Featured Mystery Box?

I'm having problems dating and putting a country of origin to this box. My thoughts were either Indian or English around the first half of the 19th c going by the silk lining and key but love to hear what other members think? The photos show all the imperfections that don't really stand out in real life.

 

It is a beauty, raver. Is it a glove box?
Are the decorative bands metal?
It could be Continental European, made from imported hardwood.

 

size ?

 

28 x 9 x 13 cm

 

Yes the brass banding is solid and guiled and the Coromandel wood is from India but was very prized in England in the 19th c and just to confuse things a little more the locks and hinges were used in both countries in the same period.

 

I'm not sure if it's a glove box? All the inside is silk lined

 

gloves of that era were soft calfskin so the silk would keep them safe..

 

It was used a lot here in the Netherlands at the time, and even exported to other European countries. We got it from Indonesia, and in earlier days also from India.

Yes they are pretty generic, so unfortunately not an indication of its origin.

I have two Dutch glove boxes that are lined with silk, for silk gloves and for soft kid gloves and the like.
I don't think yours is Dutch though. I was thinking possibly Central European.

 

it's nice you have the key as well...

 

Yes, so many of those small keys are lost over time.

 

European locks tend to have round keeps whereas English and Indian locks have square keeps. I'm happy to say it's a glove box, out of all the boxes I have this is the only one that's silk lined.

 

The key is (in my eyes) is important because it points to it being the first half of the 19th c instead of the second half, most late Victorian boxes have a very simple key but this one (for it's size) is quite intricate. that's why I took a photo of it.

 

My antique Dutch boxes have square/rectangular lock keeps, but this box doesn't look typically Dutch.
I'm not sure I have ever seen a round lock keep on a box.

 

Not that I have any French boxes but they have round keeps and Italian boxes also have round keeps.

 

BTW that's not my box, just an example

 

I checked my one French box, and it does indeed have a round lock keep.
Surprisingly, I also found one Dutch early Amsterdam School box with a round keep. But all my other Dutch boxes have square/rectangular keeps. Most are older than the Amsterdam School one, but one is 1920s Art Deco, so later. So the choice of a round keep in the Netherlands wasn't a period thing. Maybe the lock on that one box was salvaged from a French box.

So it isn't so much that Continental boxes have round keeps, more that French and Italian boxes have that (and possibly some others).
So maybe we shouldn't rule out Central Europe just yet? I was thinking Germany or Austria.

 

This thread about the keep shape has made me think about what I buy and why. I hadn't really thought about it before but I do only look at 3 countries in Europe when I buy boxes, I wonder if it's just a lack of knowledge on my behalf. The only boxes that fit my buying criteria are the UK, France and Italy, I try and buy boxes that are very hard to recreate and if they are possible to recreate it would cost far more than it would be to buy a original one or someone would have to break the law ie use banned material or the skill involved has been lost to history. The above box is one of only a few antiques I own that doesn't meet the criteria although the cost of figured Coromandel wood is far more than I paid for the box. I've seen antique collections be devalued by vast amounts in the past by fakes and didn't want to fall into that trap. Of course there are other countries in Europe that have boxes I would like to buy from earlier periods but these are very costly. Also art plays a big part of weather I buy a antique or not, someone said the other day on here antiques had fallen in price, I said in my experience they hadn't but plain well made antiques have just I hadn't noticed, 95% of my antiques have gone up in price and some I can't find for sale globally because nobody is selling them ATM or the prices are so high they are ridiculous, when I started collecting these antiques were easily affordable. Anyway (sorry for going on) the above box could be from Europe, I've looked to try and find one like it but haven't managed it yet, my guess is English or Indian.

 

My antique Dutch boxes are nearly all Frisian, from ca 1750 to late 19th century.
The Amsterdam School one is Frisian chipwork. It dates from the 1910s, which would be a little too late for my Frisian collection, but being Amsterdam School style makes up for that.
I look for Frisian antiques that I can afford, often because other people miss them because they aren't sold as Frisian.

The Art Deco box is the odd one out, it was my mother's jewellery box. But it is also hand made/carved, so it is allowed to stay.

The French box is somewhere on the forum. It is one of those studded boxes with leather details. It was too beautiful and nicely priced to pass. It came from a seller in Friesland, coincidentally.

My other boxes are all East Asian, and a lot of them. I have a thing for boxes, can you tell?

 

I would love to see them, maybe we can have a box off where I post pictures of one box and you post pictures of one of your boxes?