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    Little Book of Wooden Boxes: Wooden Boxes Created by the Masters
    Little Book of Wooden Boxes: Wooden Boxes Created by the Masters
    Little Book of Wooden Boxes: Wooden Boxes Created by the Masters
    Ebook260 pages50 minutes

    Little Book of Wooden Boxes: Wooden Boxes Created by the Masters

    By Oscar Fitzgerald

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    About this ebook

    This craftsman's companion celebrates 31 of the woodturners, furniture artists, and elite craftsmen from around the world who have taken box-making to a higher level of aesthetic form. Each artist’s profile includes full-color, studio-quality photographs of their most spectacular work, along with insights on their design ideas and objectives.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFox Chapel Publishing
    Release dateFeb 1, 2021
    ISBN9781607656487
    Little Book of Wooden Boxes: Wooden Boxes Created by the Masters

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      Book preview

      Little Book of Wooden Boxes - Oscar Fitzgerald

      INTRODUCTION

      by Oscar Fitzgerald

      Boxes are among the most ancient of humankind’s works. Usually with four sides, a bottom, and a lid, boxes contain everything imaginable. Lids can be either hinged to the case or detachable, and secured with a hasp or lock to protect the contents. They can be as large as a big-box store or small enough to hold cufflinks.

      Ancient Boxes

      The numerous boxes recovered from King Tutankhamen’s tomb were typical of those that held everyday items the pharaohs would need in the afterlife. One small box held the mummified bodies of two stillborn babies that may have been the king’s children. A rectangular wooden box with a hunchbacked lid was decorated with scenes of the hunt or of battles painted on ivory panels on the top, and with floral and animal depictions on the sides. It probably held the king’s robes. Like most of the wooden boxes found in the tomb, it was made with mortise-and-tenon joints and carefully cut dovetails—the same joints used by woodworkers today. The box was secured by string threaded around mushroom-shaped knobs and tied with a knot that was then sealed.

      After the fall of the Roman Empire, boxes survived in monasteries and castles in Europe during the Middle Ages.

      Illustration

      Box with angels, intended to contain small bottles of holy oils. Champlevé enamel over gilt copper, early thirteenth century, Limoges (Limousin, France).

      Many held vestments, holy relics, incense, and plate. Small caskets or decorated boxes served as jewel or valuables boxes. Larger cast-iron boxes were common, and medieval dispatch boxes typically had two keys, one each for sender and recipient.

      Work Boxes

      By the seventeenth century, a box maker’s guild had been incorporated in England, and its members specialized in wooden boxes with compartments and drawers and slanting lids to hold books for reading. Serving as the portable desks of the time, these boxes held valuable books, writing equipment, and papers. In the eighteenth century, as papers and accounts proliferated and boxes grew larger, they were placed on stands, and the modern desk was born.

      Both men and women used dressing boxes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ones for men contained razors, strops and hones, scissors, penknives, and a looking glass. In his The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing-Book (1792), Thomas Sheraton illustrated a square Lady’s Traveling Box fitted up for writing, dressing, and sewing equipment. It contained compartments for ink and an adjustable writing surface covered with green cloth; a place for scissors and powder, pomatum, and perfume bottles; and a removable dressing glass. There was even a space to store rings and a clever little windlass for rolling up lace as it was worked.

      Snuff and Tobacco Boxes

      The heyday for English boxes was in the eighteenth century, and often the most extravagant work was lavished on the tiny snuffbox. After the discovery of tobacco in the New World in the seventeenth century, the elaborate ritual of inhaling powdered tobacco spread throughout Europe. Many gentlemen owned multiple boxes to match their various degrees of dress and the formality of the occasion. Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV, reputedly had a different snuffbox for every day of the year.

      Illustration

      Unusual English wooden snuffbox fitted with a carved mechanical snake that strikes when the lid is slid open.

      By the nineteenth century, the custom of taking snuff declined, and cigarette and cigar smoking increased. As elegant snuffboxes fell out of fashion, they were replaced with larger cigarette and cigar cases. Wooden boxes were inexpensive to make, and by the late-nineteenth century the familiar, six-board cigar box was common. Cigarette and cigar boxes survived well into the twentieth century, though they were mostly of cardboard.

      Gift and Souvenir Boxes

      As a measure of their preciousness, snuffboxes were often given as gifts or to celebrate heroic deeds or special events. Boxes were issued to commemorate the hot-air balloon assent of the Montgolfier brothers in the late-eighteenth century and to celebrate the victory of Admiral Vernon over the Spanish at Portobello in 1739.

      Sailors who made scrimshaw ditty boxes and other items for their loved ones at home continued the tradition of gift boxes into the nineteenth century. In Germany, and also in Pennsylvania, where so many of their countrymen immigrated during the eighteenth century, brides would be given painted oval or round boxes decorated with flowers and figures as a traditional wedding present containing trinkets and ribbons.

      Boxing Day, falling the day after Christmas, is celebrated in Britain, Canada, and several other countries, as a day to give gift boxes to servants and tradespeople. Although the exact origin of the custom is obscure, it may relate to the practice of opening church poor-boxes at Christmas time, or to the fact that servants had to work on Christmas Day and were rewarded the day after with gifts—much like today’s Christmas bonus.

      Personal Boxes

      In addition to gift boxes, a number of other specialized containers were popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Gentlemen carried nutmeg and graters to flavor their custard, and had pillboxes in their pockets. Different boxes held breath mints and candy, often in elegant boot-shaped boxes and other forms. Comfit boxes filled

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