Good Afternoon All! I need your help with this wooden keepsake box/chest

I just didn’t know if I should put it under jewelry for furniture. I bought this box today and it has a marking, but there is a bit of damage where the mark is and I can only make out the last three letters QES. The image looks painted. I am thinking Spanish islands or the Caribbean. The inside mirror looks antique or very vintage because of the golden scrolling on the mirror. Any information you can give me on this piece would be

greatly appreciated.

 

Not painted. I can faintly pick up the 4-color process printing pattern on the close up.

 

See it too. Along with some letters. (.....OES.)

Debora

 

Why would there be ANY letters in the middle of the sidewalk?


Wooden decorative unlined trinket/keepsake box?

 

Thank you all for your response so quickly! So would you say from the age of mirror it's more like 60's or later?

 

Given where it is, I'm thinking the name of town?

 

It's a cedar souvenir box. If it were regular wood I'd be thinking it came with chocolates or tobacco originally, but it may just be a souvenir. My guess would be 1950s made in an earlier style.

 

It would be helpful if you posted a photograph of the printed panel shot straight on rather than at a slant.

Debora

 

I recall similar cedar boxes from the 1950s, came with stationery inside, blank paper and envelopes. When stationery was depleted, we used the box for jewelry or trinkets.

 

Spanish souvenir.

 

Very common American item, most originally had candy, but they were used for other items, as well as sold both empty and filled as souvenirs. Some old ads below...


1926:



1942:



1953:



~Cheryl

 

Yes, those are common... and useful! I have one that belonged to my grandmother. As mentioned, these have a printed image attached (maybe glued?) onto the top.

 

I was going to pipe in here and say definitely late 20's or 30's as i have one from my Grandmother , it was hers as a young lady .... the adds pretty much confirm that ...

 

I have three of these only the transfer pictures are either worn off or partly torn off. My mother used them for buttons, jewelry, whatever. Some are from as late as the 50s.

 

Red cedar boxes like the OP's are usually from the 1920s-'50s, as the ads posted indicate, and they were also sometimes used for cigars, but more often had a label inside the lid (though some did have mirrors), as well as tax stamps, but labels and stamps could be removed - if I recall correctly, the 'Spanish cedar' typically used for tobacco goods boxes was in short supply for a time. Generally, the smaller souvenir cedar boxes seem to date more from after WWII and later, I can remember seeing them new into the '70s, and they were likely made past that. Of course, simple cedar boxes/chests are still being produced, and most of the time, the hardware is pretty similar to the old pieces (when my Aussie Syd was cremated ten years ago, her ashes came back in a cedar box).

My Mom had one from her childhood in the '30s, quite plain, but with amber glass marbles for feet - coveted it when I was little (it was those pretty feet), and she finally gave it to me when I was in my early teens. Most are packed away, but have picked up at least two or three dozen more cedar boxes over the years, because, well, I just can't pass up a cheap wooden box...

Here are a few souvenir trinket boxes, measuring from 4.25" to 8" long, two stamped for Texas, one for Springfield, Illinois, and one for California, the one with the small plastic cameo was made by J.B. Deere Cedarcraft (Missouri business from the late '40s into at least the '90s):




This is my latest $1.50 box, not much age to it, 5" x 9.5", with a shallow Northwest Coast style carving, signed 'Three Turtle' with Sharpie inside:




~Cheryl

 

...and I have this one, brought back by my Dad from a convention in 1962:



I kept SO many "special" things in it when I was a kid!