thanks for sharing this link. I have seen these boxes with small discs and I just assumed that these were cross sections of porcupine quills but you’re probably right and they are inlay of ivory. Thanks so much for sharing your advice and your knowledge. I always enjoy our chats on this forum.