Wooden chest - Dowry chest? Indian? Not sure...

Picked this up this morning - looks quite old to me - but I've been wrong before Looks Indian to my eye - is this perhaps a dowry chest? Any other info anyone can provide? The front feet are copper - the back feet are wooden.

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Indian.

Debora

 

Rajasthan, to be precise.

 

Thank you. Not my area of the world.

Debora

 

Thank you for the information do you have any idea on the age of this?

 

Not an expert in this kind of thing, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't at least 19th century. The hardware seems to have some honest age and just the general look of it. Again, not an expert, just going on a few older Persian and Indian things I've seen and sold over the years. Sometimes if something is really beat up it can look older than it is, but my gut says this is genuinely older.

I was searching around on Google and one thing I noticed was how your box seems to open. Just on that one section on the top, not the whole lid in other words. Might be a clue of some kind.

Looks like it has seen better days, but I think it is really cool piece.

 

Think it is genuinely old. However, the paint may be newer than the chest.

 

Are the nuts square? Can you tell if they are hand made or machine? Either way it is a nice piece.

 

I'll take some closer up pictures of the joints and hardware and post in here

 

Here are a few details:

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Here is a little bit of history on the hex nut, which would fit your chest's date if late 19th century.


Mass Production

• In 1830 James Nasmyth, an assistant to Henry Maudslay, designed a pioneering milling attachment for Maudslay's bench lathe to make a large batch of hex-head bolts for a scale model they were building for the London Science Museum. By the 1840s, cold-heading machines became available for stamping metal. It took until the 1880s, when Bessemer steel mills began producing the new mild steel in accurate thicknesses and quantity, before cold-heading machines began punching out hex nuts. This innovation meant that nuts stamped from flat metal stock and machined to exact tolerances could be screwed onto bolts made by the new screw-making machines in mills anywhere in the country. Larger hex nuts quickly replaced square bolt heads in heavy industrial applications.
  

Here is the link if you would like to see more info.

http://www.ehow.com/info_12194415_history-hex-head-nuts-bolts.html

 

I think perhaps a tad later than late 19th. Don't forget this was made in India, and is hand wrought, rather than industrial. Yes, Britain used hex nuts, but we were the world leaders in industry - early adopters and all that. They'd have taken longer to get to craftsman in India. I can't see why this isn't early 20th, though.

 

I'm a little confused about the hex nut thing these don't look like hex nuts to me...they are square?

 

No, I thought there might have been a connection to the British industrial given the ties during the Victorian Empire. That is why I was asking about handmade or machine made. I didn't know your images could be enlarged as they can be and that is why I was asking if they were square.

 

That makes sense... I can't tell for sure but everything on here looks handmade to me...including all the hardware.

 

Whichever it might be late 19th or early 20th it is still a neat piece.